Point of Rocks

Point of Rocks. . , The B&O rail line served as an important means of supply and communication during the Civil War (the station and tracks to Washington, D.C., on the southern or right side of the station were built later)., At Point of Rocks, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad reached the banks of the Potomac River from Baltimore. This narrow strip of bottomland, which allowed passage beyond the Blue Ridge's Catoctin and South Mountain ranges, had been the subject of a court fight decades earlier when the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and the railroad both sought to use it., In May 1861, Col. Thomas J. (later Gen. "Stonewall") Jackson convinced the railroad to consolidate its coal shipments at a specific time period. He then captured 56 locomotives and more than 300 rail cars by halting all train traffic west of Point of Rocks., In mid-June 1863, shortly before the Battle of Gettysburg, Confederate troops here captured and burned a train loaded with provisions for the Union garrison at Harpers Ferry. In 1864, Confederate Lt. Col. John S. Mosby, in what became known as the "Calico Raid" or the Crinoline Raid," attacked the Union garrison here., [Sidebar:] , Did you know? , Union pickets were commonly stationed along the river during the war. The Confederate soldiers were often just across the Potomac River in Virginia.