Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park will host a free guided walking tour on Saturday, Feb. 28, from 9:30-11:30 a.m. The program will focus on the role of the Union artillery that was stationed on the southern end of Stringer’s Ridge during the Civil War Siege and Battles for Chattanooga in the fall of 1863.
The program will be led by National Military Park Historian Jim Ogden and will cover about a mile and a half of moderately difficult trail. The walk will begin at a parking area near 201 Moccasin Bend Road, just north of the Moccasin Bend Mental Health Institute entrance. Look for the “Special Program” signs beginning on Manufactures Road just west of US 27. Comfortable, supportive footwear, clothing appropriate for the weather and water are recommended for this program.
“We shot pretty much every day” is how one Union artillerist on Moccasin Bend described the role of his and a companion battery in that critical fall of 1863. That simple statement, however, obscures both the skill and effect of the innumerable shells they sent across the Tennessee, mostly toward the looming and imposing mass of Lookout Mountain. During this special program, Mr. Ogden will talk specifically about the artillery practice on Moccasin Bend that caused one Confederate recipient of that fire to call those Union guns “a vicious little battery.”
For more information about programs at Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park,
contact the Chickamauga Battlefield Visitor Center at 706.866-9241, the Lookout Mountain
Battlefield Visitor Center at 821-7786, or visit the park’s website at www.nps.gov/chch.