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4 unusual facts about Cumberland Gap


Battle of Cumberland Gap

Battle of the Cumberland Gap may refer to several engagements in and around the Cumberland Gap during the American Civil War.

Cumberland Gap Historic District

The Cumberland Gap, also designated as the Cumberland Gap Historic District

Cumberland Gap, Tennessee

In 1888, a work camp was established at Cumberland Gap by Scottish-born entrepreneur Alexander Arthur (1846–1912) to house workers needed to build a tunnel for the Knoxville, Cumberland Gap & Louisville Railroad.

Arthur, who was attempting to establish a large-scale iron production operation in the Cumberland Gap region, founded the nearby cities of Middlesboro, Kentucky and Harrogate, Tennessee and the nearby community of Arthur.


Arcadia, Tennessee

This portion of the road was also part of Daniel Boone's Wilderness Road which allowed those following the Great Wagon Road to continue past present-day Bristol, through the Reedy Creek Settlement, through Moccasin Gap, and over to Cumberland Gap to settle in Kentucky.

Battle of Camp Wildcat

Brig. Gen. Felix Zollicoffer's Confederates moved from Tennessee in an effort to push from Cumberland Gap into central Kentucky and gain control of the important border state.

Mary O'Connell

Sister Anthony also served at the battlefields of Winchester, Virginia; the Cumberland Gap, Tennessee, Richmond, Virginia, Nashville, Tennessee, Gallipolis, Ohio, Culpeper Court House, Virginia, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee, and Lynchburg, Virginia.

Proctor, Kentucky

In 1862, the Proctor flour mill was burned by troops of CSA Colonel John Hunt Morgan as he attempted to stop the retreat of General George W. Morgan (USA) from Cumberland Gap.

Timeline of Kentucky in the American Civil War

October 8, 1862 • Confederate General Braxton Bragg's invasion of Kentucky comes to an end when his army defeats Union Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell at the Battle of Perryville, but then withdraws through the Cumberland Gap, leaving Eastern Kentucky in Union hands for the rest of the war.


see also

185th Ohio Infantry

Detained at Louisville, Kentucky, and assigned to guard duty at various points in Kentucky from Owensboro to Cumberland Gap, with headquarters at Eminence, until September.

A74 road

In August 2008, when the A74 was still an all-purpose road across the Cumberland Gap, the Highways Agency took out a special order to ban cyclists and pedestrians from the route, advising them to use the A7 to Longtown instead.

Camp Nelson Civil War Heritage Park

When Union Major General Ambrose Burnside attacked the Cumberland Gap and Knoxville, Tennessee, Camp Nelson's distance from the Gap and Knoxville, combined with lack of railroads and the weather, hampered the Union advance.

Great Road

Wilderness Road, a road that traverses the Appalachians through the Cumberland Gap

James Edwards Rains

But the forces that Maj. Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith had gathered about Knoxville, in addition to those in the neighborhood of Cumberland Gap, made the Union occupation of that post almost a barren victory.