Appalachian History
A Mountain County on the Front Line
When the Civil War reached Kentucky in 1861, Laurel County sat in a place that generals on both sides could not ignore. The Wilderness Road threaded up from Cumberland Gap through London and the Rockcastle Hills toward the Bluegrass. Whoever held that narrow corridor could threaten Lexington and the Ohio River or shield East Tennessee from invasion.
Within a few months of Kentucky’s claimed neutrality, Confederate brigadier general Felix Zollicoffer pushed north from Tennessee while Union brigadier general George H. Thomas rushed troops forward from Camp Dick Robinson. Their advance guards collided along that ancient road at places like Laurel Bridge, Camp Wildcat, and London, turning a sparsely settled mountain county into a contested military gateway.
Skirmish at Laurel Bridge
The first shots around Laurel County came before most of the state had chosen a side. In late September 1861 Zollicoffer probed north toward London, feeling for Union camps along the Rockcastle River. Official Records from his command and later battle lists summarize a loose series of clashes between September 26 and 30, usually grouped under the label “Skirmish in Laurel County.” These reports describe Confederate detachments under colonels James E. Rains and Alexander W. Reynolds or William H. Carroll moving toward a Federal or Home Guard gathering near Laurel Bridge, just south of London.
Contemporary newspapers filled in some of the human detail. On 8 October 1861 the Richmond Daily Dispatch printed a brief dispatch from Kentucky stating that Zollicoffer “broke up the Federal encampment at Laurel Bridge, in Laurel County,” about thirty six miles from Cumberland Ford, capturing men and supplies. Later Confederate reminiscences and modern regimental histories remembered the same episode as a small success that encouraged Zollicoffer to keep pressing toward the Rockcastle Hills, even as stronger Federal forces assembled in his front.
For local residents the skirmish meant more than a line in the Official Records. Farms along the Wilderness Road saw armed men foraging livestock, tearing down fences for firewood, and searching cabins for Union recruits. The quiet valley at Laurel Bridge became the gateway through which thousands of Confederates would soon march toward a new Federal camp in the ridges ahead.
Camp Wildcat and the Battle for the Wilderness Road
Alarmed by Zollicoffer’s movement, George H. Thomas ordered Colonel Theophilus T. Garrard and his 7th Kentucky Infantry to establish a fortified camp in the Rockcastle Hills above the Wilderness Road. The site became known as Camp Wildcat. In his official report from Camp Dick Robinson, Thomas explained that he wanted Garrard to secure the ford on the Rockcastle River and block the main road from Cumberland Gap toward the interior of Kentucky.
Garrard soon realized he was badly outnumbered and warned Thomas that he would have to retreat without reinforcements. Thomas responded by sending a mixed brigade under Brigadier General Albin F. Schoepf. Schoepf’s men, including the 17th Ohio Infantry, the 1st Kentucky Cavalry, and other Midwestern regiments, slogged up the muddy road to Wildcat in mid October. Regimental histories from the 14th and 17th Ohio recall the exhausting march and the eerie climb into steep, timbered hills where they could hear Confederate pickets long before they saw them.
On 21 October 1861 Zollicoffer tested the new camp. Confederate infantry pushed up the slopes of Round Hill and other ridges that shielded the Federal position. Schoepf’s official report, filed from “Camp on Rockcastle River” the next day, described how his men held the high ground through several hours of broken assaults, using the rough terrain as a force multiplier.
Modern summaries such as the American Battlefield Trust and the National Park Service disagree slightly on casualty figures but agree that the fight ended in a clear Union victory. Estimates typically list around seven thousand Federals and roughly five to six thousand Confederates engaged, with fewer than one hundred total casualties. The outcome forced Zollicoffer to fall back toward Cumberland Gap and bought the Union precious time to shore up its hold on central Kentucky.
Locally, the battle imprinted itself on the landscape. Archaeological surveys at Camp Wildcat in the late twentieth century located surviving trenches, artillery positions, and shallow rifle pits along the ridges, confirming descriptions from soldiers who remembered cutting earthworks into the rocky soil. Interpretive panels today emphasize that this remote, heavily wooded site escaped the farming and development that erased so many other Civil War battlefields, leaving Laurel County with one of the best preserved early war positions in Kentucky.
London in the Crosshairs, 1862
Camp Wildcat did not end Laurel County’s brush with invasion. By the summer of 1862 the strategic focus had shifted to Cumberland Gap, where Union general George W. Morgan held an isolated mountain fortress. While Confederate forces maneuvered to cut him off, cavalry columns fanned through southeastern Kentucky. One of these, a brigade under Colonel John S. Scott of Louisiana, rode north into Laurel County in mid August.
The Official Records group the events of 16 to 22 August under “Operations about Cumberland Gap, including action at London, Ky.” Morgan’s correspondence described the constant threat that Confederate horsemen posed to his supply lines. He warned that a strong enemy column could strike his depots at London and Flat Lick and force him to abandon the Gap. Leonidas C. Houk, colonel of the 3rd Tennessee (Union), commanded the small garrison at London itself.
On 17 August Scott’s cavalry swept into town. Later summaries based on Houk’s report recount that around five hundred Confederate troopers attacked roughly two hundred Federal effectives and convalescents. The brief fight left at least thirteen Union soldiers dead, seventeen wounded, and more than one hundred captured. Local tradition preserved by Kentucky historical markers in downtown London repeats similar numbers, noting that only a fraction of Houk’s men escaped into the surrounding hills.
For Laurel Countians the “Battle of London” meant raided homes, seized horses, and a main street suddenly choked with prisoners and wounded. The fight also highlighted the county’s role as a way station for East Tennessee Unionists. Many of Houk’s men had marched north through London earlier that year, part of a stream of recruits who slipped across the mountains to join Federal regiments at Flat Lick and Camp Dick Robinson.
Scott’s Raid and the 1863 Skirmish at London
Laurel County’s wartime story includes a second visit from Scott. In July 1863, after the fall of Vicksburg and as Confederate cavalry launched a flurry of raids into Kentucky, Scott led the 5th Louisiana Cavalry and attached units on a fast moving expedition known simply as Scott’s Raid.
Battle lists derived from the Official Records trace his route from Williamsburg through London, Richmond, Paris, and Winchester between 25 and 31 July. On 26 July he again skirmished at London. The surviving Federal and Confederate reports for this phase of the raid are brief, but they describe clashes with Union cavalry screens and the capture of horses, arms, and government stores as Scott’s column tried to evade larger forces under Union generals Edward Hobson and George Hartsuff.
In Laurel County memory the 1863 encounter never loomed as large as Camp Wildcat or the 1862 fight at London. Yet it underscored the same reality. As long as armies moved through eastern Kentucky, London and the surrounding crossroads could not stay quiet.
Laurel Countians in Blue and in Gray
The Official Records and battle summaries focus on generals and regiments, but Laurel County’s Civil War story also lives in enlistment rolls and gravestones. The United States Colored Troops Muster and Descriptive Roll for Kentucky includes a section explicitly labeled “Volunteers enlisted from Laurel County, Kentucky.” Young men listed there, many formerly enslaved or classified as laborers, entered USCT regiments with notes on height, complexion, and occupation that hint at lives largely absent from standard county histories.
Local genealogical compilations, cemetery surveys, and the Laurel County Historical Society’s reference files identify dozens of Civil War veterans buried in the county, Union and Confederate. These lists tie familiar Laurel County surnames to units that fought at Camp Wildcat, London, and across the Upper South.
Regimental histories and memoirs deepen the picture. The History of the Twentieth Tennessee Regiment, for example, traces Zollicoffer’s 1861 campaign from East Tennessee to Laurel Bridge and Camp Wildcat, dwelling on the rough marches and the shock of meeting determined resistance from Kentucky Unionists in what some Confederates had hoped would be friendly territory. Kentucky and Ohio unit histories do the same from the opposite side, recalling how the steep Laurel County hills gave inexperienced Federal troops their first taste of combat.
Landscape, Memory, and Preservation
More than a century and a half later, Laurel County’s Civil War past is written on the land as much as in the archives. Archaeologists working with the Camp Wildcat Preservation Foundation and the Kentucky Archaeological Survey have mapped trenches, gun pits, and camp sites that match the positions described in Schoepf’s report and later veterans’ accounts. Studies along the nearby Little Rockcastle and Hazel Patch areas connect those features to older routes along the Wilderness Road, showing how an eighteenth century migration path became a nineteenth century battle line.
Markers on U.S. 25 and at the Camp Wildcat pavilion now guide visitors through the battle, while a state historical sign on Main Street in London summarizes the 1862 action and its casualties. The Laurel County History Museum and Genealogy Center maintains files on local veterans and hosts a virtual exhibit that includes Alfred E. Mathews’s contemporary sketch “Battle of Wild Cat, Oct 21st, 1861,” which captures smoke curling over steep ridges crowded with tiny figures in blue and gray.
Each October, reenactors and visitors gather at Camp Wildcat to walk the same slopes that Garrard’s Kentuckians and Zollicoffer’s Tennesseans once climbed. For many Laurel Countians the event is both commemoration and homecoming, a reminder that the county’s wooded hills were once the stage for national decisions about slavery, Union, and the future of the border South.
Why Laurel County’s Civil War Story Matters
Laurel County’s Civil War experience shows how a seemingly out of the way Appalachian community became crucial to grand strategy. The skirmish at Laurel Bridge, the stand at Camp Wildcat, the capture of London in 1862, and the flash of Scott’s Raid in 1863 all revolved around control of a narrow corridor of road and river. Through those gaps moved Unionist refugees from East Tennessee, Confederate raiders hunting supplies, and eventually African American volunteers from Laurel County who seized their own freedom by enlisting.
Today preserved earthworks, historical markers, and thick archival records allow Laurel County to tell a Civil War story that belongs as much to local farmers, teamsters, and soldiers as to generals. For travelers tracing the Wilderness Road and for residents looking up from Main Street toward the distant ridge of Wildcat Mountain, the message is simple. The war that decided the fate of the Union was not only fought in great set piece battles. It was also fought, and remembered, in places like Laurel County, where holding a few miles of steep, stony road could change the course of a campaign.
Sources & Further Reading
Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol. 4, “Action at Rockcastle Hills or Camp Wild Cat, Ky., October 21, 1861,” reports of George H. Thomas and Albin F. Schoepf.Civil War Notebook+1
Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol. 16, Part I, “Operations about Cumberland Gap, Tenn., including action at London, Ky., August 16–22, 1862.”Civil War Index+1
Richmond Daily Dispatch, 8 October 1861, report on Zollicoffer’s dispersal of the Federal camp at Laurel Bridge, Laurel County, Kentucky.Daily Dispatch
United States Colored Troops Muster and Descriptive Roll for Kentucky, 7th, 8th, and 9th Districts, section “Volunteers enlisted from Laurel County, Kentucky.” Kentucky Historical Society Digital Collections.Kentucky History+1
“Battle at Camp Wildcat.” Laurel County Historical Society virtual exhibit and associated archaeological reports and maps.Laurel County Historical Society+1
History of the Twentieth Tennessee Regiment, Volunteer Infantry, C.S.A. (regimental history discussing Zollicoffer’s 1861 campaign in southeastern Kentucky).Wikimedia Commons
Regimental records and unit histories for the 14th and 17th Ohio Infantry and 1st Kentucky Cavalry, including narrative accounts of the march to and battle at Camp Wildcat.MSU Libraries+2National Park Service+2
American Battlefield Trust, “Camp Wildcat Battle Facts and Summary,” and National Park Service battle overview for Camp Wildcat.American Battlefield Trust+1
Brian D. McKnight, Contested Borderland: The Civil War in Appalachian Kentucky and Virginia.
Kent Masterson Brown, The Civil War in Kentucky: Battle for the Bluegrass State.
David Owens, Baptism in Blood: The Camp Wildcat Affair.
Carolana Civil War site, “All Known Battles and Skirmishes During the American Civil War – Kentucky,” entries for “Skirmish in Laurel County,” “Action at London,” and “Skirmish at London (Scott’s Raid).”Carolana+1