Appalachian History Series – The Burning of the North River Bridge at Jordan’s Point
On June 11, 1864, as Union general David Hunter pushed south through the Shenandoah Valley, Confederate brigadier general John A. McCausland burned the bridge over the North River at Jordan’s Point, just north of Lexington in Rockbridge County, Virginia. That act did not stop Hunter’s advance, but it did shape the fighting that day, forced a contested river crossing, and became one of the defining moments of Hunter’s raid on Lexington and the destruction that followed. The best evidence for the event comes from wartime correspondence, Union and Confederate reports, a Union soldier’s diary, and later site documentation that ties the surviving remains at Jordan’s Point to the bridge burned in 1864.
Jordan’s Point mattered because it was much more than a simple crossing. Long before the Civil War it had become a transportation and commercial hub for Lexington, with mills, canal activity, warehouses, and a bridge carrying the main approach into town from the north. The National Register nomination for the Jordan’s Point Historic District describes the bridge as strategically valuable and notes that its stone abutments remained important enough to be reused after the war. In other words, when McCausland burned the span, he was not destroying an isolated country bridge. He was torching one of Lexington’s most important gateways.
June 10, 1864: Lexington Waits
By the evening of June 10, Lexington’s leaders understood that Hunter’s army was closing in. A VMI letter associated with Superintendent Francis H. Smith records that intelligence had come in from McCausland that the enemy, in strong force, was advancing on the town. Rose Page Pendleton’s near-contemporary account, written within days of the occupation and later published in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, likewise recalled that on Friday evening Lexington received certain news that the Yankees were approaching. Those two pieces of evidence, one official and one civilian, show how quickly alarm spread through town on the eve of the fight.
The response at Jordan’s Point was immediate. The Jordan’s Point nomination, drawing on local historian Robert J. Driver Jr., states that on June 10 the bridge was fortified by Virginia Military Institute cadets. A cadet howitzer was placed to defend the approach, Captain Henry A. Wise led cadets to a supporting hillside position, and other cadets lined the bridge with turpentine-soaked bales of hay so that it could be fired if retreat became necessary. That detail is crucial because it shows the bridge’s destruction was not improvised in the moment. It was planned in advance as part of Lexington’s defensive scheme.
June 11, 1864: Fire on the North River
The strongest firsthand Union description of the action comes from J. O. Humphreys, whose June 11 diary entry states that the Federals marched to Lexington and that “the enemy disputed our passage of North River with artillery and sharp shooting.” That short line is one of the clearest eyewitness confirmations that the crossing at Lexington was actively contested. It also matches the larger picture in Union reports, which show McCausland trying to delay Hunter’s advance long enough to save his smaller command from being trapped.
Union cavalry commander William W. Averell reported that on June 11 his division crossed North River at the Rockbridge Bath and tried to cut off McCausland, “who had burned the bridge at Lexington, and was opposing the crossing of Crook.” That report matters because it confirms two things at once. First, McCausland did burn the bridge. Second, the burning did not end the fight, since Confederate forces still tried to hold up the Union crossing while Averell moved upstream to turn the position.
Confederate and VMI evidence points in the same direction. One Francis H. Smith letter states that McCausland had destroyed the bridge over the North River, planted artillery on Magazine Hill, and occupied the hills south of the river. Another wartime Confederate dispatch from June 11 reported that Averell’s cavalry, said to be 4,000 strong, had crossed the North River eight miles above Lexington. Taken together with Averell’s report, those records show the tactical problem McCausland faced. He could damage the direct approach at Jordan’s Point, but he could not prevent Union cavalry from seeking another crossing and threatening his flank.
Hunter’s own account, as preserved in the Official Records and echoed in later syntheses, says the enemy had fled across the river, burned the bridges, and occupied the cliffs opposite town. He described Confederate sharpshooters among rocks and storehouses at the bridge and in the buildings of the Virginia Military Institute. The U.S. Army Center of Military History summarizes the same action by noting that the Valley Pike crossed a wooden bridge over the North River, that cadets helped prepare it for burning, and that when Union cavalry approached on June 11 the cadets set the bridge ablaze while McCausland’s guns and the VMI howitzer opened fire.
The Bridge Burns, But Lexington Falls
Burning the bridge bought McCausland time, but not enough. The Army history and the surviving site record agree that Union forces found ways across. The Center of Military History states that Averell’s division and a brigade of Crook’s command crossed the North River northwest of town, forcing the Confederates to retreat, after which Union engineers put up a pontoon bridge. The Jordan’s Point nomination adds a useful local detail, noting that some Federal troops crossed the “remnants of the burning bridge,” while others used a pontoon bridge, though the nomination also cautions that the pontoon may not have stood exactly at the Point. Even where details differ at the margins, the central story is clear. McCausland’s destruction of the bridge delayed the Union army but could not prevent Lexington’s capture.
Once the line at the river gave way, the consequences for Lexington were severe. Encyclopedia Virginia notes that McCausland’s burning of the bridge on June 11 was meant to delay Hunter’s advance, but by mid-afternoon Union shells were falling on the town. The National Park Service similarly states that McCausland’s delaying tactics, burning the bridge and posting sharpshooters on the cliffs, only aggravated Hunter. Within the next days Lexington suffered looting, the burning of VMI, the burning of Governor John Letcher’s home, and broader destruction tied to Hunter’s occupation.
Jordan’s Point in Memory and on the Landscape
One of the strongest local clues that the bridge burning remained vivid in community memory comes from the Lexington Gazette of August 9, 1864. The paper remarked that the restoration of navigation on the North River Canal had destroyed the ford that had been used “since the destruction of the bridge.” That line is brief, but it is powerful. It shows that only weeks after the raid, Lexington residents were still measuring everyday travel against the loss of the bridge at Jordan’s Point.
The physical landscape also preserved the story. The Jordan’s Point Historic District nomination states that the bridge burned in June 1864 and that a later bridge reused the antebellum stone abutments. The same nomination links the June 10 fortification of the bridge, the June 11 burning, and the surviving remains at the site. In that sense Jordan’s Point is not simply where the event happened. It is one of the few places where the material trace of the event still anchors the documentary record.
Why the Story Matters
The burning of the North River bridge at Jordan’s Point captures something essential about Civil War fighting in Appalachian communities. Major campaigns were often decided not only in famous battles but also at river crossings, road junctions, warehouses, canal landings, and mill sites that local people used every day. At Lexington in June 1864, McCausland’s men and VMI cadets tried to turn one such place into a defensive barrier. They failed to save the town, but they left behind a moment well documented in wartime records and still visible in the historic landscape. For Rockbridge County, the bridge at Jordan’s Point was where strategy, geography, and local memory met in fire.
Sources & Further Reading
United States War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Series I, vol. 37, pt. 1. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1890. https://civilwar.com/official-record/941-monocacy-part-i/213574-146-series-i-volume-xxxvii-i-serial-70-monocacy-part-i.html
Smith, Francis H. “Hunter’s Raid on VMI, June 1864” letters. Virginia Military Institute Archives, Lexington, Virginia. https://digitalcollections.vmi.edu/digital/api/collection/p15821coll14/id/1006/download
Humphreys, J. O. Civil War Diary, 1864. Virginia Military Institute transcription. https://vmi.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15821coll11/id/2133/
Pendleton, Rose Page. “General David Hunter’s Sack of Lexington, Virginia, June 10–14, 1864.” Edited by Charles W. Turner. Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 83, no. 2 (1975): 173–201. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4247940
McDonald, Cornelia Peake. A Diary with Reminiscences of the War and Refugee Life in the Shenandoah Valley, 1860–1865. Nashville: Cullom & Ghertner, 1935. https://archive.org/details/diarywithreminis00mcdo
Lynch, Charles H. The Civil War Diary, 1862–1865, of Charles H. Lynch, 18th Conn. Vol’s. Hartford, CT: Case, Lockwood & Brainard, 1915. https://archive.org/details/lynchcivilwardiar00charrich
Moore, J. Scott. “Raid of General David Hunter, U.S. Army. Burning of the Virginia Military Institute and Other Buildings, and the Murder of Two Citizens by His Orders. How General McCausland Held Immense Odds in Check.” Southern Historical Society Papers 27 (1899): 177–191. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Southern_Historical_Society_Papers/Volume_27
Lexington Gazette. August 9, 1864. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=LGZ18640809.1.2
U.S. Army Center of Military History. The Shenandoah Valley Campaign, March–November 1864. Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1994. https://history.army.mil/portals/143/Images/Publications/catalog/75-14.pdf
National Park Service. “Raids on Staunton, Lexington, & Virginia Military Institute.” Last modified January 30, 2023. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/raid-on-lexington-virginia-military-institute.htm
Encyclopedia Virginia. “Lexington during the Civil War.” Virginia Humanities. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/lexington-during-the-civil-war/
Encyclopedia Virginia. “John A. McCausland (1836–1927).” Virginia Humanities. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/mccausland-john-a-1836-1927/
Virginia Department of Historic Resources. Jordan’s Point Historic District National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, 2016. https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/VLR_to_transfer/PDFNoms/117-5027_JordansPoint_HD_2016_NRHP_FINAL.pdf
Historical Marker Database. “Jordan’s Point.” https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=58589
Virginia Military Institute Archives. “John McCausland.” Historical Rosters Database. https://archivesweb.vmi.edu/record.php?ID=638
Author Note: This article reconstructs the June 11, 1864 burning of the North River bridge at Jordan’s Point using wartime reports, eyewitness accounts, and site documentation. Because the event sits inside Hunter’s larger raid on Lexington, I have focused on sources that tie the bridge itself to the surviving landscape as closely as possible.