Bulls Gap, Tennessee
The Bulls Gap fortifications once commanded approaches of one of the Confederacy’s most critical east-west transportation routes. During the Civil War, the East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad crossed Bay’s Mountain at Bulls Gap, along its route from Chattanooga through Knoxville and across the Appalachian Mountains to Lynchburg, Virginia. Today, portions of the original redoubt, possible rifles pits along the military crest of the hill and the Civil War-era John T. Myers house, which local tradition suggests was used as a short-term military hospital, remain on private property at Bulls Gap near US Highway 11E and the Southern Railway Line.
(AT RIGHT: TCWPA East Tennessee Sites Specialist Mike Beck and Tennessee Wars Commission Program Director Fred Prouty stand in interior of redoubt at Bulls Gap.)
Built by Confederate forces as early as 1862, earthwork fortifications at the gap witnessed several battles between Federal and Confederate forces for control of the gap. By November 1864, with Union forces defending their position at Bulls Gap, Confederate Major General John C. Breckinridge led an attack on Brigadier General Alvan C. Gillem’s Union forces. The initial confederate attack was repulsed; artillery fire ensued, and fighting continued for two days before the Union forces, short on ammunition and rations, withdrew from Bulls Gap. The Confederate victory was a Union set back in the Union’s plans to rid East Tennessee of Confederate influence. By spring 1864, U.S. General Ulysses S. Grant ordered Bulls Gap be occupied and fortified. By this time the Confederacy had begun to dissolve and Bulls Gap would see no fighting. Major General George Stoneman wrote from Knoxville on April 22, 1865, “The most perfect quiet exists throughout East Tennessee.
(AT RIGHT: Photo w/house: John T. Myers house at Bulls Gap)
