The Camp Wildcat Civil War Battlefield
is located in Laurel County, Kentucky, approximately eight miles
north of London near the small rural community of Hazel Patch.
The Battlefield is located on the Old Wilderness Road which extended
through the Cumberland Gap to Crab Orchard and westward through
the Bluegrass region of Kentucky to the Ohio River.
Camp Wildcat and the associated Civil
War features remain in excellent condition today surrounded by
an environment much the same as it was at the time of the Battle,
October 21, 1861. In this Battle the Confederate forces, numbering
an estimated 7,500 men under the command of General Felix Zollicoffer,
were defeated by a Union force of approximately 5,400 men under
the command of Colonel Theophilus Garrard and General Albin Schoepf.
This was the first Union victory in the Battle for Kentucky and
one of the Union's first victories in the Civil War.
The Old Wilderness Road is much the
same today as it was in 1861. It is a one-lane gravel road winding
its way up Wildcat Mountain and thence northbound to the river
crossing on the Rockcastle River near Livingston. Here you can
travel several miles along the historic Old Wilderness Road surrounded
by woodlands
and small farms much as they existed at the time of the Civil
War. The Old Wilderness Road has long since been replaced by
U. S. 25, and more recently by Interstate 75.
(Hospital Rock, Camp Wildcat Battlefield)
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