Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 4.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

---

[58] railroad along the left bank from the bridge at Bridgeport, via Shell Mound, Whitesides, and Wauhatchie in Will's Valley. The first route ran around the extremity of Walden's Ridge, the other cut through the end of Raccoon Mountain; both passed together at the foot of the high cliff which abruptly terminates the extension of Lookout Mountain above the Tennessee River, and is crowned with the summer resort called Summertown. A third route, running diagonally, connected the other two. Descending from Tracy City by Battle Creek, it went up the right bank to a point opposite Shell Mound, where it again met the railway. These thoroughfares were so easy to guard that there was no thought of taking them by force.

To approach the enemy's army it was then necessary to manoeuvre to the southward. The difficulties presented on that side were also great. The Federals would have to encounter first that formidable obstacle the Tennessee, the narrow valley of which, encumbered with masses of rock and covered with brushwood, was as barren as the neighboring plateaus; then they would have to encounter in succession the different spurs and outcroppings just mentioned, and which were all lying across the way that they had to follow. There were only three routes leading through these mountains: the one, very bad, led from Bridgeport to Trenton, a large town situate on Lookout Creek; two others, starting from Caperton's Ferry opposite to Stevenson, came out, the one at Johnston's Crook and the other near Valley Head on the Big Will's Creek. They crossed Lookout Mountain through the passes of Frick's Gap, Stevens' Gap, and Winston's Gap. The first two, separated from each other only by a knob not quite one mile and a fifth in length, are distant some twenty-five miles from Chattanooga, and the third forty-three miles. The distance to Winston's Gap must have rendered perilous the march of the army, obliged as it was to clear at once these different passes in presence of an adversary free to move on the opposite eastern slope of the mountain. The two railroads which run out of Chattanooga in an eastern direction intersect each other, and then continue to run apart, the one to Cleveland on the north, and the other to Dalton on the south on the direct line between Knoxville and Atlanta. As this last line passes away from Chattanooga, Dalton is the central