Metro Pulse/Secret History/In the Trenches

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A not-quite forgotten South Knoxville battlefield

by Jack Neely

I used to think the bluff across from Neyland Drive was Mount Rushmore. I would look at the cliff from the window of my dad's Opel and I thought I could see, as I still do see in certain weather, George Washington, gazing sternly toward the sewage treatment plant. I was up there last week, right on top of his head, reconnoitering the Union defenses, looking for remains of war.

I've never seen any trace of the downtown area's formidable Union defenses, which once included a dozen forts. Fort Sanders is erased. But on the rugged, less-developed south side of the river, the war's scars were slower to heal. The earthworks of Fort Dickerson, still sharply defined, are well known. But anybody who grew up around here knows that if you go back in the woods in several less-conspicuous areas, you'll start tripping over Civil War trenches.

One battlefield on the south side may be for sale. It's in a very interesting neighborhood, the only one of its kind in America, and unusual even for South Knoxville. On its east side is colorful Scottish Pike, my favorite dead-end street in town, a cheerful waterfront lane and the sort of place you might figure Popeye would live. Nearby is idyllic Log Haven, the early-20th-century village of getaway cabins where Chris Whittle began his peculiar career. Another neighbor is the famous Body Farm, celebrated in mass-market fiction and prime-time news shows.

The Rose property has charms not even the Body Farm can match. 100 acres, much of it along the river, heavily wooded with a couple of ponds so big that people from Fountain City would call them lakes. In the middle is a house, a sprawling, rustic, early 20th century thing of eccentric design. It was the summer home of the Rose family, part owners of the Miller's Department Store at its height. It has been a family rental house for some years, but it still feels like a summer place; standing on the porch, there's nothing but woods in every direction. You hear only the wind in the yellow leaves. It's easy to forget that, as the crow flies, downtown's barely a mile away.

Architect Charlie Richmond and I met out there last week to have a look around. He brought with him a topographical map of fortifications made near the end of the war by Orlando Poe, the brilliant Union engineer who planned Knoxville's defenses. We use it to find our way around.

Paths run from there to the river bluff where there are remains of the family's boat-making operation. A path leads along the base of the bluffs.

In the side of the bluff is a cave. You climb up to it, and if you hunch over you can follow it back in maybe 50 feet before it takes a hard right and descends to uncomfortable depths. We're not the first to discover it. Tucked in crannies all around are vintage beer cans and spray-painted graffiti. But what catches your attention is the older vandalism, carved into the limestone.

The carvings are neater than some gravestone incriptions. Names and dates, mostly. One is clearly 1915. Another looks like 1896. The most intriguing one to me reads "EM JOHNSON MAY...." and the next line is a number that begins with 18 and ends with 5. In between is a curving number. Maybe it's our monomania today that makes it look like a 6. May, 1865. The end of the Civil War, when Union troops were finally deciding it was safe to leave these positions.

On top of the bluff is an unnatural hole that looks like it could have been a trench of some sort. Charlie looks at Orlando Poe's map of the Union fortifications, and Poe did seem to indicate something up here. We're right between the old Union Fort Higley and Cherokee Bluffs, where the Confederates had a significant artillery installation under Col. Porter Alexander, survivor of Gettysburg.

Alexander was up there to the west, banging away at Fort Sanders and Knoxville, but just out of range. To the east were the Union placements, and the pontoon bridge that Confederates hoped to reach to invade the city. In between, then as now, are steep, slippery hills and dense forest. Twice I slip and fall in the mud and wet leaves.

The Battle of Armstrong's Hill, on Nov. 25, 1863, in which Union forces beat back a surprise Confederate attack, may have been right here. Overshadowed by the Battle of Fort Sanders four days later, it was long forgotten, except by the hundreds of troops who fought it, and is still a little mysterious. Which one of these heights was known to some soldiers as "Armstrong's Hill" has never been positively identified.

On the other side of the property, near Cherokee Trail, there's a more obvious network of trenches: maybe four of them running parallel to each other, narrow plateaus with shallow grooves. "It's a series of rifle pits," Richmond says. "I suspect that these were quite deep at one time." Poe has these trenches marked as a significant V-shaped fortification, almost big enough to have a name, just on the Confederate side of Union Fort Higley.

Right now it's probably wilder even than it used to be. A road that used to connect to Scottish Pike is now only a theoretical groove in the forest. It's a rugged place, but 100 acres of beautiful riverfront this close to town is bound to change. Nothing's signed, but development seems inevitable. Whether it's smart development or not is, or should be, a matter of concern to the whole city. I hope it's not even a controversial thing to suggest that a good part of it should be preserved as a public park.