Civil War
Lost River Cave served as a camp for both Union and Confederate troops in this area. Lost River offered a natural water supply and the beauty of the cave provided a diversion from the ugliness of war. On one of his “lightning raids” into Kentucky, John Hunt Morgan allegedly hid in the cave when escaping from pursuing troops.
Nearly 40,000 Union soldiers camped around Lost River Cave & Valley from 1862-1865. An oasis in difficult times, the cave and river provided a cool respite from blistering heat in the summers. The men enjoyed the cave just as the Confederate troops had in their down time. They crawled through the underground network of passages and wrote their names, ranks and companies on the ceilings and walls of the cave. They even fired their guns inside the cave passages to hear the echoes, leaving behind their bullets for historic archaeologists to find more than a century later.
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Famous quotes related to civil war:
“One of the greatest difficulties in civil war is, that more art is required to know what should be concealed from our friends, than what ought to be done against our enemies.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“The utter helplessness of a conquered people is perhaps the most tragic feature of a civil war or any other sort of war.”
—Rebecca Latimer Felton (1835–1930)
“To the cry of ‘follow Mormons and prairie dogs and find good land,’ Civil War veterans flocked into Nebraska, joining a vast stampede of unemployed workers, tenant farmers, and European immigrants.”
—For the State of Nebraska, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)