Chattanooga was a strategic Confederate communications point during the American Civil War and was a major objective of the Union armies. Fighting there culminated in the decisive battles of Chickamauga Creek and Chattanooga (September and November 1863, respectively), after which Union forces occupied the city and used it as a supply centre for the Atlanta campaign of General William Tecumseh Sherman. The city’s historic environs have been preserved in Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park (established 1890), which encompasses about 13 square miles (33 square km) over several locations in Tennessee and Georgia. The park includes the major battlefields and sections on Orchard Knob, Lookout and Signal mountains, and Missionary Ridge. Chattanooga National Cemetery in the city has the graves of James J. Andrews’s Union raiders, who became famous for stealing the Confederates’ wood-burning locomotive The General.
