Stevenson, AL news and local guide

In the summer of 1862 the Union Army began Fort Harker, an earthen redoubt 150 feet square with 14-foot walls, a dry moat and a central blockhouse, built by soldiers and freed slaves on a hill a quarter mile east of town; it was expanded in 1864. On August 18, 1863, General William S. Rosecrans moved his headquarters into a small house called "The Little Brick," where for three weeks he planned the attack on Braxton Bragg at Chattanooga; Generals James A. Garfield and Ulysses S. Grant were among his visitors. Tens of thousands of soldiers, prisoners, refugees and wounded passed through Stevenson around the battles of Chickamauga and Chattanooga, and a large refugee camp stood between the depot and the fort. The first depot burned after the war and was replaced in 1872 by the present brick depot and hotel, where trains stopped at mealtimes; it was said the trains passed so close that they "opened the hotel windows and pulled the covers off the beds." Sources disagree on whether the town was incorporated in 1866 or 1867. Sources The Historical Marker Database: Stevenson Depot and Hotel; Fort Harker; Union Army Headquarters (Alabama Historical Commission) Wikipedia: Stevenson, Alabama