Battle of Davis Bridge

The Davis Bridge fight was meant to be a trap. After the Confederate defeat at Corinth, Grant sent General Hurlbut's force south from Bolivar to block the Hatchie crossing, hoping to catch Van Dorn's retreating army between two rivers and open the way to Vicksburg. Then the plan came apart. General Ord was wounded, and Union regiments crowded onto ground where the river's sharp bend left no room to deploy. Van Dorn, who had found the obscure Bone Yard Road, slipped across at Crum's Mill, and Union losses probably exceeded his.

What the plaque says

Battle of Davis Bridge October 5, 1862 Here a force of three brigades under Major General E.O.C. Ord, USA, enroute from Bolivar to Corinth, seized high ground to the east and turned aside the Confederate Army of W. Tennessee, retiring to Holly Springs after its abortive attack on Corinth. Overall Federal casualties were 570. The Confederates crossed the Hatchie at Crum's Mill, 6 miles south.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Big Hill Pond State Park — 4.5 mi
  A 4,000-acre bottomland park in McNairy County built around a pond that railroad crews dug in 1853, with a 70-foot tower over Dismal Swamp and Civil War earthworks.
• Corinth Civil War Interpretive Center — 18 mi
  A Park Service center at Battery Robinett telling why two railroads made Corinth a prize, from the siege of 1862 to the battle of October, and what happened to the people who sought freedom there.
• Corinth Contraband Camp — 19 mi
  The site of a Union-run town of freedom seekers in 1862 and 1863, with a quarter-mile walkway of life-size bronze figures and the origin of a Black regiment that fought at Brices Cross Roads.

More markers nearby

• The Trail of Tears, Cherokee Removal 1838 — 15 mi
• Kossuth — 15 mi
• The Hurst Nation — 17 mi
• Roscoe Turner — 17 mi