C.S.A. Rifle Pit

Earthworks like this were dug in the spring of 1862, when Halleck, with more than 120,000 men, crept toward Corinth and fortified after every step, covering about five miles in three weeks. Beauregard's Confederates, put at between 58,000 and 65,000 depending on the count, held lines running roughly two miles from the Chewalla Road to the Mobile and Ohio. On the night of May 29 they left by rail, leaving dummy Quaker guns on the works and campfires burning. Union patrols walked into an empty town on May 30.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Corinth Contraband Camp — 0.9 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.
• Corinth Civil War Interpretive Center — 1.2 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.
• Big Hill Pond State Park — 14 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.
• Shiloh Indian Mounds — 17 mi
  A National Historic Landmark on the Tennessee River bluff: the remains of a palisaded Mississippian-era town with seven mounds and the visible rings of its house sites, inside Shiloh National Military Park.

More markers nearby

• Battle of Corinth — 0.4 mi
• Corinth — 0.6 mi
• Ft. Robinette — 0.7 mi
• Johnston's Headquarters — 0.8 mi