Walker's Ford

On December 2, 1863, while Longstreet held a partial siege of Knoxville, Colonel Felix Graham's Union cavalry was sent toward Maynardville and met Confederate cavalry under General William T. Martin. Historian Earl Hess estimated about 3,000 Confederates against 1,500 Union men; the Union reported 64 casualties, the Confederates reported none, and Hess guessed about 100. He called it a Union tactical victory with no strategic result, because the probe never relieved Burnside. Sherman's approach toward Loudon had Longstreet lifting the siege two nights later and withdrawing toward Rutledge.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cumberland Gap, Tennessee, and the Wilderness Road — 20 mi
  The Claiborne County town below the notch in Cumberland Mountain where Daniel Boone's axmen widened the Warriors' Path into the Wilderness Road in 1775, now bypassed by a tunnel.
• Museum of Appalachia — 22 mi
  John Rice Irwin's 65-acre collection of moved log cabins and mountain objects north of Knoxville, opened in 1969, with a cabin believed to be Mark Twain's father's.
• Norris Dam and Norris Dam State Park — 22 mi
  TVA's first dam, finished in 1936 on the Clinch River, and the state park beside it with the 1798 Rice Grist Mill, built for a valley whose families were moved out.
• Beck Cultural Exchange Center — 26 mi
  Knoxville's Black history museum and archive, opened in 1975 in the 1912 Dandridge Avenue house the community bought for $22,500.

More markers nearby

• J. Will Taylor — 5.8 mi
• Horace Maynard — 6.6 mi
• Roy Acuff — 6.6 mi
• Barren Creek Dam Failures — 7.4 mi