Point Park on Lookout Mountain

From the point of Lookout Mountain you look down on Moccasin Bend, a loop of the Tennessee River that the National Park Service describes as one of its most unusual units, with 12,000 years of continuous human habitation. In 1838 and 1839 Cherokees in the area were rounded up and held in camps, one of them at Ross's Landing, before removal west. Some who left by boat passed around the bend, and at least one party marched across its neck.

The mountain's Civil War story is the fall of 1863. After the Confederate victory at Chickamauga, artillery on the point could choke Union supply routes and shell Union positions on the bend. Union forces opened the Cracker Line in late October, and on November 24 General Joseph Hooker's troops swept the northern slope in heavy fog, a fight later given the romantic name Battle Above the Clouds. It was fought across the property of Robert Cravens, an ironmaster who enslaved at least twelve people. His house was largely destroyed and was rebuilt in 1866, and the Park Service keeps it.

Point Park is a ten-acre memorial with a paved path past historic tablets, monuments and Confederate artillery positions. Its largest monument, the New York Peace Memorial, was raised as a tribute to peace between Union and Confederate veterans after the war. The Ochs Memorial Observatory holds exhibits on Civil War signaling and photography, and a visitor center just outside has exhibits on the campaign. The War Department bought the Cravens land in 1896 and the point in 1898.