Pea Ridge: Civil War Campaign in the West

Chapter 8. Clash in Cross Timber Hollow

8 ClashinCrossTimberHollow T he fighting near Leetown on March 7 was only one part of the battle of Pea Ridge. Twomiles to the east at Elkhorn Tavern a far more intense and costly struggle raged all that day and much of the next for control of Telegraph Road. There the outcome of the battle was decided. Early on that decisive Friday, hours before the deaths of McCulloch and Mclntosh and the repulse of Hebert's brigade at Leetown, the chain of events leading to the fighting at Elkhorn Tavern was set in motion. At about 10:30 A.M., during the council of war at Pratt's store, Curtis learned from Major Weston at Elkhorn Tavern that Confederate infantry was on Telegraph Road in Cross Timber HollowThe news arrived less than an hour after Curtis had dispatched Osterhaus on the demonstration toward Twelve Corner Church. When Curtis discovered Dodge's 1st Brigade of the 4th Division standing in the road, he immediately instructed Carr to take the brigade and intercept the enemy force in Cross Timber Hollow Curtis sent Carr on his waywith the cheery prediction that he would "clean out that hollow in a very short time." Carr was a West Point graduate and a regular army officer. During a decade of frontier service he had gained a reputation as an irascible subordinate—his superiors invariably described him as gloomy and argumentative—and a pugnacious fighter. Carr joined Dodge at the head of the blue column and set out toward Elkhorn Tavern, a little over a mile to the northeast. 152 H I Pea Ridge Dodge's brigade consisted of the 3rd Illinois Cavalry, the 4th Iowa and the 35th Illinois,and the 1st Iowa Battery, around fourteen hundred men in all. The troops had been standing in the cold for over an hour and probably welcomed the chance to move; they maintained a brisk pace despite having to march up a slight incline most of the way to the tavern. With every step the sound of gunfire grew louder.1 Carr trotted ahead of the column to familiarizehimself with the lay of the land. On this part of Pea Ridge the plateau is slightly more eroded and inclines more steeply toward Little Sugar Creek than is the case north of Leetown. The dominant feature is Big Mountain,whose rocky eastern face rises 170feet above the plateau and 1,610 feet above sea level.At the time of the battle most of the plateau was covered with the familiar scrubby forest of hardwoods, brush, and vines. The most prominent structure in the area was Elkhorn Tavern, a white, two-story hostelry named for the huge set of antlers fixed atop its roof. The tavern and its outbuildings were located in a sizable clearing on Telegraph Road near two important junctions. Directly in front of the tavern was the western terminus of Huntsville Road, which extended southeast toward the distant seat of Madison County. A quarter of a mile south was the eastern terminus of Ford Road. The intersection of Telegraph and Ford roads is the northeastern corner of the rough parallelogram of roads linking various points on the battlefield.2 A large irregular open area lay between Elkhorn Tavern and Pratt's store, most of it west of Telegraph Road. The clearing was composed of a dozen adjacent fields belonging to BenjaminRuddick, Jesse Cox,George Ford, and other local inhabitants. On the morning of March 7 these broad fields were covered with hundreds of wagons and thousands of draft animals—the vital trains that just barely kept the Army of the Southwest supplied. Rufus demon's modest farm occupied a small clearing east of the tavern on Huntsville Road.All else was forest. Immediately north of the tavern the Pea Ridge plateau ends and the ground descends nearly three hundred feet to the floor of Cross Timber Hollow The forested slope below the edge is deeply cut by a fanlike seriesof ravines that come together to form the upper end ofthe hollowAt the mouth of the deepest of these ravines in 1862 was a small tanyard. Between the ravines are descending ridges of limestone. The ridges vary in width but are similar in profile. At their upper ends they slope gently downward from the edge of the plateau for about two hundred yards in a northerly direction. A Clash in Cross Timber Hollow III 153 Eugene A...