Old Confederate Fort

On this high ground above the Tennessee River once stood an unnamed Confederate fort, a commanding spot used by both armies during the Civil War. Large earthworks were thrown up here in February of eighteen sixty-two by Confederate forces. At that moment Florence was crowded with hundreds of sick and wounded soldiers, casualties streaming back from the fall of Forts Henry and Donelson upriver in Tennessee.

The fort saw its last action in late December of eighteen sixty-four, when Federal gunboats on the river shelled it, trying to block General John Bell Hood's retreating army from crossing the river above Florence after the disasters at Franklin and Nashville. The Florence Coliseum now sits where the old fort once watched the river.