Ringgold, Georgia
Near Chattanooga, Georgia
Ringgold, the seat of Catoosa County, was incorporated in eighteen forty-seven and named for Samuel Ringgold, the artillery officer killed at the Battle of Palo Alto during the Mexican-American War, one of the first American officers to die in that conflict. The town sits just south of the Tennessee line in the narrow ridge-and-valley corridor that funneled both railroads and armies during the Civil War. In April of eighteen sixty-two, Ringgold's depot was the end point of the Great Locomotive Chase, the daring Union raid in which James Andrews and his men stole the Confederate locomotive the General and raced north, only to run out of steam near Ringgold.
The town's old stone depot still stands as a museum. In November of eighteen sixty-three, after the Battle of Missionary Ridge, the Confederate Army used the Ringgold Gap as a crucial escape route.
