Camp Nelson

Then

Chosen in 1863 for the Lexington-Danville Turnpike, the Hickman Creek Bridge over the Kentucky River and the railroad end at Nicholasville, Camp Nelson was the main forward supply depot of the Army of the Ohio, about 4,000 acres with roughly 300 buildings, including twenty quartermaster and commissary warehouses, two ordnance warehouses, a powder magazine, government shops and a bakery whose three ovens could turn out ten thousand bread rations a day. It supplied the Knoxville Campaign of 1863, the Atlanta Campaign of 1864 and two expeditions into southwestern Virginia that fall and winter. One wagon train sent to Knoxville in October 1863 carried 2,700 blankets and 3,600 pairs of bootees.

From 1864 it was a major training center for Black troops, and 8 US Colored Troops regiments of more than 10,000 men were organized there between 1864 and 1865.

Now

Park

The site is Camp Nelson National Monument, run by the National Park Service.

The nearest railroad in service today is a line owned by Norfolk Southern, about 5 miles away.