The original Cloud Spring has been covered up, but water from the spring flows from a concrete pipe into the basin above shown in the parking lot of Joy Carpets. at LaFayette Road and White Street in Fort Oglethorpe. A marker is planned to commemorate the Union Army field hospital set up near Cloud Spring during the Battle of Chickamauga.Before the Battle of Chickamauga began, Union forces set up a field hospital at what was described as a “beautiful spring” on Col. A.C. Cloud’s property near what is now Old LaFayette Road.
Cloud Springs field hospital cared for at least 1,000 soldiers during the first day of fighting on Sept. 19, 1863. Confederate artillery shelled it by mistake in the confusion of battle, and Union soldiers later accused Southern troops of robbing and otherwise abusing the wounded left behind when the North retreated.
Aside from Cloud Springs Road, there’s little left to commemorate the site’s history.
That’s likely to change. Plans are afoot to erect a memorial where Cloud Spring’s water still flows from a concrete pipe into a basin at the parking lot of Joy Carpets Inc., at LaFayette Road and White Street in Fort Oglethorpe.
“We want to highlight where the spring is and put some things up,” Mayor Lynn Long said during a recent meeting with Joy Carpets owners Joy and Denis Dobosh, City Councilman Louis Hamm, city historian Gerry Depken and Jim Ogden, historian for the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park.