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Mt. Ephraim Crossroads
Sharpshooters Hold the Line
Antietam Campaign 1862
You are looking at Sugarloaf Mountain, where the running cavalry fight that began in the late afternoon on September 9, 1862, in Barnesville came to a halt. By the next morning, the 7th and 9th Virginia Cavalry had been brought to bay here at the southern base of the mountain by the 8th Illinois and 3rd Indiana Cavalry. Both sides had been reinforced, and each had brought up artillery. Dismounted sharpshooters of the 2nd Virginia Cavalry looked down on the Federals from among the trees and rocks on the slopes of the mountain. The fighting continued throughout the day with much cannon fire. By evening neither side had budged, and one Union cavalryman had been killed and one wounded.
Early on the morning of September 11, the Confederates slipped away after brief exchanges of gunfire, also abandoning a signal station atop the mountain. As the Army of Northern Virginia was marching northwest out of Frederick, the action at Sugarloaf Mountain proved to be a successful rear guard action.
The Comus Inn was the Benjamin Johnson family farm at the time of the Civil War, and the crossroads was known as Mt. Ephraim. The family's log cabin was added to in the 1890s. The name Comus (Roman god of revelry and son of Bacchus) was not used until a post office was established here in 1930. In the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt wanted to acquire Sugarloaf Mountain as his presidential retreat, but the owner, Gordon Strong, refused to sell, so the president went north to Shangri-La, now Camp David. |