Trail at the site of the Cheat Summit Fort, atop Cheat Mountain in the Monongahela National Forest of Randolph County, West Virginia

Title, date and keywords based on information provided by the photographer.
In the summer of 1861, the fort, a crude ring of earthen mounds protecting log cabins, was hastily built by Union forces attempting to control of the turnpike connecting Staunton in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and Parkerburg, then also in Virginia and now in West Virginia, on the Ohio River. Confederate forces attacked the fort, but it never fell. It was, however, abandoned as the fighting moved east, and nothing, other than a historical information sign, remains of the fort today.
Credit line: West Virginia Collection within the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
Purchase; Carol M. Highsmith Photography, Inc.; 2015; (DLC/PP-2015:055).
Forms part of: West Virginia Collection within the Carol M. Highsmith Archive.