ROCKY FACE, Ga. — Peppered along Rocky Face Ridge and in Crow Valley are fortifications that echo the history of cannon fire, assault and bloodshed.

Union soldiers led by Gen. William T. Sherman spilled out of Chattanooga in the spring of 1864, sights set on Atlanta and then the sea.

Confederate troops under Gen. Joseph Johnston had not been idle as they wintered in Dalton. They built defensive placements in Mill Creek Gap and upon the high ground of Rocky Face Ridge.

Then they waited for the enemy’s inevitable push south, along the route of the critical Western and Atlantic Railroad, which split the gap.

After taking Ringgold and then Tunnel Hill, Union troops poured toward the gap in Rocky Face Ridge that Gen. Sherman called “the doors of death.”

The Rebels tried to hold off the invaders and protect their families and farms.

“I couldn’t imagine being on Rocky Face Ridge and looking out on Mill Creek Valley and what it would feel like to stand there with your wife and kids in back of you and see that valley filling up with tens of thousands of enemy soldiers,” said Kevin McAuliff, historic preservation planner for the North Georgia Regional Development Center.

“That would be scary. Real scary,” he said.

Among the few comforts for the defenders was the network of small forts known as redoubts, the rock wall breastworks for protection atop the ridges, and the rifle pits scattered to harass the advancers.

The Rebels also felled trees and sharpened the heavier branches points aimed north, and built up a curtain wall of stone and dirt that stretched for thousands of yards.

Gen. Sherman, in memoirs, noted the spade and the ax were as useful as the musket to defenders. “On the defensive,” he wrote in 1891, “there is no doubt of the propriety of fortifying.”

These constructions have been reduced by weather and nearly a century and a half of erosion, dirt and leaves, but many are largely intact. And they are largely unprotected and unheralded, Mr. McAuliff said.

Local government owns about 650 acres in Crow Valley, home to some of the earthworks, and would like to add more in Crow Valley and on Rocky Face Ridge, he said.

According to local historians, nationally renowned preservationists have said Whitfield County has more intact Civil War era fortifications than anywhere else in the country.

John Veverka, a Civil War tourism consultant and former university professor, recently unveiled a tourism master plan for Whitfield County that calls for the fortifications to be protected and mapped as “landscape museum” to lure tourists.

“There are many, many more sites that I haven’t even discovered yet. Mill Creek Gap was very heavily fortified,” Mr. McAuliff said during a recent tour of Redoubt Sisk and nearby earthworks on Rocky Face Ridge.

Marvin Sowder, a Civil War enthusiast and member of several regional history boards, said Crow Valley is full of sites.

The Northern Defense Line of Dalton runs across the ridge above Crow Valley and cannon placements and other markers are still visible.

Whitfield County Historic Preservation Commission member Windall Coley said Whitfield’s earthworks are unlike anything he’s seen before.

“You go to these other Civil War sites, and it’s just one big open field. A sign says such and such battle was here, and there’s really nothing to see except a flat field,” Mr. Coley said.

Mr. McAuliff said preservation and promotion of these relics should have started long ago.

But it’s not too late. He envisions more sites protected for the public and interpretive tours that guide students of history through Whitfield’s unique Civil War architecture during the sesquicentennial of the Civil War in 2011.

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