Thirty caches are located in five different regions throughout NC. Instructions for sending the documentation are in the passport. Once all five regions are completed, you have earned a special NC Civil War trackable geocoin. Mail the passport to the address inside the passport – then your passport will be returned with your unique coin.
All of the containers are the same - camouflaged 6 inch PVC tubes - the code word you need for your passport is inside the container on a laminated card and also taped on the container that holds the log sheet. Date your logbook and add your code word in the numbered area for the cache. As the containers may become over tightened, carry a TOTT to ease the opening process.
Passports will be available at the event, some Civil War Museums in NC, and via mail if you send me you address or you can download your passport here.
Burning of Clarendon Bridge: Confederates Evacuate Fayetteville
On March 12, 1865, Confederate Gen. Wade Hampton’s cavalry under Gens. Joseph Wheeler and Matthew C Butler formed the rear guard of Gen. William J. Hardee’s Corps as it evacuated Fayetteville. Wheeler deployed artillery and dismounted cavalry on the eastern bank of the Cape Fear River to protect the Clarendon Bridge until the last Confederates crossed, then set it afire.
Union Gen. Henry W. Slocum, commanding Gen. William T. Sherman’s Left Wing, had been ordered “to do all that is possible to secure the bridge” as he captured Fayetteville. When Confederate skirmishers delayed Slocum’s lead division as it approached from the west, however, part of Sherman’s Right Wing, with elements of the 15th Illinois Cavalry leading, entered the city first. Hampton and his men held them off in street fighting, then fired the bridge while withdrawing as Union Gen. Giles A. Smith’s infantry division arrived in support. Confederate small arms and artillery fire from the eastern bank held off the Federals until flames engulfed the bridge. Union soldiers “struggled manfully with washtubs of water” to extinguish the fire but without success. Hampton’s cavalrymen abandoned the east bank and marched toward Averasboro twenty-five miles north, while Butler covered routes to the east toward Clinton. Sherman’s engineers placed pontoon bridges across the river, and his army left Fayetteville on March 14.