If you have ever stood on the bluffs at Columbus-Belmont State Park and looked out over the Mississippi, you have stood where one of the oddest plans of the Civil War took shape.
In early September 1861, Confederate General Leonidas Polk moved into Kentucky and seized Columbus. The high bluffs gave his army command of the river, and about 19,000 Confederate soldiers went to work building fortifications there.
Polk wanted to do more than fire down on passing boats. He stretched a chain about a mile long across the Mississippi, from the bluff north of Columbus to the Missouri shore at Belmont. The idea was to stop Union gunboats long enough for the cannon on the bluff to sink them.
It did not work. The river and the current had other plans, and after Union troops took Columbus in March 1862, most of the chain was pulled out.
Grant’s first real test
Across the river, a then little-known general named Ulysses S. Grant attacked the Confederate camp at Belmont on November 7, 1861. His men pushed the Confederates back, but Polk sent reinforcements across from Columbus and Grant had to retreat to his boats. According to the National Park Service, Grant was nearly hit by gunfire on his ship. His willingness to attack still caught President Lincoln’s eye, and in 1864 Grant was put in charge of all Union armies.
Found again in 1925
The chain resurfaced when a landslide in December 1925 exposed a section of it. Each link weighs a little over 20 pounds. Digging at the end of the chain turned up an anchor more than 15 feet long, buried 11 feet deep and braced with oak logs. In 1934, the Civilian Conservation Corps built the stone stand that holds the chain and anchor today.
You can still walk the Confederate earthworks on the park’s 2.5-mile trail, visit the Civil War museum in a building once used as a hospital, and see the anchor up close. It is one of the best history lessons in our corner of Kentucky, and it is right here in Hickman County.
Have a family story about Columbus or the park? Send it to news@southwestky.com.
Sources: Anchor and Chain historical marker, National Park Service, Living New Deal, Kentucky State Parks.
Photo: The anchor and chain at Columbus-Belmont State Park. Knowledgeum, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
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