It was not an accident. Union troops who had occupied the Cumberland Gap were forced to abandon it when Braxton Bragg began his campaign into Kentucky. Union forces under George W. Morgan mined the mountain and set fire to the nearby buildings and then lit fuses to the mines and powder stores on September 18, 1862. In most of the old drawings of Cumberland Gap, a mill and a building for making lead shot were at the base of the mountain on the south side of the Gap. These may have been the buildings that were set on fire.