cwla - Shiloh Terrain File

Terrain
Encompassing over 3,950 acres, the Shiloh National Military Park, in southwestern Tennessee. The Park contains over 90% of the core contested area of the Shiloh battlefield, and over 60% of the troop movement areas on April 6 and 7th, 1862. [1]

From The 3-D Gallery

Instead of camping his army at Savannah, General Smith, with the authority of Halleck, had selected a place nine miles higher upstream, and on the opposite bank, known as Pittsburg Landing...
The ground upon which the Union camps stood, and upon which the battle of Shiloh took place, was twenty-two miles by road northeast of Corinth... It was an irregular triangle, with sides three or four miles long, bounded on the east by the Tennessee [River], which here flows due north; on the northwest by Snake Creek and its branch, Owl Creek; and on the south by Lick Creek and its branch, Locust Grove Creek, a small brook in a considerable ravine...
The highest ground was a ridge lying north of Locust Grove Creek, and extending on toward the west. Its top was 200 feet above the river, and its northern slopes fell gradually to the level of the camps, 100 feet lower. In the hollows of these slopes the branches of Owl Creek found their headwaters. The most important of these branches was Tillman (Tilghman) Creek, whose deep hollow, running north, a mile and a quarter from the river, divided the space into two main plateaus. These plateaus were broken into smaller tables and undulations by the surface drains and ravines of the smaller watercourses. At the time of the battle the ground generally was in forest, partly open, but partly impassable for horsemen, with, here and there, clearings of twenty to eighty acres.
Several roads traversed the battlefield. One, the Hamburg-Savannah Road, usually spoken of as the River Road, led from Crump's Landing, six miles downstream, and, crossing Snake Creek by a bridge, continued on southward along the eastern plateau. At the eastern end of the ridge north of Locust Grove Creek it forked with the Purdy-Hamburg Road. This road, coming in from Purdy by a bridge over Owl Creek, continued southeasterly along the high ground, and, crossing Lick Creek a mile from its mouth, led to Hamburg, three or four miles farther up the river.
Pittsburg Landing was three-quarters of a mile below the mouth of Snake Creek. From this landing two roads led to Corinth. One, called the Eastern Corinth Road, followed the backbone of the ridge beyond the headwaters of Locust Grove Creek, and joined the Bark Road; the other, a mile farther west, ran nearly parallel to the Eastern Corinth Road for about four miles, and was known as the Western Corinth Road. There were other by-roads and trails through the timber. Shiloh Church, the little log meeting-house that gave its name to the battle, stood above the bank of Oak Creek..., at the fork of the Western Corinth Road and the Purdy Road.
On this ground the Union army was encamped by divisions... One of Sherman's brigades was on the extreme right front, along the Purdy Road, and guarding the bridge over Owl Creek. Two others were astride the Western Corinth Road just at Shiloh Church, and behind the ravine of Oak Creek. Stuart's brigade of this division was on the extreme left-front, at the junction of the Purdy-Hamburg Road and the River Road, near the end of the ridge above Locust Grove Creek.
Prentiss's camp occupied the middle-front and was across the Eastern Corinth Road. McClernand's formed an angle at the junction of the Hamburg-Purdy Road with the Western Road. It was about 500 yards behind the left of Sherman's tents. Hurlbut's camp was a mile and a half behind that of Prentiss, at the junction of the River Road and the Eastern Road. W. H. L. Wallace's was in the angle of these two roads, a mile in rear of Hurlbut's. Lew Wallace's division was still camped at Crump's Landing.

(Text From: "Shiloh", American Campaigns, Matthew Forney Steele. 1909)

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Participant's Quotation(s)
FROM: Shiloh by William Swinton

On the westerly bank of the Tennessee, 219 miles from its mouth, is the historic spot of Pittsburg Landing. Its site is just below that great bend in the river, where, having trended many miles along the boundary-line of Alabama, it sweeps northerly in a majestic curve, and thence flowing past Fort Henry, pours its waters into the Ohio. The neighboring country is undulating, broken into hills and ravines, and wooded for the most part with tall oak-trees and occasional patches of undergrowth. Fens and swamps, too, intervene, and, at the spring freshets, the back-water swells the creeks, inundating the roads near the river's margin. It is, in general, a rough and unprepossessing region, wherein cultivated clearings seldom break the continuity of forest. Pittsburg Landing, scarcely laying claim, with its two log cabins, even to the dignity of a. hamlet, is distant a dozen miles north-easterly from the crossing of the three State lines of Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee--a mere point of steamboat freighting and debarkation for Corinth, eighteen miles south-west, for Purdy, about as far north-west, and for similar towns on the adjoining railroads. The river banks at the Landing rise quite eighty feet, but are cloven by a series of ravines, through one of which runs the main road thence to Corinth, forking to Purdy. Beyond the crest of the acclivity stretches back a kind of table-land, rolling and ridgy, cleared near the shores, but wooded and rough further from the river. A rude log chapel, three miles out, is called Shiloh Church; and, just beyond, rise not far from each other two petty streams, Owl Creek and Lick Creek, which, thence diverging, run windingly into the Tennessee, five miles apart, on either side of the landing.
The general topography of the rugged plateau, which, seamed with ravines, but mainly ninety or a hundred feet above the road-bottom, contained the encampment, has already been drawn: it was at once camp and battle-ground. Its southerly limit is Lick Creek, which, rising, a few miles in the interior, runs between very high banks easterly to the Tennessee, at right angles with the latter, three miles above the landing. Near its source, Owl Creek, bending like an arm around the camping-ground, forms the westerly and northerly boundary of the plateau, and emptying into Snake Creek, joins the Tennessee at right angles, two miles below the Landing. The drift or slope of the land is, in general, from the bluffs of Lick Creek across to the banks of Owl Creek; but the enclosure is uneven, and lesser rivulets, of course, swell those already mentioned. The battle-ground is from three to five miles wide, and as much in length. The troops were posted with reference to the roads from the Landing. The main road winding up the top of the hill, there branches, and the right hand one leads along the river across Snake Creek to Crump's Landing. Further on, a mile from the Landing, the main road sends out another branch, this time to the south, up the shore across Lick Creek to Hamburg. Continuing inland, it once more divides, this time into two roads, both leading to Corinth, of which the one nearest the Hamburg road is called the Ridge road, from its elevation. Shiloh Church is three miles out from the Landing, on the further road to Corinth, near Owl Creek, and thence a road runs north-westerly to Purdy. The many cross-roads and interlacing paths need not be described.

FROM: Shiloh Reviewed by Major General Don Carlos Buell

The locality on which the storm of battle was about to burst has often been described with more or less of inaccuracy or incompleteness. It is an undulating table-land, quite broken in places, elevated a hundred feet or thereabout above the river; an irregular triangle in outline, nearly equilateral, with the sides four miles long, bordered on the east by the river, which, here runs nearly due north, on the north-west by Snake Creek and its tributary, Owl Creek, and on the south, or south-west, by a range of hills which immediately border Lick Creek on the north bank, two hundred feet or more in height, and sloping gradually toward the battle-field. In these bills rise the eastern tributaries of Owl Creek, one of them called Oak Creek, extending half-way across the front or south side of the battle-field, and interlocking with a ravine called Locust Grove Creek, which runs in the opposite direction into Lick Creek a mile from its mouth. Other short, deep ravines start from the table-land and empty into the river, the principal among them being Dill's Branch, six hundred yards above the landing. Midway in the front, at the foot of the Lick Creek hills, start a number of surface drains which soon unite in somewhat difficult ravines and form Tillman's Creek, or Brier Creek. It runs almost due north, a mile and a quarter from the river, in a deep hollow, which divides the table-land into two main ridges. Tillman's Creek empties into Owl Creek half a mile above the Snake Creek bridge by which the division of Lew Wallace arrived. Short, abrupt ravines break from the main ridges into Tillman's Hollow, and the broad surface of the west ridge is further broken by larger branches which empty into Owl Creek. Tillman's Hollow, only about a mile long, is a marked feature in the topography, and is identified with some important incidents of the battle.
Pittsburg Landing is three-quarters of a mile above the mouth of Snake Creek, and two and a quarter miles below the mouth of Lick Creek. Shiloh Church is on Oak Creek two miles and a half south-west of Pittsburg Landing. The table-land comes up boldly to the river at the landing and for a mile south. Beyond those limits the river bends away from the high land, and the bottom gradually widens.
The principal roads are the River road, as it will here be called, which crosses Snake Creek at the bridge before mentioned, and running a mile west of Pittsburg Landing, obliquely along the ridge east of Tillman's Creek, crosses Lick Creek three-quarters of a mile from the river at the east end of the Lick Creek hills; the Hamburg and Purdy road, which branches from the River road a mile and two-thirds in a straight line south of Pittsburg Landing, and extends north-west 400 yards north of Shiloh Church; and two roads that start at the landing, cross the River road two-thirds of a mile apart, and also cross or run into the Hamburg and Purdy road nearly opposite the church. In the official reports these various roads are called with some confusion, but not altogether inaccurately, Crump's Landing road, Hamburg road, Corinth road or Purdy road, even over the same space, according to the idea of the writer. The Corinth road from the landing has two principal branches. The western branch passes by the church, and the eastern passes a mile east of the church into the Bark road, which extends along the crest of the Lick Creek hills. The military maps show many other roads, some of them farm-roads, and some only well-worn tracks made in hauling for the troops. In some places the old roads were quite obliterated, and are improperly represented on the maps, as in the case of the River road, which is not shown on the official map between McArthur's and Hurlbut's headquarters, immediately west of the landing. It is shown on Sherman's camp map, and its existence is not doubtful. At the time of the battle, much the largest part of the ground was in forest, sometimes open, sometimes almost impenetrable for horsemen, with occasional cleared fields of from 20 to 80 acres; and these variations operated in a signal manner upon the fortune of the combatants. There was not a cleared field within the limits of the battle that has not its history.

FROM: The Battle of Shiloh by General Ulysses S. Grant

Shiloh was a log meeting-house, some two or three miles from Pittsburg Landing, and on the ridge which divides the waters of Snake and Lick creeks, the former entering into the Tennessee just north of Pittsburg Landing, and the latter south...
The ground on which the battle was fought was undulating, heavily timbered, with scattered clearings, the woods giving some protection to the troops on both sides. There was also considerable underbrush.

1. Personal communication with Mr. Stacy Allen, Park Historian, Shiloh National Military Park, June 15, 2000.