Qualla: Buffington Island

Buffington Island: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

By the morning of July 19, 1863, John Hunt Morgan and his cavalry had been raiding north of the Ohio River for sixteen days. They had ridden through Indiana and across Ohio, burning bridges and stealing horses, chased by Union forces and harassed by every militia company a panicked countryside could muster. Morgan was trying to recross the Ohio at a ford near Buffington Island, on the West Virginia side near a small place called Portland. He was a day too late. Federal gunboats had moved into position. Federal cavalry had caught up. What followed was the largest Civil War engagement fought on Ohio soil: about 700 of Morgan's men captured at the riverbank, hundreds killed or wounded, and the raid effectively broken. Buffington Island itself was a spectator to the disaster - a wooded sandbar in the river, named for the settler family whose mill once stood on the West Virginia bank.

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Buffington Island: The Settler the Island Was Named For

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Before it was a battlefield, the island belonged to a frontier of small mills, cattle drovers, and stories told around fires. A traveler named Fortescue Cuming, passing through in 1807, recorded an encounter with the younger Buffington - 'a very stout young man' carrying a rifle,...

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Buffington Island: Morgan's Raid

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

By the summer of 1863, the Confederate cause needed something dramatic. Brigadier General John Hunt Morgan proposed a cavalry raid across the Ohio River - deep into the Union states of Indiana and Ohio, far behind any front line - to disrupt Union logistics and force the Federals...

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Buffington Island: The Battle on the Riverbank

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

At dawn on July 19, Federal cavalry under Brigadier General Edward Hobson and Brigadier General Henry Judah moved against Morgan's tired column. Federal gunboats, including the USS Moose, hammered the Confederates from the river. Morgan's men fought back with cavalry rear-guard a...

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Buffington Island: What's There Now

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The island today is part of the Ohio River Islands National Wildlife Refuge, a string of more than two dozen Ohio River islands managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Most are wooded, undeveloped, and accessible only by boat. Buffington Island has no facilities, no trails...

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Buffington Island: Flying the River Bend

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

From altitude, Buffington Island appears as a slender wooded sliver in the middle of a long bend in the Ohio River, between Ravenswood, West Virginia, and Racine, Ohio. The river is wide here - more than half a mile - and the island sits closer to the West Virginia bank than the ...

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