Camp Alleghany was a Civil War engagement fought in West Virginia, 1861. The outcome was inconclusive.
In December, Confederate forces under Col. Edward Johnson occupied the summit of Allegheny Mountain to defend the Staunton-Parkersburg Pike. A Union force under Brig. Gen. Robert Milroy attacked Johnson on December 13. Fighting continued for much of the morning as each side maneuvered to gain the advantage. Finally, Milroy's troops were repulsed, and he retreated to his camps near Cheat Mountain. At year's end, Edward Johnson remained at Camp Allegheny with five regiments, and Henry Heth was at Lewisburg with two regiments.
On December 13, 1861, Union and Confederate forces clashed at Camp Allegheny, a fight also remembered as the Battle of Allegheny Mountain. The engagement unfolded in Pocahontas County, Virginia, in territory that would later become West Virginia, roughly 3 miles from the rugged boundary with Highland County, Virginia, and formed part of the broader Operations in Western Virginia Campaign during the American Civil War.
Involving only brigade-sized forces, the clash was modest in scale. Union troops ultimately pulled back, handing the Confederates a technical victory, though the outcome carried little real military weight. Its significance lay elsewhere: the result shaped how the border between Virginia and West Virginia would eventually be drawn, keeping Highland County under Confederate control and out of the territory that would become the new state of West Virginia.
Colonel Edward Johnson led Confederate troops onto the summit of Allegheny Mountain that December, positioning them nearly 4,400 feet above sea level to guard the Staunton and Parkersburg Turnpike, a route linking the mountains of western Virginia to the vital Shenandoah Valley. Troops referred to this position as the "Monterey Line," a name drawn from the nearby village of Monterey in Highland County. That winter proved harsh, and the Confederates camped on the mountain endured widespread illness and hardship as a result.
Meanwhile, Union forces had already secured much of the western mountain region of Virginia through a string of early victories, an outcome that gave them confidence to push toward capturing the Staunton to Petersburg Pike. Believing the Confederates might be weakened in spirit, Brigadier General Robert H. Milroy led a Union brigade numbering 2,000 men in a dawn assault on December 13, striking Johnson's force of 1,200 Confederate soldiers.
This engagement carries other names as well, appearing in some records as the Battle of Alleghany Camp or the Battle of Alleghany Mountain. Johnson himself picked up the moniker "Alleghany Johnson" among Southerners, a label tied to the older English colonial spelling rather than the French-derived "Allegheny" now more common. Writers in the South at the time consistently favored this "Alleghany" form, a pattern visible in Johnson's own account of the fight, which ran in the Staunton Spectator during March 1862.
This district gained recognition on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990, preserving one contributing structure alongside four contributing sites tied to its wartime past. Among these are the earthworks that once fortified the position, the ground where huts and a campground stood, a cemetery holding those who died there, the location where a church once stood, and the site of the Yeager farmstead.
Although often dismissed as minor next to the war's later engagements, this fight actually ranked among the deadliest clashes of the conflict's first year, spanning April through December of 1861. Union losses came to an estimated 137 men, while the Confederates suffered roughly 147 casualties. It was this action, along with his command of the daunting mountain outpost, that earned Johnson the nickname "Allegheny" Johnson.
Curiously, Confederate command had issued orders to pull back from the position just days before the fighting broke out. Yet the Union attack's failure changed those plans entirely, persuading Confederate leadership to instead bolster Johnson's force at Camp Allegheny with five additional regiments for the remainder of that harsh 1861-62 winter. Conditions turned brutal, with snow frequently piling up to knee height, a hardship that troops hailing mainly from Georgia and Virginia found difficult to endure. The Confederate ranks paid dearly for it. By March 18, 1862, shortly before the Battle of McDowell unfolded in Highland County on May 8 of that year, Johnson (who had since risen to the rank of General) commanded a force nominally near 4,000 strong
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