Redoubt Brannan

The other remaining part of Fortress Rosecrans that you can tour is much smaller. Redoubt Brannan was basically a small fort within the fort that offered room for a battery's worth of cannon to operate. I've always seen the weeds pretty high here so there has never been any great shots of the redoubt. In person you can see more of the shape of the ground and can better picture where the various cannons would have been. These pictures don't do that part justice.

The outside wall of the redoubt, showing that if the fort had been attacked directly it would have been a difficult chore.

Fortress Rosecrans was barely attacked during the Nashville campaign in 1864. The Confederates exchanged fire with the fort but had no intention of attacking it. They had too few men to attempt it and there were too many cannon in the fort.

Lunette Palmer

After the Battle of Stones River Rosecrans kept his army in the Murfreesboro area. He decided to make Murfreesboro a huge supply depot for the next season's campaigns (one could argue he started that next campaign a little tardy). The supply depot he constructed was called Fortress Rosecrans and was huge, over 200 acres in size with 14,000 feet of earthworks. It controlled all the main transportation routes (rail and road) into the city. About 3,000 feet of earthworks remain in two areas, Lunette Palmer and Redoubt Brannan.

It is hard to get a good picture of the size of the fortress because there is so much vegetation blocking the views, but this drawing will give some idea of what Lunette Palmer looked like. I've included two pictures to show how the vegetation prevents long panoramas and then I have a copy of a postcard I scanned.