Picture courtesy of Jim Kuntz

Picture courtesy of Jim Kuntz

Picture courtesy of Jim Kuntz

This crater marks the site of the powder magazine. The underground structure was forty feet long, twelve feet high, and twelve feet wide. It was covered with fifteen feet of earth to protect it from enemy fire. Some twenty tons of gunpowder and ammunition were stored here during the battle.

At midnight the defenders silently evacuated the fort. Equipment that could not be taken was piled against the magazine and the Union dead were laid nearby. An hour later a party of volunteers lit a fuse to the magazine and galloped for safety.

"...suddenly the heavens were lighted up by a grand column of fire ascending hundreds of feet...and making the whole region reverberate with a sound as though a mighty thunderbolt had riven Pilot Knob..."
Colonel Thomas C. Fletcher, 47th Missouri Volunteer Infantry

The startled Confederates did not realize that the fort had been evacuated. General Price presumed that an accident had ignited the magazine and that the fort would surrender in the morning.

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