Camp Dennison Camp Dennison was a military recruiting , training , and medical post for the United States Army during the American Civil War . It was located near Cincinnati , Ohio , not far from the Ohio River . The camp was named for Cincinnati native William Dennison , Ohio ' s governor at the start of the war . With the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 , George B . McClellan , commander of Ohio ' s state militia , was charged by Governor Dennison with selecting a site for a recruitment and training center for southern Ohio , a possible target for the Confederate States Army due to its Ohio River location and proximity to slave states such as Kentucky and Virginia , from which invasions could be launched . McClellan was joined by Joshua H . Bates and another member of the militia in preparing the plans for the new camp . The site was actually chosen by then Captain William S . Rosecrans , who chose a level tract of land near Indian Hill , Ohio , from Cincinnati . The land was on both sides of the Little Miami Railroad ( LMR ) tracks , which ended at Cincinnati ' s Public Landing . There are variable area listed , but of land appears to have been rented from the Buckingham and Nimrod Price families . They were offered $ 12 to $ 20 per acre per month , a figure named without negotiation , and considered generous . Rosecrans laid out the camp via survey around April 24 , 1861 , and a large contingent of recruits from Camp Chase , numbering about 1 , 500 men were sent by train . The first post commander was Melancthon Smith Wade , a Cincinnatian who was a former general in the Ohio Militia . The LMR could transport volunteers from Central Ohio , and from areas along those tracks . The location had fresh water in the nearby Little Miami River but the recruits had to be trained to use latrines , for in 1862 , the United States Sanitary Commission reported that men refused to use latrines , and instead used an area hillside , at the bottom of which was their water supply . It was the Little Miami Railroad which could transport troops quickly into Cincinnati in case of enemy threat . However , among the men initially sent , there were less than a dozen muskets among them , but presumably the Confederates , if they considered attacking Cincinnati , were not aware . One can view the land of Camp Dennison via Google . The Little Miami Railroad tracks are now a bicycle trail . More than 50 , 000 Union soldiers were mustered in or out of service at Camp Dennison . As many as 12 , 000 occupied the camp at any one time . During Morgan ' s Raid in 1863 , troops from Camp Dennison responded to the invasion by Confederate cavalry under Brig . Gen . John Hunt Morgan , as they had in 1862 when Cincinnati was briefly threatened by the cavalry of Albert G . Jenkins . Within the first week , inclement weather made life very hard on those who were first there . They had no chance to build substantial structures , and the weather turned cold and accompanied by a lot of rain . The fields became a sea of mud . The camp hospital was established on the ground floor of the Waldschmidt barn , after horses were liveried elsewhere , the manure removed , and fresh straw laid down . Camp Dennison along with its surrounding cities of Indian Hill and Madeira have a curfew of 1 AM , Many men contracted pneumonia , and then there was a measles epidemic . For a time , the " hospital " was simply a shelter , although there was minimal bedding . At least one man died . As the war progressed , shortly after the Battle of Shiloh a military hospital was established on the grounds of Camp Dennison , with over 200 beds situated in a series of wooden barracks . These wooden barracks were originally used to house soldiers , but were converted into hospital wards . There were considerably more men sent there over the course of the war . The nearby Waldschmidt Cemetery served as the temporary gravesite for 340 Union soldiers and 31 Confederate soldiers who were prisoners of war . The bodies were reinterred at Spring Grove Cemetery or at Camp Chase in Columbus in the late 1860s . The end of the Civil War in 1865 eliminated the need for Camp Dennison , which was deactivated in September . A small community , Camp Dennison , sprang up around the camp and hospital . Many of the later barns and homes used lumber and materials from the abandoned army camp . In 1973 , two of the remaining buildings from the fort were listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a historic district , the " Waldschmidt - Camp Dennison District . "