During the afternoon of May 16, 1863, while the Battle of Champion Hill raged to its conclusion some 3 miles away to the east-northeast, Maj. Samuel Lockett, chief engineer of the Army of Vicksburg, labored to rebuild a bridge across flooded Bakers Creek at this point. By late afternoon the bridge was completed, and a courier was sent to inform Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton, who was at the Roberts House on the Ratliff road, that the bridge was ready for use.

Confederate Maj. Gen. Carter Stevenson's division and Brig. Gen. John Bowen's division withdrew across the newly rebuilt bridge. Bowen's division was deployed on the west bank to protect the crossing for Maj. Gen. William Loring's division, which was acting as the rear guard for the retreating Confederate army. However, advance elements of Bowen's division came under artillery fire from the north between the bridge and Edwards, leading Bowen to assume that Edwards had been occupied by Union forces. He sent a message to Loring telling him that he was abandoning the bridge, although he did not say why. He then marched his division across country to Mt. Moriah, from where good roads led south of Edwards to join the Jackson road at Smith's Plantation, about 4 miles west of Edwards.

When Maj. Gen. William Loring's division arrived at the bridge, fires could be seen in Edwards. Loring assumed that the town was occupied by Union forces. A local resident told him that there was no way to by-pass Edwards on the south, so he searched for an alternate route. Another local resident told him that there was a road that led south form a point 0.4 mile east on the Raymond road that connected with the Mt. Moriah-Dillon's Farm road.

This site has local significance because of its association with military activites and events that achieved or affected important local objectives of the Vicksburg campaign.