Robert E. Lee's Secret Weapons Lab
During the Civil War, gunpowder was probably the most important substance for waging war. Without it, military efforts could have come to a screeching halt. Where did the South get the massive amount of salt peter needed to make gunpowder? Evidently, right under the noses of Union troops. Before the war, Robert E. Lee had visited Organ Cave (then in Virginia; now in West Virginia) on a pleasure trip. There he noticed copious amounts of calcium nitrate. Saltpeter comes from calcium nitrate that has been exposed to bat droppings. When the war began, he set up a factory within the cave (it could hold up to 1,100 men for church services in the antechamber and had miles and miles of unusable tunnels) and the cave produced a large percentage of the saltpeter necessary for the mills in Georgiea to make gunpowder. Amazingly, about 75 feet above the cave mouth was a Union encampment. Somehow, the mining efforts of the rebels were never discovered. In 1863 most of the workers abandoned the factory to fight in a nearby battle in which the South was routed. Operations ceased thereafter at the cave and the South struggled to replace what is now known as "Lee's secret weapons lab".