The Clanton Camp, located at nearby Pollard, was a loosely organized gathering of troops whose primary purpose was to guard the Alabama-Florida Railroad which ran from Pensacola to Pollard.

Its strategic presence would have been invaluable to the Union. Even though the track was first removed from Pollard to about Gonzalez, Florida, about ten miles north of Pensacola, the Pollard Confederate camp was used to protect the many trestles between the two locations from Yankee raids.

Toward the war's end, however, the effort became futile as the Union forces moved out of Pensacola and eventually headed toward Canoe and points further west in the spring of 1865. An account of that ongoing battle is written at this site: