DALTON, Ga. — They’d heard about it, read about it, discussed it. But for many members of the Civil War Trust, Friday was the first chance they’d had to actually visit Whitfield County.

“If you are going to cover the Atlanta Campaign, from May 1864 to the fall of Atlanta in September 1864, I don’t see how you can’t cover this area and cover it in detail,” said Garry Adelman, director of history and education at the Civil War Trust.

The Civil War Trust is a nonprofit group with a primary focus on preserving the nation’s Civil War battlefields. Its annual convention began Wednesday in Chattanooga and continues through Sunday. On Friday, about 55 people attending the convention toured sites in Whitfield County.

They began the morning at Tunnel Hill with a tour of the Tunnel Hill Heritage Center, the Western & Atlantic railroad tunnel, the battlefield and the Clisby Austin House, which served as Union Gen. William T. Sherman’s headquarters at the start of the Atlanta Campaign.

“There’s a great deal of history here,” said Adelman. “And the opportunity to walk through the tunnel is very cool.”

CarolAnn Adcock, of Winston-Salem, N.C., has been a member of the Civil War Trust for 17 years and says she was excited to learn they’d be touring Tunnel Hill.

“I’ve heard about it, but it gives you a totally different perspective when you actually put boots on the ground,” she said.

Adcock noted Tunnel Hill’s importance in Civil War history doesn’t lie just in its connection to the start of the Atlanta Campaign. In 1862, a group of Union spies stole a train near present-day Kennesaw intending to drive it north, destroying tracks, bridges and the tunnel as they went. But the train’s conductor spotted them and gave chase, first on foot, then on a handcart and finally on a succession of locomotives in what was later dubbed the Great Locomotive Chase. The raiders were able to do only minimal damage and many were captured.

The tour concluded at the Huff House in Dalton. Gen. Joseph Johnston, commander of the Confederate Army of Tennessee, kept his headquarters in that house while his army spent the winter of 1863-64 camped in Dalton.

“It’s great that these old homes have been preserved. It gives us a better sense of history to be able to walk around in them,” said Adcock.

The Huff House was where Confederate Gen. Patrick Cleburne in 1864 proposed that the South free and arm slaves if they agreed to fight for the Confederacy, a proposal that was rejected by almost all of the other generals present.

Robert Davis, of West Columbia, S.C., has only been a member of the Civil War Trust for about a year.

“But I have been a history buff all my life. It’s really great to see these historic sites preserved and to be able to walk around them,” he said.

The Civil War Trust has helped preserve some 42,000 acres of historic sites, say members. Among its most recent efforts was helping fund Whitfield County’s purchase of the 309-acre Grant Farm, off Crow Valley Road, which was the site of two Civil War battles. The farm and roughly 600 acres on adjacent Rocky Face Ridge will become a Civil War park, and the ridge will also have a mountain bike trail.