One small but significant cavalry battle occurred 4.5 miles north of Woodstock, at Tom's Brook on October 9, 1864. The Battle of Tom's Brook followed a Union victory at the Battle of Fisher's Hill. After Fisher's Hill, Sheridan's Union cavalry pursued Jubal Early's Confederates south to Staunton, after which the Federals withdrew, devastating anything of military benefit in their path, a campaign known in the Shenandoah as "The Burning." Rebel cavalry harassed the withdrawal, until Union troopers under Wesley Merritt and George Armstrong Custer turned and routed the divided Confederate divisions of Rosser and Lomax at Tom's Brook, 5 miles south of Strasburg and 4.5 miles north of Woodstock. The Confederate cavalry's disorderly retreat from battle became known as the "Woodstock Races", because the routed Rebel troopers fled back in disarray through Woodstock all the way to Mt. Jackson. A total of 6,300 Federal troopers and 3,500 Confederates engaged in the battle, with Union casualties at 57 and Confederate losses at 350. With the victory, the Union cavalry attained superiority in the Valley. The Battle of Tom's Brook preceded by ten days the dramatic, large-scale and climactic battle at Cedar Creek (just north of Strasburg) between Early and Sheridan, which ended in a decisive Union victory that smashed any real threat of Confederate power in the Shenandoah or invasion of Washington DC via the Valley. The Battle of Tom's Brook, and the "Woodstock Races," occurred in significant part along the Valley Pike, now Route 11.