The Battle of White Sulphur Springs, also known as the Battle of Rocky Gap or the Battle of Dry Creek, occurred in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, on August 26 and 27, 1863, during the American Civil War. A Confederate Army force commanded by Colonel George S. Patton defeated a Union brigade commanded by Brigadier General William W. Averell. West Virginia had been a state for only a few months, and its citizens along the state's southern border were divided in loyalty to the Union and Confederate causes. Many of the fighters on both sides were West Virginians, and some were from the counties close to the site of the battle.

The U.S. state of West Virginia was formed out of western Virginia and added to the Union as a direct result of the American Civil War, in which it became the only modern state to have declared its independence from the Confederacy. In the summer of 1861, Union troops, which included a number of newly formed Western Virginia regiments, under General George McClellan drove off Confederate troops under General Robert E. Lee at the Battle of Philippi in Barbour County. This essentially freed Unionists in the northwestern counties of Virginia to form a functioning government of their own as a result of the Wheeling Convention. Before the admission of West Virginia as a state, the government in Wheeling formally claimed jurisdiction over all of Virginia, although from its creation it was firmly committed to the formation of a separate state.