Action at Dardanelle

On January 14, 1865, Colonel William Brooks hit Dardanelle with about 1,500 Confederates and spent four hours attacking a stockade held by 276 Union cavalrymen under Major J. D. Jenks. Sergeant William Ellis of the Third Wisconsin Cavalry earned the Medal of Honor there. The sides disagree on the cost: Union reports counted one dead and fifteen wounded, Confederate reports eight dead and nineteen wounded. Three days later Brooks ambushed Union steamers at Ivey's Ford upstream and burned the New Chippewa. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas calls these the last serious Confederate challenges to Union control of the river.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lake Dardanelle State Park — 3.9 mi
  A park on a 34,300-acre Arkansas River reservoir at Russellville, with aquarium exhibits and the story of the Norristown ferry crossing used in the removal of five nations.
• Mount Nebo State Park — 5.2 mi
  Arkansas's second state park, on a flat-topped mesa above Dardanelle: a Victorian summer town, a town run by women in 1924, CCC cabins and a Trail of Tears view.
• Holla Bend National Wildlife Refuge — 6.5 mi
  A 7,000-acre refuge on an island of former farmland made when the Corps cut off a bend of the Arkansas River in 1954, with winter ducks, geese and eagles and a 14-mile auto tour.
• Petit Jean State Park — 16 mi
  Arkansas's first state park, founded in 1923, with a Civilian Conservation Corps lodge, Cedar Falls and a Trail of Tears overlook on a canyon-cut mountain.

More markers nearby

• Pope County in the Civil War — 4.8 mi
• Pope County Militia War — 4.8 mi
• Potts Tavern — 6.6 mi
• Butterfield's Overland Mail — 6.6 mi