Albert Pike School House

The teacher in this cabin went on to a long, contested career. Albert Pike, born in Massachusetts in 1809, taught school in western Arkansas, edited the Arkansas Advocate and became the state Supreme Court's first reporter. In 1861 he negotiated Confederate treaties with Native nations, including one with the Cherokee leader John Ross, and was made a brigadier general; he resigned in 1862 after disputes with superiors. He later led Scottish Rite Freemasonry. Historians dispute whether he held a Ku Klux Klan post, and protesters toppled his Washington statue in 2020.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Van Buren Historic District — 0.3 mi
  Eight blocks of Main Street on the Arkansas River, from Phillips Landing, with 1889 banks, a beer depot and a railroad depot, on the National Register since 1976.
• U.S. Marshals Museum — 4.6 mi
  A star-shaped museum on the Arkansas riverbank, opened in 2023, telling the story of the nation's oldest federal law enforcement agency and the marshals who worked out of Fort Smith.
• Fort Smith National Historic Site — 5.2 mi
  Two army forts, a federal courthouse and a basement jail on the bluff where the Poteau meets the Arkansas, from the 1817 riflemen to Judge Parker's court and its gallows.
• Fort Smith National Cemetery — 5.3 mi
  The post burial ground of the first Fort Smith, kept since 1819, holding its first commander, more than 400 Confederate dead, Judge Parker and veterans of every war since.

More markers nearby

• Courthouse — steps away
• Van Buren Raid — 0.2 mi
• Sebastian County California Gold Seekers — 5.1 mi
• Sebastian County Seat of Justice — 5.2 mi