Chalk Bluff Crossing and Town

Chalk Bluff was a real town before it was a battlefield. The Seitz brothers settled around 1840 with a ferry, a store and, from 1850, a post office. By 1860 the community had three churches, three merchants, two doctors and several skilled tradesmen. After the Cotton Belt railroad built a narrow-gauge bridge less than two miles away in 1882, residents moved to the tracks, and the new town took the name St. Francis. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas notes that African American workers on the line were threatened and reportedly refused to enter Clay County.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum — 6.9 mi
  The Piggott house and barn where Ernest Hemingway visited his in-laws, the Pfeiffers, and worked on A Farewell to Arms in 1928, kept with the family's own Stickley furniture.

More markers nearby

• Chalk Bluff in the Civil War (Raids of March-April 1863) — steps away
• Chalk Bluff in the Civil War (Skirmish of May 15, 1862) — steps away
• Chalk Bluff in the Civil War (Battle of May 1-2, 1863) — steps away
• Chalk Bluff — steps away