Conway County Seat of Justice

The seat of justice kept moving. Cadron, the first temporary seat in 1825, gave way to Harrisburg in 1829, then to Lewisburg in 1831 after Dr. Nimrod Menifee donated land for a courthouse. Springfield took the seat in 1850 as the more central town, Lewisburg won it back in 1873, and in 1883 it moved to Morrilton for good. Morrilton exists because Lewisburg could not pay the railroad: Edward Morrill and James Moose donated land a mile north, the tracks bypassed Lewisburg, and a coin toss reportedly chose Morrilton over Moosetown. The present courthouse dates from 1929.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Museum of Automobiles — 8.4 mi
  Winthrop Rockefeller's 1964 museum on Petit Jean Mountain: a cable-roofed hall of antique cars, the only known Arkansas-built Climber, and vehicles once owned by Presidents and Elvis.
• Petit Jean State Park — 10 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.
• Holla Bend National Wildlife Refuge — 20 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.
• Pinnacle Mountain State Park — 26 mi
  A day-use state park west of Little Rock around a 1,011-foot Ouachita peak, with a strenuous summit trail, the Arkansas Arboretum and a visitor center above the Arkansas River.

More markers nearby

• Conway County Cherokee Indian Boundary — 0.4 mi
• Lewisburg in the Civil War — 0.8 mi
• Murder of John Clayton — 4.6 mi
• Conway County in the Civil War — 4.6 mi