C.S.S. Pontchartrain

The Pontchartrain began as a river steamer. Built in 1859 at New Albany, Indiana, as the side-wheeler Lizzie Simmons, she was bought by the Confederate Navy at New Orleans in October 1861, converted to a gunboat and commissioned in March 1862 with seven cannon. In Arkansas she served on the Arkansas and White rivers under Lieutenant John Dunnington, and her sailors and heavy guns were sent to batteries downriver; Dunnington and his men were captured at Arkansas Post in January 1863. Confederates burned her at Little Rock in September 1863 to keep her from capture.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Old State House Museum — 0.5 mi
  The oldest standing state capitol west of the Mississippi, where lawmakers met from 1836, enslaved people were auctioned in the east wing and Arkansas voted to secede.
• Mosaic Templars Cultural Center — 1.0 mi
  The state museum of African American history on the site of the Mosaic Templars of America headquarters, a Black fraternal order's 1913 building on West Ninth Street.
• Arkansas State Capitol — 1.2 mi
  The neo-classical Capitol built from 1899 to 1915 on the old penitentiary site with state convict labor, free to enter, with the Little Rock Nine monument on the grounds.
• Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site — 1.9 mi
  The 1927 high school where nine Black students entered under federal troops on September 25, 1957, with a National Park Service visitor center across the intersection.

More markers nearby

• Huntersville — steps away
• Pulaski County County Government — 0.5 mi
• BISHOP CHARLES HARRISON MASON — 0.9 mi
• The Arsenal Crisis — 1.0 mi