Jackson County First Court House

Newport won the Jackson County seat because the railroad did. The Cairo and Fulton line reached the town in 1873 and the county's population center shifted toward it, while the courts stayed at Jacksonport, where a courthouse had gone up in 1872. Voters turned down a move to Newport in 1882 and again in 1886. In 1891 they chose Newport by a wide margin, and a red brick, Romanesque-looking courthouse was finished in 1892 for $44,196. Its architect is unknown, though it resembles Ouachita County's courthouse in Camden.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Jacksonport State Park — 2.9 mi
  A steamboat port at the confluence of the White and Black rivers whose 1872 Second Empire courthouse, raised two feet to clear the floods, stands as the park museum.
• Old Independence Regional Museum — 23 mi
  A Batesville museum in a 1936 WPA sandstone National Guard armory, telling the story of the twelve counties that once formed Independence County, with a research wing for local records.

More markers nearby

• Shelling of Jacksonport — 2.9 mi
• Action at Fitzhugh's Woods — 18 mi
• Colonel Shelby in Arkansas — 22 mi
• Woodruff County Courthouse — 22 mi