Military Activity in Boone County

Dubuque, home of the powder works the plaque mentions, got its name in 1851 when a steamboat captain from Dubuque, Iowa, was asked to christen the Sugarloaf Prairie settlement. A lead smelter opened there in 1859, and the lead drew the war: Union militia raiding from Ozark, Missouri, on November 8, 1862, killed a Confederate surgeon and the postmaster, and Union cavalry wrecked the niter works that same month. Few residents came back. The ferry ran until Bull Shoals Dam closed it, and the town site now lies under the lake.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Boxley Valley Historic District — 21 mi
  A seven-mile farm valley of log houses, a grist mill and a 1980s elk herd inside Buffalo National River, still lived in and still grazed by cattle.
• Lost Valley Trail — 21 mi
  A box-canyon walk past a natural bridge, a 2,000-year-old bluff shelter and a 53-foot waterfall, the most popular hike in Buffalo National River.
• Buffalo National River at Tyler Bend — 26 mi
  The country's first national river, kept free-flowing after a dam fight that ended in 1965, seen from the Middle District's visitor center, the Collier Homestead and the Riverview Trail.
• Whitaker Point (Hawksbill Crag) — 30 mi
  The one designated trail in the Upper Buffalo Wilderness leads to Hawksbill Crag, a bluff over the river's headwaters in a valley no one has lived in since 1948.

More markers nearby

• Boone County Men Served Both Armies — steps away
• Caravan Spring — 3.9 mi
• Skirmish at Rolling Prairie — 10 mi
• Old Carrollton — 12 mi