Old Mt. Comfort

Mount Comfort took its name from a church, and the church made the place a school town. Solomon Tuttle settled the land in 1828 with his family, including enslaved people. The community was Cumberland Presbyterian, tied by families and clergy to Cane Hill, and Rev. Robert Mecklin's Ozark Institute enrolled sixty students within four years, alongside a female academy; the writer John Rollin Ridge was among the students. The war destroyed the church, and a Union Post Colony was set up in December 1864. Afterward people drifted to Fayetteville. The church, graveyard and schoolhouse still stand.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Prairie Grove Battlefield State Park — 9.3 mi
  The December 7, 1862 battlefield where about 2,700 fell and Hindman withdrew in the night, with the Borden orchard, Hindman Hall's free museum, and walking and driving tours.
• Walmart Museum — 19 mi
  Sam Walton's 1950 variety store on the Bentonville square, now a free museum with his 1979 pickup, a recreated office, the 1945 Newport store door and a 1950s-style soda counter.
• Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art — 20 mi
  A 2011 Moshe Safdie building on 120 acres of Ozark forest in Bentonville, with free admission, six trails, two ponds, a spring, an arboretum and a relocated Frank Lloyd Wright house.
• Hobbs State Park-Conservation Area — 21 mi
  Arkansas's largest state park, about 12,000 acres on Beaver Lake, with the Van Winkle mill site, a graveyard of enslaved people, 54 miles of trail and regulated hunting.

More markers nearby

• Wartime Gristmill Destruction — 3.6 mi
• David Walker — 4.1 mi
• Elm Springs in the Civil War — 7.9 mi
• Holcomb's Spring in the Civil War — 8.0 mi