Old Niblett's Bluff, C.S.A.

The marker stands in Texas, but the post it describes sat on the Louisiana bluff across the Sabine. Camp Pleasant was a rectangular earthwork with walls about six feet thick at the base and eight feet high. It held a two-gun section of a Texas light artillery company, two mountain howitzers and a 32-pounder, while two companies of the 20th Texas Infantry guarded the supplies. Major General John B. Magruder visited in May 1863 and made the bluff a main commissary center. It was never attacked, and the only casualties came from a measles epidemic.

What the plaque says

Old Niblett's Bluff, C.S.A. On high point SE, across the Sabine in Louisiana. Busiest east Texas port of entry in the Civil War. Target for enemy movements west across Louisiana repeatedly in 1862-64. Confederate defense post. Supply depot to support constant troop movements, both for fighting and for patrols and recruiting. Crossroads for land and river traffic. Ferry point on old road through swamps. Cotton concentration point. A boom town with gambling, saloons, night life. Patrolled on both sides of the Sabine by Texans, to protect troop movements, commercial shipping, stagecoach travel routes, freighters' trains, and herds of cattle and hogs going east on the hoof. Passed Texas troops through by thousands, to go eastward through marshlands and sloughs toward Brashear City and New Orleans or upper Mississippi River crossings, to eastern battlefields. Many units went by rail from Houston to Beaumont, then to Sabine Pass and up the river by steamer. Niblett's Bluff welcomed steamers unloading guns, ammunition, clothing, medicines and other goods vital to the Confederacy— swapping these for Texas and Louisiana cotton, called "Money of the Confederacy" because of its purchasing value in world trade. (1964) 1983 supplemental plate (reported missing Dec. 1999): Marker moved from SH 87 and West Bluff Rd. to actual point of boat departure from Texas train and road termination to Niblett's Bluff.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stark Museum of Art — 0.3 mi
  A white-marble museum in Orange built by the Stark Foundation and opened in 1978, holding Western art, American Indian art, Audubon's Birds of America and Steuben glass, free to enter.
• Shangri La Botanical Gardens and Nature Center — 1.4 mi
  More than 250 acres on Adams Bayou, begun by H. J. Lutcher Stark in 1937, with garden rooms, a cypress-tupelo swamp, a heronry blind and free pontoon tours in season.
• Museum of the Gulf Coast — 19 mi
  Port Arthur's regional museum in a former bank building: fossils, Native Americans, the petroleum story, a 125-foot history mural and Halls of Fame for musicians, athletes and artists.
• Spindletop-Gladys City Boomtown Museum — 21 mi
  A re-created oil boomtown on the Lamar University campus, with a derrick, period shops, a 1941 granite monument and an optional re-enactment of the January 1901 Lucas gusher.

More markers nearby

• Atakapan Indians of Orange County — steps away
• The Sawmill Industry in Orange County — steps away
• Site of End of the Line Station — steps away
• George Alexander Pattillo — steps away