Old Town of Napoleon

The river took Napoleon in stages. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas says merchant Frederick Notrebe founded the town and a federal marine hospital for boatmen was chosen for it in 1837. Stephen Long warned in 1850 that the site would flood and was overruled. In January 1863 Union soldiers destroyed the courthouse, and that spring a channel dug across a peninsula to avoid an ambush shifted the river toward town. The hospital fell into the river in 1868, a flood in 1874 submerged the rest, and the county government moved to Watson that October.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Rohwer Relocation Center Memorial Cemetery — 2.0 mi
  A National Historic Landmark cemetery built by Japanese Americans incarcerated at Rohwer from 1942 to 1945, with monuments they made and audio panels narrated by George Takei.
• Japanese American Internment Museum — 14 mi
  A museum in the McGehee train depot on the two Arkansas camps, Rohwer and Jerome, where about 16,000 Japanese Americans were held from 1942 to 1945.
• Arkansas Post National Memorial — 16 mi
  The site of Arkansas's first European trading post, opened in 1686 beside the Quapaw town of Osotouy, later a territorial capital and the scene of a January 1863 Union victory.

More markers nearby

• Skirmish at Amos Bayou — 0.9 mi
• Battle of Arkansas Post — 17 mi
• Early Railroads in Chicot County — 21 mi
• The Orphan Company — 26 mi