Pitman's Ferry

The ferry's biggest fight took a morning. On October 27, 1862, Colonel William Dewey marched about 65 miles in two and a half days from Missouri with roughly 1,000 men and surprised Colonel John Burbridge's Confederate brigade, about 1,500 strong. Private Richard Lloyd of the 25th Missouri swam the Current River to bring the ferry boat across, and Dewey's artillery scattered the Confederates. About forty were taken prisoner. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas counts four skirmishes here in 1862, on April 1, July 20, October 27 and November 25, and calls this the last major one in Randolph County.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Davidsonville Historic State Park — 8.5 mi
  The ghost-town site of Arkansas's first post office, courthouse and federal land office, on the Black River, with open-frame outlines of the courthouse and a dogtrot house.
• Powhatan Historic State Park — 15 mi
  A river port and county seat on the Black River whose 1888 courthouse, 1873 jail, log house and academy still stand where they were built, with a state archives branch in the same park.
• Crowley's Ridge State Park — 22 mi
  A 1933 state park on the loess hills of Crowley's Ridge, built around Benjamin Crowley's homestead spring and the stone-and-log pavilion, dam and cabins of the Civilian Conservation Corps.

More markers nearby

• The Pocahontas Civil War River Walk Memorial — steps away
• The Missouri Swamp Fox Is Captured in Pocahontas — steps away
• General Sterling Price's Invasion of Missouri — steps away
• Randolph County Civil War Timeline — steps away