Pope County Militia War

Two accounts exist of what happened near Shiloh Creek on July 8, 1872. Sheriff Elisha Dodson's militia, authorized by Governor Ozro Hadley, had arrested four men and was taking them to Dardanelle when Joseph Tucker and William Hale were shot dead. The posse said unknown men tried to free the prisoners; the prisoners who got away said the posse tried to murder them. Martial law followed under Adjutant General Daniel Upham and Captain George Herriot, who commanded Black soldiers. Herriot was killed at the courthouse on February 16, 1873, and Dodson was shot the next day.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lake Dardanelle State Park — 3.6 mi
  A park on a 34,300-acre Arkansas River reservoir at Russellville, with aquarium exhibits and the story of the Norristown ferry crossing used in the removal of five nations.
• Mount Nebo State Park — 8.2 mi
  Arkansas's second state park, on a flat-topped mesa above Dardanelle: a Victorian summer town, a town run by women in 1924, CCC cabins and a Trail of Tears view.
• Holla Bend National Wildlife Refuge — 10 mi
  A 7,000-acre refuge on an island of former farmland made when the Corps cut off a bend of the Arkansas River in 1954, with winter ducks, geese and eagles and a 14-mile auto tour.
• Petit Jean State Park — 18 mi
  Arkansas's first state park, founded in 1923, with a Civilian Conservation Corps lodge, Cedar Falls and a Trail of Tears overlook on a canyon-cut mountain.

More markers nearby

• Pope County in the Civil War — steps away
• Action at Dardanelle — 4.8 mi
• Potts Tavern — 6.8 mi
• Potts Family in the Civil War — 6.8 mi