Pope County The County Seat

Dover's name has two origin stories. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas says Stephen Rye laid out the town in 1832 and named it for his hometown in Tennessee, while another account credits Joseph Brearley, who settled nearby in the 1830s, with naming it for a Delaware town or a city in England. Dover became the seat in 1841, after the new Yell County took a slice of Pope County, leaving Norristown off center. The Dover to Clarksville Road, heavily used in the 1830s, was listed on the National Register in 2005, and the first jail was finished in April 1857.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lake Dardanelle State Park — 9.6 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 — 14 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 — 17 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 — 22 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 — 6.9 mi
• Pope County Militia War — 6.9 mi
• Potts Tavern — 11 mi
• Potts Family in the Civil War — 11 mi