Potts Inn

Enslaved people built Potts Inn. Kirkbride Potts brought two enslaved families west with him, and the 1969 National Register nomination says enslaved workers cut the timber, hauled it by oxen to a mill near present Russellville, made the brick and did most of the building. The work took six years. Potts paid for the grander house by selling cattle to miners after the California gold rush. Stagecoaches stopped there, and as postmaster he handled the mail in his living room. He and Pamelia Logan Potts had eleven children, nine of whom lived to adulthood.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Holla Bend National Wildlife Refuge — 6.5 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.
• Lake Dardanelle State Park — 9.1 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.
• Petit Jean State Park — 11 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.
• Mount Nebo State Park — 12 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.

More markers nearby

• Butterfield's Overland Mail — steps away
• Potts Family in the Civil War — steps away
• Potts Tavern — steps away
• Action at Dardanelle — 6.6 mi