Randolph County Civil War Timeline

Union soldiers reached Pocahontas in 1862 by way of Batesville. After the victory at Pea Ridge, Samuel Curtis's Army of the Southwest took that town with Little Rock in view, then split up. The Fifth Illinois Cavalry went to Pocahontas to reinforce Frederick Steele's division, which held the town for several weeks, and detachments rode out along the Military Road toward Smithville. Randolph County had about 6,000 people, 359 of them enslaved, and sat on the Black River, which gave armies water and a road. After Pitman's Ferry fell in October, raids and guerrillas were what remained.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Davidsonville Historic State Park — 8.4 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

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