Saline County Records

The records came back to a county that had built three courthouses. Commissioners chose Benton over Collegeville and Caldwellton as the seat, and the first courthouse and jail went up in 1838. A second was finished in 1857. The third was begun in 1901, when Dr. Dewell Gann Sr. laid the cornerstone, and completed in 1902; the National Register listed it in 1976. The county they served had been cut from the western edge of Pulaski County on November 2, 1835, as Arkansas's thirty-fourth. Benton had won its seat for its place on the Southwest Trail.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Pinnacle Mountain State Park — 20 mi
  A day-use state park west of Little Rock around a 1,011-foot Ouachita peak, with a strenuous summit trail, the Arkansas Arboretum and a visitor center above the Arkansas River.
• Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site — 20 mi
  The 1927 high school where nine Black students entered under federal troops on September 25, 1957, with a National Park Service visitor center across the intersection.
• Big Dam Bridge — 21 mi
  A 14-foot-wide walking and cycling bridge built onto Murray Lock and Dam, 90 feet over the Arkansas River between Little Rock and North Little Rock.
• Arkansas State Capitol — 21 mi
  The neo-classical Capitol built from 1899 to 1915 on the old penitentiary site with state convict labor, free to enter, with the Little Rock Nine monument on the grounds.

More markers nearby

• Saline County in the Civil War — steps away
• Old Southwest Trail — steps away
• The Benton Courier — steps away
• The Gann Building — 0.2 mi