Sebastian County California Gold Seekers

The army had a hand in the Fort Smith gold rush. An appropriation passed on March 3, 1849, put $50,000 into a survey and an emigrant escort, and Captain Randolph Marcy of the Fifth Infantry led the escort while Lieutenant J. H. Simpson, a topographical engineer, surveyed the wagon road. Troops left with the emigrants on April 4. A Baltimore Sun correspondent estimated about 900 wagons and 2,000 emigrants had gone with them. The trail followed Josiah Gregg's 1839 route along the Canadian River, and Clarksville sent a company of more than 100 under Redmond Rogers.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Smith National Cemetery — 0.2 mi
  The post burial ground of the first Fort Smith, kept since 1819, holding its first commander, more than 400 Confederate dead, Judge Parker and veterans of every war since.
• Fort Smith National Historic Site — 0.3 mi
  Two army forts, a federal courthouse and a basement jail on the bluff where the Poteau meets the Arkansas, from the 1817 riflemen to Judge Parker's court and its gallows.
• U.S. Marshals Museum — 0.9 mi
  A star-shaped museum on the Arkansas riverbank, opened in 2023, telling the story of the nation's oldest federal law enforcement agency and the marshals who worked out of Fort Smith.
• Van Buren Historic District — 5.4 mi
  Eight blocks of Main Street on the Arkansas River, from Phillips Landing, with 1889 banks, a beer depot and a railroad depot, on the National Register since 1976.

More markers nearby

• Sebastian County Seat of Justice — steps away
• Confederate Occupation of Fort Smith — 0.2 mi
• Union Occupation of Fort Smith — 0.2 mi
• Van Buren Raid — 5.1 mi