Settlement of Midway

Caddo Indians lived in this area until about 1700, and the Quapaw ceded it to the United States in an 1818 treaty. A post office opened at Midway in 1850, and the stagecoach stop was its best-known place. Then the Cairo and Fulton Railroad bypassed Midway for Donaldson. Donaldson's post office opened in 1873, and Midway's closed in 1878. The Ouachita River's 1927 flood threatened local livestock, and Interstate 30 brought more traffic in the 1960s. Midway incorporated as a town on April 20, 2000.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• DeGray Lake Resort State Park — 11 mi
  A resort park on a 13,400-acre lake made when the Caddo River was dammed, with a lodge, a golf course and a paddle trail through the islets.
• Garvan Woodland Gardens — 13 mi
  A 210-acre botanical garden on a Lake Hamilton peninsula that one gardener built over thirty years and left to the University of Arkansas.
• Ouachita National Forest — 18 mi
  The oldest and largest national forest in the South, proclaimed in 1907 to protect shortleaf pine, with a supervisor's office in downtown Hot Springs.
• The Gangster Museum of America — 18 mi
  A Central Avenue museum on the years when Hot Springs ran an open gambling town, with Owney Madden, the Southern Club and the 1967 shutdown.

More markers nearby

• Military Road — steps away
• Confederate Manufacturing — 8.1 mi
• Military Road — 8.1 mi
• First Manufactory in Arkansas — 11 mi