Site of Lacrosse Collegiate Institute

Michael Shelby Kennard, a University of Alabama graduate from Sumter County, opened the school in 1868 as the LaCrosse Male and Female Academy and renamed it the Collegiate Institute about a year later to fit its curriculum. A newspaper reported it taught more than 3,000 students, many of them boarders. The tornado of November 21, 1883, destroyed much of the village and the building with it; the school was rebuilt with a brick facade by February 1884. It closed June 1, 1901, and Kennard died that July. In the 1970s its red bricks went into a house in Melbourne.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Calico Rock Historic District — 17 mi
  A one-block railroad-era Main Street climbing a hillside above the White River, rebuilt in brick and stone after the 1923 fire, with a hotel of homemade cement blocks.
• Blanchard Springs Caverns — 21 mi
  A living limestone cave in the Ozark National Forest, opened to the public in 1973 on a spring that once ran a Confederate veteran's gristmill.
• Ozark Folk Center State Park — 21 mi
  A state park of working craftspeople, a herb garden and live mountain music at Mountain View, born of a 1963 folk festival and a plan to pay for a sewer.
• Old Independence Regional Museum — 25 mi
  A Batesville museum in a 1936 WPA sandstone National Guard armory, telling the story of the twelve counties that once formed Independence County, with a research wing for local records.

More markers nearby

• Wild Haws in the Civil War — steps away
• Izard County First Courthouse — 4.2 mi
• The Civil War in Sharp County — 12 mi
• Bushwhackers — 16 mi