Skirmish at Amos Bayou

The fight began at Cypress Bend, ten miles due east of Kelso. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas says many residents fled to the Kelso area to escape Union gunboat fire aimed at a small Confederate battery there. Residents still point to a cannonball embedded in a walnut tree near the Kelso Cemetery, where the marker stands. Kelso itself is a railroad creation: the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern reached it in September 1904, and the depot was named for engineer George Kelso. The railroad stopped running in 1969.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Rohwer Relocation Center Memorial Cemetery — 1.3 mi
  A National Historic Landmark cemetery built by Japanese Americans incarcerated at Rohwer from 1942 to 1945, with monuments they made and audio panels narrated by George Takei.
• Japanese American Internment Museum — 13 mi
  A museum in the McGehee train depot on the two Arkansas camps, Rohwer and Jerome, where about 16,000 Japanese Americans were held from 1942 to 1945.
• Arkansas Post National Memorial — 17 mi
  The site of Arkansas's first European trading post, opened in 1686 beside the Quapaw town of Osotouy, later a territorial capital and the scene of a January 1863 Union victory.

More markers nearby

• Old Town of Napoleon — 0.9 mi
• Battle of Arkansas Post — 18 mi
• Early Railroads in Chicot County — 20 mi
• The Orphan Company — 26 mi