Skirmish at Farr's Mill

The Fourth Arkansas Cavalry (US) was sent to scout Caddo Gap in July 1864 and set out with about 250 men on July 5. It skirmished with Confederate irregulars almost at once, and on July 8 it camped at Farr's Mill, near where Gulpha Creek meets the Ouachita River. The next day a detachment rode into Hot Springs after a band of Confederates, and about a hundred men from Cook's and Crawford's companies then attacked the camp. A counterattack drove them off with four Confederates dead and six wounded. The regiment went on to Caddo Gap and recruited Unionists.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ouachita National Forest — steps away
  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 — steps away
  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.
• Buckstaff Bathhouse — steps away
  The Edwardian bathhouse on Bathhouse Row that opened in 1912 and has run ever since, with a new concessioner expected in 2027.
• Hot Springs National Park — 0.2 mi
  A federal reservation since 1832, where rain from the Ouachita Mountains comes back as 143-degree water along a row of bathhouses.

More markers nearby

• Lefty Grove — 0.6 mi
• Military Road — 18 mi
• Settlement of Midway — 18 mi
• Confederate Manufacturing — 23 mi