The War in Van Buren County

Two words in this story were ones every Ozarks family knew, and both were slippery. Washington Irving used bushwhacker in the 1840s as a compliment for hunters; later Union commanders applied it to roving bands in the Ozarks, and it came to mean any band, Union or Confederate, that preyed on soldiers and civilians. Jayhawker began as a Missouri name for Kansas Free Staters. In Van Buren County, where the 1860 census counted 200 enslaved people among 5,157 white residents, bushwhackers burned the courthouse in 1865, and a Methodist church served as the courtroom until 1869.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Greers Ferry Dam and Lake — 26 mi
  The Corps of Engineers dam on the Little Red River that President Kennedy dedicated on October 3, 1963, with a visitor center, a trout hatchery below the dam and a lake of 340 miles of shoreline.
• Ozark Folk Center State Park — 28 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.

More markers nearby

• Elton Britt — 24 mi
• Arkansas Peace Society — 24 mi
• Federal Raids on Burrowville — 24 mi
• Searcy County Seat — 24 mi