Union County Second Court House

The county seat was only a few years old in El Dorado when this courthouse rose. Union County's first seat, chosen in 1839, was Scarborough Landing on the Ouachita River, later called Champagnolle, where a storehouse under the bluff served as the courthouse. A petition in 1843 started the move, and by 1844 the seat was El Dorado, nearer the county's center. El Dorado itself began in 1843, when Matthew Rainey opened a store and gave the place its name. Champagnolle's river port peaked in the 1850s, then the railroad of 1891 missed it.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• El Dorado Commercial Historic District — steps away
  The courthouse square and brick blocks of a town that jumped from 4,000 people to nearly 30,000 after the 1921 Busey well, listed on the National Register in 2003.
• Arkansas Museum of Natural Resources — 9.1 mi
  A free state museum on the Smackover field, where a 112-foot derrick, a rebuilt 1920s boomtown street and working pumps tell how oil and bromine remade south Arkansas.
• Moro Bay State Park — 19 mi
  A 117-acre park where Moro Bay and Raymond Lake meet the Ouachita River, home to the old Moro Bay Ferry, a cable ferry that ran from 1828 until bridges replaced it in 1992.

More markers nearby

• Mount Holly Cemetery — 18 mi
• Calhoun County in the Civil War — 25 mi