Van Buren Raid

The raid cost the Union column one man killed and five wounded. On December 28, 1862, about 8,000 troops under Blunt and Herron rode into Van Buren three weeks after Prairie Grove, with Lt. Col. Owen Bassett's Second Kansas Cavalry in the lead, followed by the Sixth Kansas and Third Wisconsin cavalry. The steamboats they captured and a ferry were burned, 13,000 bushels of corn they could not carry were destroyed, and the Confederates left Fort Smith with about 600 sick and wounded behind. The marker stands on the lawn of John Drennen's house.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Van Buren Historic District — 0.4 mi
  Eight blocks of Main Street on the Arkansas River, from Phillips Landing, with 1889 banks, a beer depot and a railroad depot, on the National Register since 1976.
• U.S. Marshals Museum — 4.5 mi
  A star-shaped museum on the Arkansas riverbank, opened in 2023, telling the story of the nation's oldest federal law enforcement agency and the marshals who worked out of Fort Smith.
• Fort Smith National Historic Site — 5.1 mi
  Two army forts, a federal courthouse and a basement jail on the bluff where the Poteau meets the Arkansas, from the 1817 riflemen to Judge Parker's court and its gallows.
• Fort Smith National Cemetery — 5.2 mi
  The post burial ground of the first Fort Smith, kept since 1819, holding its first commander, more than 400 Confederate dead, Judge Parker and veterans of every war since.

More markers nearby

• Albert Pike School House — 0.2 mi
• Courthouse — 0.3 mi
• Sebastian County California Gold Seekers — 5.1 mi
• Sebastian County Seat of Justice — 5.1 mi