Wittsburg in the Civil War

Wittsburg was a river port that briefly became a county seat. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas says steamboats reached it on the St. Francis River and its cotton warehouses made it a trading town. Cross County was created on November 15, 1862, and named for David C. Cross, a planter and slaveholder. Wittsburg was the first temporary seat, though Union activity forced county business to be done secretly in Pineville. The seat returned in 1868, then moved to Vanndale in 1884 after railroads bypassed the town, and Wynne has held it since 1903.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Parkin Archeological State Park — 9.1 mi
  A National Historic Landmark on the St. Francis River preserving a 17-acre Mississippian village, AD 1000 to 1550, that many archeologists think was Casqui in the Hernando de Soto accounts.
• Southern Tenant Farmers Museum — 27 mi
  A museum in the 1930s dry cleaner and filling station where leaders of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union met, telling the story of cotton tenancy and the Black and white union it produced.

More markers nearby

• Taylor's Creek and Mount Vernon — 8.7 mi
• Poinsett County Court House — 24 mi
• Confederate Headquarters in Harrisburg — 24 mi