McCollum-Chidester House Museum

Peter McCollum, a North Carolinian, built this house in 1847, buying his materials in New Orleans and shipping them up the Ouachita by steamboat. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas calls it the first planed-lumber house in the area and possibly in southern Arkansas, and the first with plastered walls, carpet and wallpaper. In 1858 John Chidester, a stagecoach owner and mail contractor, bought it for $10,000 in gold and moved his family from Tuscumbia, Alabama. He ran his stage line from Camden over routes across the state, including a subcontract with the Butterfield Overland Mail from Fort Smith to Memphis.

The Civil War reached the house in April 1864. Union General Frederick Steele took the parlor and the east bedroom as his headquarters for five days, the days of the Engagement at Poison Spring west of town. Chidester was accused of passing Union mail to Confederate troops. Visitors are shown bullet holes in an upstairs wall where Union soldiers fired at random while looking for him, as he hid in a nearby closet. He fled to Texas and came back after the war to run his stage business and a livery stable.

The Ouachita County Historical Society bought the house in 1963 from Chidester descendants, who had lived there until about 1961, and the National Register listed it in 1971. The rooms are kept in the family's style, with the New Orleans furniture, Leah Chidester's china and her 1851 sewing machine.