The Great River Road in Arkansas: Helena to Lake Village
About 147 miles of the Arkansas Great River Road, from Helena by AR 1 and US-165 past Rohwer and McGehee to Lake Village and Lakeport Plantation.
The Route at a Glance
The Great River Road follows the Mississippi through ten states, from Lake Itasca in Minnesota to the Gulf, marked by green and white pilot's wheel signs. Arkansas made its stretch a state byway in 2001, and in 2002 it became a National Scenic Byway, 362 miles long. This drive takes 147 miles of it, about four hours without stops, from Helena south to Lake Village and Lakeport on US-49, AR 1, US-165 and US-65. Helena & the Lower Delta covers the country.
In Helena the river shaped everything. By the 1860 census 8,941 of the 14,877 people in Phillips County were enslaved, and in 1862 more than 2,000 people who had escaped slavery came to town with Union troops; Freedom Park stands on the site of a contraband camp. The Elaine Massacre Memorial records the violence that began on September 30, 1919, when white mobs and, by some accounts, soldiers killed Black sharecroppers who had organized for fair pay. Estimates of the Black dead run from about 20 to 800, and twelve Black men were sentenced to death in Helena. The Delta Cultural Center carries the region's story, and KFFA has aired King Biscuit Time from here since 1941.
AR 1 carries the road south past St. Charles and DeWitt. Arkansas Post National Memorial, about three miles off US-165 on AR 169, marks the first semi-permanent French settlement in the lower Mississippi valley. At Kelso a state marker tells how the river took the town of Napoleon, and nearby Rohwer held more than 10,000 Japanese Americans, over two thirds of them citizens, from September 1942 to November 1945. Its cemetery is a National Historic Landmark. In McGehee, the Japanese American Internment Museum covers Rohwer and Jerome, which together held some 16,000 people, the largest influx of any ethnic group in the state's history.
US-65 reaches Lake Village. Lake Chicot, about five miles off the road, is twenty miles long, the largest natural lake in Arkansas and the largest oxbow lake in North America. At the park, a marker records the river port of Columbia, where an enslaved man known as William was lynched in 1846 and which the Mississippi eroded away, probably by the 1870s. The drive ends at Lakeport Plantation, where Joel Johnson held ninety-five enslaved people when he died in 1846 and his son Lycurgus held 155 by 1860. In Chicot County, 7,512 enslaved people made up more than 83 percent of the population that year.
The Drive, Stop by Stop
8 stops along the route, in driving order from Delta Cultural Center, Helena, Arkansas to Lakeport Plantation, near Lake Village, Arkansas. One of them sits off the road itself — the distance is noted on each.
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That's the drive. Take your time, pull over often, and let The Great River Road in Arkansas: Helena to Lake Village do what it does best.
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