Are We There Yet?

Heritage Trails System traces Arkansas' history

Potts Inn Museum is housed in a former Butterfield Overland Mail Trail stop in Pottsville.
Potts Inn Museum is housed in a former Butterfield Overland Mail Trail stop in Pottsville.

Driving along highways in the Natural State these days, you have a very good chance of spotting roadside signs that designate the route as part of the Arkansas Heritage Trails System.

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Special to the Democrat-Gazette

About 2,000 signs mark routes designated by law as part of the Arkansas Heritage Trails System.

There are about 2,000 of these rectangular markers -- so many that they can easily fade into background clutter. That would be too bad, because the signs denote four sets of trails that played important roles in our state's history.

Created in 2009 by the General Assembly, the trails must be "of state or national significance to Arkansas or American history, including without limitation trade, commerce, exploration, migration, settlement or military campaigns." They must also "have a far-reaching effect on broad patterns of American culture."

Two of the trail sets run like spiderwebs along networks marking tragic happenings in the state's history: Civil War campaigns of the early 1860s and Trail of Tears paths taken by American Indians forcibly moved west in the 1830s. The other two, much less scattered, trace antebellum transportation along the Southwest Trail and Butterfield Overland Mail Trail.

The Civil War trails cover eight episodes: the Pea Ridge campaign, the Prairie Grove campaign, the Little Rock campaign, the Camden expedition, Confederate approaches to Helena, Confederate approaches to Pine Bluff, Cabell's route to Fayetteville and the Price Raid route.

Two of the state's most prominent Civil War sites -- Pea Ridge Battlefield National Park and Prairie Grove Battlefield State Park -- are prime stops on two of the trails. Other designated routes explore less familiar military encounters.

One of them, Cabell's route, traces action on April 16, 1863, when a Confederate force led by Brig. Gen. William "Old Tige" Cabell attacked Col. M. LaRue Harrison's Union troops in Fayetteville. The Rebels were driven back into the Boston Mountains. Another encounter, the Confederate attack on Pine Bluff, took place in October 1863, when a small Union garrison fought off a Rebel effort to retake that city.

The Trail of Tears markers extend to all four corners of Arkansas. That reflects the fact that the emerging state in the 1830s saw the involuntary westward passage to present-day Oklahoma of five American Indian nations: Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw and Seminole.

More than two dozen separate routes display Trail of Tears signs. Monuments at a number of locations give details on the migrations, during which uncounted hundreds of tribal members died of disease and hardship. At one of the most poignant sites, Cadron Settlement Park west of Conway, plaques pay tribute to the 100 or more Cherokees who died there during an 1834 cholera epidemic. Forty-four, about half of them children, are listed by name.

Southwest Trail signs extend from the Missouri border near Maynard southwest to Texarkana, marking part of an early 19th-century complex of routes from Ste. Genevieve, Mo., to the Red River Valley of Texas.

During Arkansas' territorial period before 1836, the Southwest Trail was one of the few roads of any kind in the future state. Driving along Interstate 30 or U.S. 67, you are running parallel to the onetime route.

Markers for the Butterfield Overland Mail Trail line a single route from West Memphis to Fort Smith, with a branch to Little Rock, before heading north to the Missouri state line. The mail service to the West Coast via stagecoach was founded in 1858 by John Butterfield. It was eclipsed only two years later by the faster Pony Express.

The trail's brief heyday is evoked in Pottsville, 75 miles northwest of Little Rock, at the Potts Inn Museum. Built by Kirkbride Potts mostly with slave labor, it served as an overnight stop for Butterfield passengers, who sometimes had to sleep two to a bed and eight to a room. Furnishings from the 19th century, including a chandelier lighted by an oil lamp, give the place an authentic period feel.

Maps and other details on Arkansas Heritage Trails can be found at arkansasheritagetrails.com.

Style on 11/08/2016

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