Sandy Longhorn

Date of Visit: 24-25 February 2024

Marianna, AR

57º sunny & breezy

Typing out the name of this, my 21st park, Mississippi River, makes me itchy to add “State Park” to distinguish from a visit to the river itself. As the photo shows, the park rests within the St. Francis National Forest. While my overnight trip to the park proved fun and fruitful, I was quite disappointed that it lacks a focus on and easy access to the river itself. Instead, most of the park highlights the southern tip of Crowley’s Ridge, Arkansas’ least-known and least-understood ecoregion. Even in the visitors center most of the presentation material centers on the land, beginning with the Louisiana Purchase survey. I did appreciate the chance to read more about this after having been to Louisiana Purchase State Park earlier in the day.

Per my usual routine, I started the visit at the welcome center and took in all of the informational displays. I stood for a long time in front of the box (maybe 18″ x 18″) with the chains shown in the picture here. Having visited the headwater swamp where the survey began, I imagined men working these lengths into straight lines in cardinal directions, marking out the land one slow, trudging, bushwhacking, malaria-suffering mile at a time. Stunning.

In the visitor center, a cut-away diagram of Crowley’s Ridge rising up out of the delta also dazzled me. Fun fact: the ridge is not an uplift formation. Instead, much like the Ozark Mountains in the northwest, the ridge is the product of erosion created by wind, rain, and eventually rivers. In fact, the St. Francis River forms the eastern border border and the L’Anguille River the west.

For this trip, I lucked out and a good friend accompanied me. We gave the camper cabins at the park a double thumbs up, and we found the Bear Creek Loop Trail fascinating. The trail provides a chance to learn to identify at least a dozen trees native to Arkansas, as placards in front of key species offer information on height, leaves, flowers, and bark. My friend is a master naturalist and general fan of all things nature. To my delight she caught this wee cricket frog so we could take a closer look before letting it get back to doing whatever it is that little frogs do. We saw deer and raccoon tracks, caught prairie trillium coming up out of the ground, checked out the stiff bristle fern growing on tree trunks, and at the very end of our hike, thought a bear or a very large person must be hiking off trail based on the sound of the disturbance in the leaf litter down below us. Turns out it was an armadillo scrambling around. A lot of noise for such a pint-sized creature.

The next morning, our luck ran out. We headed out from the cabin by car, determined to find the confluence of the St. Francis and Mississippi Rivers. After all, the title of the park promised as much, and I could see a little road marked on the map. Alas, we made it to within 500 yards (so said my GPS), when flooding forced us to turn back. Here’s a picture of the dry road that we took out of the park, windows down to catch the birdsong and to better view the swampy surroundings. It seems that at every park I’m left saying, “I need to come back so I can … .” This one was no exception. Heads up, confluence, I’ll be back next year (after I’ve managed to visit all 52 parks once) to check you out.

Next up: Delta Heritage Trail

21 February 2024

Hwy 8 & 97, Hwy 46 north of Leola (respectively)

65º partly cloudy with breezes

Even though it will mess up the math of having 52 individual posts on the blog, I’m writing about Marks’ Mills and Jenkins Ferry Battlegrounds together. First because Marks’ Mills is quite small and second because they are the continuation of the battle story started with Poison Springs Battleground of my last post. I’m already stressing about whether I will write three individual poems or if they will end up three parts of one long poem, thus screwing up my math even more. Ah, poet troubles.

Marks’ Mills occupies a thin wedge of land created by the angled intersection of Arkansas highways 8 and 97, northwest of New Edinburg. A small stand of pine trees, saved from the lumber industry that surrounds it, shelters a few picnic tables and three informational placards. Biggest surprise here: this isn’t the actual battleground; instead, the park commemorates the battle that took place roughly a half a mile away on the private land of the Marks family. Again, this battle centered around a wagon train. This time though, it was a train returning to Pine Bluff after resupplying Steele’s Union army at Camden, following the defeat at Poison Springs. Confederates captured over a thousand horses and mules, wagons, ambulances, 4 big guns, and official Union communications. Among the Union train were 300 refugee slaves trying to get north. The Confederate soldiers murdered over 100 of these people.

The placards offer directions if anyone wants to drive the byways back into the woods to visit the actual site. With this history heavy on my heart, I didn’t need to stand on the exact land to feel the weight.

After Poison Springs and Marks’ Mills, and my reading ahead of time, I knew Jenkins Ferry would be another difficult visit, although with a somewhat happier ending, if one can even say that of a battle. At this park, 37 acres of Saline River bottomlands where the river intersects highway 46 northeast of Leola, there are the requisite picnic tables and placards, but the trees turn to oaks along the shoreline, and the river offers its own marking of history. The space provided much needed room to stretch my legs and ramble along the muddy banks.

I stood where the old ferry once ran and revisited the battle. After the overwhelming losses in the previous fights, General Steele took the remains of the Union Army in Arkansas and abandoned Camden to retreat north to Little Rock. It was April, the river flooding. At the site of the ferry, Steele ordered his engineers to construct an India rubber pontoon bridge that the forces used to traverse the waters. Once across, Steele’s men scuttled the pontoons, sinking the safe passage and stranding Confederate forces on the southern side of the Saline. The area was probably much greener then, in April, but the muted February colors gave the place a haunted vibe as I walked, again, on bloodied land.

For me, the happier ending was, of course, the escape of the Union troops. Yes, I am now more Arkansan than Iowan, but I will never be able to see the Confederate side.

Turning away from war, the park rewarded me with more wilderness than the previous two provided. As I finished my tromping through old leaves and scattered trees, I looked down and caught sight of a giant paw print and a small heap of fresh scat. (I’ll spare you the picture of the scat.) While I desperately wanted this to be a bobcat, I saw the claw marks immediately and knew it could not be. Bobcats, like nearly all felines, retract their claws when they walk (because who wants dirty nails!). Once home, I celebrated when I identified the print and scat as coyote. Who knew I would come to love identifying all things wild?

Next up: Louisiana Purchase

Date of Visit: 20 February 2024

Halfway between Chidester and Camden off Hwy 24

72º sunny skies, small breezes

Poison Springs Battleground (park #17) and the two parks to follow — Marks’ Mills Battleground and Jenkins Ferry Battleground — took me back to my trip to northwest Arkansas last summer and my visit to Prairie Grove Battlefield. These sites focus on some of our most violent and vitriolic history. For this reason, I read up ahead of time and learned about the Red River Campaign and the Camden Expedition, the last major victory for the Confederacy in the Civil War. I also noted that none of these parks offer services beyond a scattering of picnic tables, some outdoor grills, and educational placards. Poison Springs does offer a small trail down toward a creek, perhaps the produce of the spring itself.

The hardest truth, among many: on this site, the First Kansas Colored Infantry Regiment fought in the battle the Union lost, and the Confederacy did not take prisoners from African American troops; they slaughtered them. And yet, the battle reminds me that no one survives a war blameless. The Union forces had been on a foraging venture, being half-starved in their Camden encampment, and by all reports, Union soldiers did not limit their theft to corn from area farms and plantations. Civilians reported the looting of household goods: silver, jewelry, and clothing, including that for women and children. This inspired the Confederates to engage the wagon train. In the end, Union forces numbered 1,134 (236 killed, 65 wounded, 125 captured) to the Confederate’s 3,335 (16 killed, 88 wounded, 10 missing). As always, I speculate about the language of the placards. 125 Union men “captured,” but 10 Confederate men “missing.” Only 16 Confederate soldier’s dead? Accurate or not, many lives ended here; none of them ended easily.

Interesting to me: I found no mention on site of the rumor about the place name. Many of my friends born and raised in Arkansas had told me the tale of Confederates putting something in the water to make Union soldiers ill. According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, “The name Poison Spring was known to Camden area residents at the time of the engagement and was used in battle reports, but its origins are uncertain. Later legends suggested that Union soldiers became ill after drinking the cold spring water, but no contemporary accounts confirm this story.” Again, history proves an imprecise science. As I walked along the trail among the trees, I remembered what a friend had texted earlier that day in response to my preparations for such a grim visit. She wrote, “The civil war is full of sadness. But today they [the grounds] are nice habitats.” Indeed. Nature takes no sides; it suffers and thrives regardless.

Next up: Marks’ Mills