An informational meeting will be held Thursday, April 29, via Zoom to discuss a proposed scenic byway route related to the Civil War in Southwest Arkansas.
Specifically, the byway would provide a heritage tour related to the Camden Expedition of 1864. Both printed material and signage to designate the route on both state and federal highways would be part of the byway.
Communities and areas affected by this proposed scenic byway include Washington, Arkansas, near Texarkana, and Little Rock, Benton, Malvern, Rockport, Arkadelphia, Hollywood, Okolona, Prescott, Camden, Fordyce, Sheridan, Leola and Prattsville.
Arkansas State Parks along the byway would include Historic Washington State Park, Poison Springs Battleground State Park, Mark's Mill Battleground State Park and Jenkins Ferry Battleground State Park.
The meeting runs from 6 p.m. until 7 p.m.
Josh Williams, curator at Historic Washington State Park, explains this meeting follows legislation passed during by Arkansas State Legislature.
The Camden Expedition occurred in the spring of 1864 as a Civil War campaign. The driving tour would essentially serve as heritage tourism to showcase various sites connected with it - "to mark that for people to tour and to connect all the different sites that are affiliated with it," Williams said.
Historic Washington is something of a spur off the byway. For Union troops with their wider Red River campaign, the goal was to come down this way from Little Rock.
"Other federal troops were coming up the Red River, and they were supposed to meet at Shreveport, Louisiana, and from there after they defeated the Confederate forces they were to go on into Texas and secure cotton supplies that the North was short of at the time," Williams said. "This is the one that really impacted our area, the branch of that overall campaign, which is sometimes called the Camden Expedition because they went to Camden and had to retreat back to Little Rock."
Washington served as the center of Confederate government in Arkansas for a while. Part of the goal, said Williams, was to finish off the Confederate government here. But that didn't happen, he said.
"During this campaign that's when the archives, the state archives, and the local newspaper in Washington, the Washington Telegraph, they moved across the river to Rondo," Williams said.
The concern was that Union forces would take Washington.
"They got to Prairie D'Ane. They ran into more formal resistance by the different Confederate troops and so turned and went to Camden. Part of the reason for Camden, too, was they were running very low on supplies, the Federal troops, that is."
These are the aspects of the Civil War that people may learn about if they travel along the scenic route. The Delta Heritage Trail in Eastern Arkansas is an example of this sort of byway.
"There's a public meeting that's required by the highway department. After the public Zoom meeting, the next step would be getting signage to go on all the highways to denote it. They are currently working on the website for it and then brochures, that type of thing, information to hand out to people so they can travel the byway," Williams said.
(To register for the virtual Zoom meeting, contact Historic Washington State Park at 870-983-2684. Register by Wednesday and provide a valid email address to attend. For more information about Historic Washington, visit HistoricWashingtonStatePark.com.)