Jenkins' Ferry
Jenkins' Ferry State Park
The Jenkins' Ferry battlefield is administered by Arkansas State Parks administration. The general mailing address is Arkansas State Parks, One Capitol Mall, Little Rock, AR 72201. Telephone: 501-682-1191.
The Jenkins' Ferry State Park is located on Arkansas State Highway 46, circa 5 miles northeast of Leola, Arkansas.
Civil War Sites Advisory Commission Report on Jenkins' Ferry: AR016
(The CWSAC Battle Summary Will Open In Its Own Window)
Jenkins' Ferry In The Red River Campaign, Camden Expedition: April 30, 1864
Spring of 1864 saw war's violent hands seize southern Arkansas as Union leaders launched the Red River Campaign. Its purpose was to separate western Confederate forces from the east and to reopen access to Texas cotton. Union mistakes, heavy rain and floods, and strong Confederate resistance doomed the campaign to failure.
On April 26, following such overwhelming defeats as Marks' Mills and Poison Springs, the Union VII Corps under General Frederick Steele pulled out of Camden heading north. General E. Kirby Smith's Confederate troops were less than 24 hours behind. The heavy Union wagons moved slowly as torrential rains turned the Camden Road into a quagmire. On April 29, Confederate infantry caught the Union army in the flooded white oak forest of the Saline River bottoms just south of Jenkin's Ferry.
The battle raged for two days. Confederate forces mounted three major attacks but failed to halt the Union army's escape. Steele's troops managed to slip across the swollen Saline at Jenkins' Ferry on a mobile wooden bridge supported by India Rubber pontoons. Once across, the bridge was sunk.
Without a bridge, the Confederates could not follow. Bedraggled Union troops moved northward to higher ground where they burned many of their cumbersome wagons. The starving army then pressed on to Little Rock. The Campaign was over! The disastrous Red River Campaign was the Union's last major encroachment into south Arkansas.
(Text Adapted From: Arkansas State Park Interpretive Signage at Jenkins' Ferry, 2003.)