---

---

Mt. Elba began to emerge as a trade center on the east bank of the Saline River in the 1830s with the building of the road from Pine Bluff to Camden. A ferry started operation in 1845, and Mt. Elba was a port for small boat traffic on the Saline River. Cotton plantations run with slave labor began to grow in the area as Mt. Elba reached its heyday in the early 1860s. With the return of the Union Army to Little Rock in September of 1863 and the withdrawal of the Confederate forces to points west of the Ouachita River, southern Arkansas between the Ouachita and Arkansas Rivers became a no-man's land with no one really in control and both the Union and Confederate armies operating in the area at times.

---

As General Steele was leaving Little Rock on March 23rd at the start of the Camden Expedition, he had sent an order to Colonel Powell Clayton in Pine Bluff to go to Mt. Elba along the Saline River to create a distraction from the movement of Steele's forces to the southwest and to discourage or disrupt possible attacks on the Pine Bluff garrison. Clayton left Pine Bluff on March 27th with just over a thousand troops, four mountain howitzers and rifled cannons. They proceeded to Mt. Elba where his force routed Confederate pickets on the afternoon of March 28 and built a pontoon bridge.

On the morning of March 29th, Clayton left Colonel Samuel B. Marks in command of the 18th Illinois Infantry, the 28th Wisconsin Infantry, 54 of the troops from the 5th Kansas Cavalry and eleven men from the 1st Indiana Cavalry. He moved south with the rest of the 5th Kansas and 1st Indiana Cavalry and the 7th Missouri Cavalry under the command of Lt. Col. W. A. Jenkins. A part of the cavalry force raided a Confederate camp at Long View some forty miles south of Mt. Elba, captured 287 prisoners and 300 horses and mules, burned 39 wagons filled with gear and supplies, tossed between 175 to 200 Confederate guns into the Saline River and destroyed a bridge over the river.

On March 30, a scouting party out of Mt. Elba detected a large Confederate force approaching from the south and alerted Col. Marks. Wisconsin infantry held them off while Col. Marks organized his forces. Brigadier General Thomas Dockery was attacking with 1500 cavalrymen, but they were repulsed and then forced to retreat when Col. Clayton crossed the Saline from its west bank on the pontoon bridge with his forces and pursued Dockery for some twelve miles before turning back. Dockery retreated to Monticello. It was a Union victory. The Union forces had light losses, but there were much more substantial losses for the Confederate forces in men killed, wounded and captured and in livestock, equipment, arms and supplies lost. Mt. Elba and its pontoon bridge would enable the Union supply train to bring food to Steele's hungry troops in Camden on April 20, but it did not prevent the disaster at Marks' Mills on April 25.

---

With the economic devastation caused by the Civil War, Mt. Elba never regained its importance after the war ended. With the coming of the railroads in the 1870s and 1880s, new towns developed and became the new centers of commerce and local government. Travel on the rivers diminished, especially on those rivers that could only carry small boats. Little remains at Mt. Elba today.

---

Photo by Peggy Lloyd

---

This marker is on the east side of the Saline River at the site of Mt. Elba. We do not cross the river as part of the Scenic Highway. This site is about nine to ten miles south of Rison, Arkansas on the old Mt. Elba Road.

---

Approximate location of marker.

---

Photo by Peggy Lloyd.

---

Today Mt. Elba is a collection of dwellings used as hunting camps or weekend getaway homes. They are built on stilts because of possible flooding near the river as is evident in this photo taken after the melting of a heavy snow and heavy late winter rains.

---

Photo by Peggy Lloyd

---

Kingsland did not exist at the time of the Civil War. It is a railroad town that emerged in then Dorsey County when the Cotton Belt Railroad was built through the region in 1882. It was incorporated in 1884, and the county changed its name to "Cleveland" in 1885 for the first Democratic president elected after the Civil War. Kingsland became a center for the timber industry and enjoyed its heyday in the late decades of the 19th century and early decades of the 20th century.

As the Great Depression settled over the country in the early 1930s, J. R. Cash was born near Kingsland on February 26, 1932. When he was three in 1935, his impoverished parents moved their family to the Dyess Colony in northeastern Arkansas. The Dyess Colony was a federal project to aid destitute farmers. Cash grew up there and eventually became known as Johnny Cash, one of the iconic figures in country music. Famous as "The Man in Black", Cash was musician, singer, songwriter, actor and author until his death in 2003. He did return often to his original hometown. The new post office in Kingsland completed in 1994 at 80 1st St./Highway 189 was named in Cash's honor. A Johnny Cash Birthplace Memorial is two blocks west of the post office and on the same side of the street as the post office near the Kingsland Baptist Church.

---

Photo by Patricia McClellan of New Edinburgh, Cleveland County, Arkansas