Wittsburg Fortification National Register of Historic Places Listing

Wittsburg is gone now. Mostly, anyway, since the St. Francis River shifted and the railroads bypassed the bustling port in the late nineteenth century. But back in 1862, this clay bluff on Crowley's Ridge was a vital military choke point. Union troops wanted control. So, Confederate Major General Thomas C. Hindman ordered his men to throw up dirt fortifications to block the Federal advance toward Little Rock. They dug deep.

What remains today at National Register site 02001626 isn't some grand brick fortress. It is dirt. Specifically, a series of crescent-shaped earthworks and rifle pits carved directly into the loess soil of the ridge. Soldiers sweated through Arkansas humidity with spades and axes, clearing oak trees to open up lines of fire for their artillery. They built gun emplacements. Actually, the Confederates abandoned the site without a major battle when Union General Samuel Curtis bypassed them, but the fort still saw action as a staging ground and scout post for both sides throughout the bloody guerrilla warfare that plagued Cross County.

Most Civil War dirt structures melted away decades ago under rain and farmers' plows. This one survived. Trees grew over the trenches, holding the eroding soil together for over a century and a half. It sits on private property now, hidden from the casual driver on Highway 163. But its inclusion on the National Register in 2002 cemented its status as one of the few untouched Confederate earthworks left in eastern Arkansas. A quiet, dusty ghost of a forgotten river war.