This stone is a marker from the old Military Road which extended from Little Rock to Ft. Smith. The marker was found west of Dardanelle in 1940 by Mr. Henry Sellers, District Highway Engineer, while supervising the construction of Arkansas Highway 22.
The U.S. Army constructed the Military Road in 1826-1827 to supply frontier forts, to facilitate removal of native Indians from east of the Mississippi River to western lands, and to serve as a migration route for new settlers.
The Military Road ran along the north side of the Arkansas River from Little Rock. It was routed to the south side of the river at Dardanelle to avoid Cherokee lands. Military construction was contracted to private companies by the U.S. Government, usually in 5 mile increments.
Jefferson Davis, as a young officer from West Point, worked on the construction of the Military Road. When the road was completed in 1827, the garrison had been transferred from Ft. Smith to Ft. Coffee and then to Ft. Gibson, Oklahoma. The Military Road was extended westward as the frontier advanced.
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