We’ve all heard of the legendary lost city of Atlantis. Supposedly the city was located in the Atlantic Ocean near the Strait of Gibraltar. According to the philosopher Plato, the gods sent a terrible night of fire and earthquakes causing Atlantis to sink into the sea. Whether or not the mythical city underwater truly existed, there is indeed a lost city under the waters of two rivers right here in the Natural State.
Napoleon, Arkansas, was located in Desha County where the Mississippi and the Arkansas rivers meet. The founders of the town thought that its location at the confluence of two major rivers would make it a bustling port city similar to St. Louis or New Orleans. Unfortunately, their dreams did not come to fruition. The town was badly damaged during the Civil War and, within 10 years of the war’s end, destroyed when the two rivers flooded.
French explorer Jacques Marquette first visited the area that would become Napoleon around 1673. Napoleon didn’t officially become a town until the late 1820s, when another Frenchman, Frederick Notrebe, officially settled the area and named the town after the French military and political leader Napoleon Bonaparte. Notrobe was a farmer and fur trader, and, in 1827, built a cotton gin at nearby Arkansas Post, bringing him considerable wealth. Unfortunately, Notrebe died while on a business trip in New Orleans in April 1849.
Though the town’s founding father had passed, Napoleon continued to grow. A post office was established in 1832, a primary school was founded in December 1838 and a Catholic church was built in May 1839. The church bell (one of few remaining artifacts of the town) is located at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in McGehee, Arkansas. A large U.S. military hospital opened in Napoleon in 1855.
Sadly, in the 1860s, Civil War battles fought in the area, along with major flooding of the Arkansas and Mississippi rivers, decimated the town. A few families returned to the ghost town only to find Napoleon and its buildings destroyed. Hoping to generate enthusiasm, a local newspaper reported the discovery of silver in the area of old Napoleon, but those claims were proven to be false.
Once every great while when the Mississippi is low, a few remains of foundations and gravesites from the town can be seen in the sandbars of the river. A historical marker was placed near Kelso, Arkansas, commemorating the town of Napoleon, which is more than the gods did for the mythical city under the Atlantic.
A proud sixth-generation Arkansan, Darrell W. Brown is a lover of all things Arkansas. He served several years with the Arkansas Department of Parks, Heritage and Tourism, and worked in all three divisions. He lives in Saline County with his wife and two beloved Boston Terriers.
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