In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson made one of the greatest real estate deals in history when he purchased 800,000 square acres of land west of the Mississippi River from France for $15 million.
The Louisiana Purchase, as it came to be called, allowed the United States to open up lands in the west for settlement, secured the nation’s borders against foreign invaders and gave traders the right to deposit goods duty-free at port cities, especially in the larger port cities such as New Orleans.
In what would eventually become the state of Arkansas, the deal helped end French and Spanish control, as Americans from the East Coast settled the area.
The Louisiana Purchase more than doubled the size of the country and brought all the territory that would become Arkansas under U.S. ownership. In 1815, President James Madison ordered a survey be conducted to establish a system for distributing free land to veterans of the War of 1812. In November 1815, Prospect K. Robbins led a group of men to survey a north-south line that would be known as the fifth principal meridian, which crossed an east-west baseline that had been surveyed by a party led by Joseph Brown. The crossing of these lines became the inaugural point from which future surveys of Louisiana Purchase lands began. Robbins’s party marked two trees in a murky swamp about eighteen inches in diameter as witness trees to delineate the crossing.
While re-surveying the boundary between Lee and Phillips counties in 1921, surveyors Tom Jacks and Eldridge Douglas of Helena-West Helena (Phillips County) discovered those witness trees. As a result, the L’Anguille Chapter of the National Society of the Daughters’ of the American Revolution in Marianna (Lee County) placed a granite marker at the site and held a dedication ceremony there on Oct. 27, 1926.
The Arkansas General Assembly authorized a state park to be built at and around the marker’s site in 1961. Early development of the park began with the help from local citizens and civic organizations. The monument was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on Feb. 23, 1972. In April 1977, the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission added the swamp in which the stone marker sat to the Arkansas State Registry of Natural Areas and gave money to buy the park site. The Arkansas Department of Parks & Tourism granted the commission a conservation easement on the site, which helped provide legal protection for its natural and historical features. Further development of park facilities began in 1977, and was completed in 1980. A 950-foot boardwalk was built from the swamp’s edge to the monument.
In June 1981, the boardwalk to the marker in Louisiana Purchase State Park was designated as a National Recreation Trail by the U.S. Department of the Interior. In April 1993, the National Park Service designated the point a National Historic Landmark. In preparation of the Louisiana Purchase’s bicentennial celebration in 2003, numerous upgrades and renovations were made to the park.
Not only is the park famous for the stone marker, but it is well-known for the fauna and wildlife that inhabit its swamp. The swamp is home to swamp tupelo, bald cypress, black willow and buttonbush, in proximity with upland species such as sweet gum, mulberry, Nuttall oak and sassafras. Many species of birds such as the belted kingfisher, the pileated woodpecker and the barred owl can often be seen.
Louisiana Purchase State Park sits at the end of Arkansas 362, two miles east of U.S. Highway 49, about 19 miles southeast of Brinkley (Monroe County) and about 30 miles northwest of Helena-West Helena. The park has no amenities — there's no visitors’ center, campgrounds or picnic areas. But public restrooms were added in April 2021. That same year, state park employees raised the granite monument and set it on a new base, so that it would no longer be submerged during times of high water.
And while the park is a bit off the beaten path, its natural beauty and historical significance not just to Arkansas, but the entire country, is well worth the time you’ll spend in the swamp that is Louisiana Purchase State Park.
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