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Arkansas » Delta » Monroe County » Blackton Vicinity » Survey Marker, Louisiana Purchase Historic State Park

Survey Marker, Louisiana Purchase Historic State Park

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1926. U.S. 49 at AR 362, approximately 3.5 miles southeast of Blackton
  • (Photograph by Ruth Hawkins)

The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 almost doubled the size of the United States, and the survey and division of the newly acquired land into square tracts began in Arkansas. This park is the point from which the surveys began in 1815. The site in an eastern Arkansas swamp lay forgotten until it was rediscovered in 1921 during a resurvey of the Phillips, Monroe, and Lee county lines. Following the discovery of two gum trees the initial surveyors marked, the L’Anguille Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution placed a marker here in 1926 to commemorate the survey. The granite monument, a National Historic Landmark, is reached via an elevated boardwalk across the swamp. The marker and the terrain poignantly illustrate the challenge the surveyors faced in their work. Because Arkansas was surveyed so early, it was the third state west of the Mississippi River (after Louisiana and Missouri) admitted to the Union.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Cyrus A. Sutherland with Gregory Herman, Claudia Shannon, Jean Sizemore Jeannie M. Whayne and Contributors
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Data

Citation

Cyrus A. Sutherland with Gregory Herman, Claudia Shannon, Jean Sizemore Jeannie M. Whayne and Contributors, "Survey Marker, Louisiana Purchase Historic State Park", [Marvell, Arkansas], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/AR-01-MO2.

Print Source

Cover: Buildings of Arkansas

Buildings of Arkansas, Cyrus A. Sutherland and contributors. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2018, 253-253.

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