Marks' Mills Battlefield Park

Marks' Mills State Park is an Arkansas State Park located at the junction of Arkansas Highway 8 and Arkansas Highway 97, north of New Edinburg, Arkansas. The park preserves part of the battleground of the Battle of Marks' Mills. fought on April 25, 1864, during the American Civil War. The battle was part of the Camden Expedition, a major Union push through southern and central Arkansas. The park is one of nine sites that make up the Camden Expedition Sites, a National Historic Landmark District. The park is a simple roadside park shaped in an irregular four-sided shape at the junction of the two highways. The park is dotted with picnic facilities shaded by pine and oak trees, and the area is in much the same condition of dense vegetative growth that the area was described as having in 1864. There are two commemorative markers on the site. The Battle of Marks' Mills was between a column of Maj. Gen. Frederick Steele's Union Army, en route from Camden to Pine Bluff for supplies, and a Confederate force under the command of Maj. Gen. James F. Fagan that had taken up a defensive position at the road junction since the last sweep of Union reconnaissance in the area on April 21. The battle was a decisive victory for the Confederates, who captured 2,000 Union troops, four guns, and 240 empty supply wagons. The National Historic Landmark District designation was made in 1994.