Arkansas Post post

Arkansas Post National Memorial is hardly a glamour destination, but it’s a day ride that offered the prospect of a stamp for my National Park Passport, so I put 350 miles on the bike today riding there and back.

I was pleasantly surprised when the guy at the Visitor Center pointed out they have two rubber stamps – one for Arkansas Post and the other for the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail. It seems that part of Andrew Jackson’s brutal relocation of Indian tribes from east of the Mississippi to alien lands in the Oklahoma Territory involved  shipping some of the unfortunates up the Arkansas River. In fact, he told me, one such group was forced to spend the winter at Arkansas Post before they could continue their journey into exile. (Native Americans are still pissed off at Jackson and avoid using the $20 bill that bears his likeness.)

Arkansas Post, the first European settlement in Arkansas was established by the French, existed briefly under the flag of Spain and became part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. It became the first capital of Arkansas Territory in 1819, but lost the title two years later to Little Rock. The population declined precipitously after that but it served as a Confederate strongpoint during the Civil War because it defended the river approaches to Little Rock.

Union gunboats shelled the hell out of the place in 1863 and there’s hardly anything left of it today except the water cistern. The Visitor Center has a crappy little museum and a movie that they show on demand rather than on a schedule. I didn’t demand a showing because I was pretty unimpressed with the place. After all, I was just there for the rubber stamps.

My GPS and I had a little misunderstanding as I was leaving Brinkley which led to a bizarre route over a dozen or so secondary state roads that involved a 90-degree dogleg turn about every 4 miles. The return trip was pretty straightforward – U.S. 165 north to I-40, east to U.S. 49 and north to home.

I stopped for gas at the Waldenburg BP station, but the pump wouldn’t take my credit card. So I went inside and paid cash for a bottle of Gatorade. The girl behind the counter eyed my lime green jacket and asked if it was a frog-gigging jacket. I assume she was making fun of my eccentric (to her) choice of riding apparel. I was not amused.