I'm here to rant that loop highways and bypasses are stupid ideas.

The Louisiana Purchase gave way to five territories along the Red River. Here are links to some of the congressional papers.

Until the 1830s, the Disputed Territory along the Red River, where Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas and Louisiana meet, was a "no man's land."

From 1817 to 1822, the "Sulphur Fork Factory" stood at the confluence of the Sulphur into the Red River in today's Miller County, Arkansas.

One of the "most noted fishing places" in the Red River Valley has historically been Spirit Lake in Lafayette County, Arkansas.

According to Jacques Marquette in 1673, this is the "First Map of the Mississippi River."

Built about 1830, the Washington Tavern served as a stage coach station as well as the nearest American boarding house to Mexican Texas.

The Caddo structures were so numerous that Europeans who came to the Red River labeled southwestern Arkansas "Mound City."

Evidence of the Caddo City of the Dead along Ozan Creek at Washington, Hempstead County, Arkansas has been almost entirely eliminated.

Ozan in Hempstead County, Arkansas is a true City of the Dead, a place that connected to the Battle Mound village along the Red River.

This 1824 German map of Arkansas Territory is a lot more illuminating than many others from the same period I've encountered.

The Cossatot River derives from a French word meaning"crushed head," and in 1833, it was to be spanned by a toll bridge.

The Central National Road connected Dallas, Texas to Washington, Arkansas.

What may be the final photo of the ferry at Fulton, Hempstead County, Arkansas which crossed the Red River just below the Great Bend.

Fort Lynn was a lumber town in southwest Arkansas surrounded by several logging camps.

The Caddo Nation mined salt for over eight hundred years, and this activity remained an Arkansas industry into the 19th century.

The people in Southwestern Arkansas before the Civil War were much more populist and had a strong free-soil expansionist base.

The Spring Bank ferry over the Red River was unique, as the Blanton family operated it for over a hundred years, from 1836 until 1957.

Garland City petitioned for a bridge over the Red River, but someone (still a mystery!) exploded it in 1930.

While at the Ouachita River, Bernard de la Harpe claimed to have eaten a unicorn.