Napoleon

Overview

The town the river took back

Napoleon stood on the point where the Arkansas River flows into the Mississippi, on what is now the eastern edge of Desha County. Frederick Notrebe, a wealthy merchant, built warehouses at the spot, then called Mouth of Arkansas, around 1820 and suggested naming the town for Napoleon Bonaparte. Wikipedia dates a post office there to 1832; the Encyclopedia of Arkansas dates the Napoleon post office and the name to 1837. It became the county seat in 1838 by Wikipedia's account, or 1843 by the Encyclopedia's.

The town peaked before the Civil War. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas notes estimates of up to 2,000 people but says the 1850 and 1860 censuses suggest fewer than half that. Its showpiece was a three-story federal Marine Hospital for river boatmen, finished in 1854. The Army engineer who built it, Stephen H. Long, had warned that the site would flood, and he was overruled.

The war wrecked Napoleon. Union troops occupied it in 1862 and destroyed the courthouse in January 1863. That April a Navy officer had a channel cut across the neck of land east of town, and the Mississippi began eating at the bank. A corner of the hospital fell into the river in 1868, and a flood in 1874 finished the job. When Mark Twain wrote about it in 1883, he found only a shanty fragment and a crumbling chimney. The church bell survives in McGehee.

Timeline

Forty years at the mouth of the Arkansas

1. About 1820Merchant Frederick Notrebe builds warehouses at the mouth of the Arkansas, a spot then called Mouth of Arkansas. The town's exact founding date isn't known.
2. 1832A post office is established there, by Wikipedia's date.
3. 1837The place takes the name Napoleon, after Napoleon Bonaparte, at Notrebe's suggestion. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas dates the Napoleon post office to this year.
4. 1838–1843Wikipedia makes Napoleon the Desha County seat from 1838. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas's county history says the court met at a private house until 1841, then at Bellville, and that Napoleon became the seat in 1843.
5. 1839The General Assembly charters the Napoleon and Little Rock Railroad. A priest holds the town's first Catholic mass in May.
6. 1842Congress picks Napoleon on August 29 as the site of a Marine Hospital for river boatmen.
7. 1850–1855Army engineer Stephen H. Long builds the three-story hospital despite his warnings that the site will flood. It is finished in August 1854 and probably takes its first patients in 1855.
8. 1860The 1850 and 1860 censuses suggest fewer than half the 2,000 people some estimates give. Farm owners register 310 enslaved people in the area, 84 of them in town.
9. Feb 12, 1861State troops seize the Marine Hospital and shipments of ammunition on Governor Henry Rector's order.
10. Sep 1862Union troops occupy the town.
11. Jan 1863Union soldiers tear down the county courthouse and burn its wood for fires during a blizzard. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas's county history says troops set fire to the town.
12. Apr 1863Lt. Cmdr. Thomas O. Selfridge's men dig a channel across the neck of land east of town. The Mississippi starts to cut straight at Napoleon.
13. Mar 1868The river is 52 feet from the hospital's doors. Within weeks a corner falls in.
14. 1871An illustrated travel article pictures what is left of the town and calls it "a mere suburb of its former self."
15. 1874A flood submerges what's left. By October the county seat has moved to Watson.
16. 1883Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi finds only "a fragment of a shanty and a crumbling brick chimney."
17. 1954The Mississippi runs unusually low in summer. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas gives it as a time when remains of the town could be detected in the sandbars.
18. Jan 26, 2009The Desha County judge takes two Arkansas Railroad Club members to the site by boat. They find nothing at the Marine Hospital site and part of the town cemetery on a hill on Cat Island.

Legend and record

Twain's hidden money

In chapters 31 and 32 of Life on the Mississippi, Mark Twain tells of $10,000 in gold hidden behind a loose stone in the foundation of a brick livery stable in Napoleon. Twain sets off to collect it and finds the town gone, washed away by the river. The story is his invention. His account of what he saw is the useful part. By the early 1880s, he writes, Napoleon was down to a fragment of a shanty and a crumbling brick chimney.

The record is harder than the tale. Napoleon was the Desha County seat, a federal hospital site and a Civil War objective. Justice Peter V. Daniel of the U.S. Supreme Court passed through in 1851 and called it a "miserable place" in a letter to his daughter, as Wikipedia quotes him; the Encyclopedia of Arkansas has him calling it "most wretched."

Site map

Where the town stood

The current USGS map puts Napoleon's point in the water at the mouth of the Arkansas, beside Cat Island and Whiskey Chute. The 1939 Big Island sheet in the historic maps below still prints the name Napoleon on the Arkansas bank of the Mississippi, opposite Prentiss Landing, and draws a dotted 1829 meander line, the bank as surveyed that year, well inland to the west. The 1972 and 1986 sheets show Cat Island in the river, and the 1986 sheet Ozark Island No. 75 to the southwest.

None of the town's buildings stand. On January 26, 2009, the Desha County judge took two members of the Arkansas Railroad Club to the site by boat. They wrote that the town lies under the Arkansas River. At the Marine Hospital site, which the judge had located from old tax records, they found nothing, even with a metal detector. On a hill on Cat Island, which they also called Napoleon Island, they found part of the town cemetery, with sunken graves and the tombstone of Henry Smith, who died at Napoleon on September 26, 1859. They wrote that the Arkansas River had washed away part of the cemetery in the 1970s, that hunters and campers use the island, and that it can be reached only by boat. The judge told them he had once seen railroad ties and foundations there at low water, more than ten years before.

The Encyclopedia of Arkansas says remains of the town can be detected in the sandbars when the Mississippi is unusually low, as it was in the summer of 1954, and Wikipedia says a few ruins show only when the water is low. Rivergator, a paddlers' guide to the lower Mississippi, says the townsite is covered by the top end of the Arkansas Bar and puts the last evidence of the town at the low water of 1957.

A state historical marker for the old town, erected in 1959 by Desha County and the Arkansas History Commission, stood beside AR 1 about 0.1 mile south of AR 138, near the Kelso-Rohwer Fire Station, when it was photographed in August 2017. It is about nine miles west of the mapped site.

• No standing buildings
• Part of the town cemetery on Cat Island, per a 2009 visit
• Traces in sandbars at very low water
• Catholic church bell, now in McGehee

Historic maps

Napoleon on USGS maps, 1939–1986

Crops from the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection, centered on the townsite. Each sheet shows what surveyors mapped that year; compare them with today's topo and aerial on this page.

19391:62,50019721:24,00019861:100,000

Map & directions

Getting there

McGehee is the closest town with services. Both routes below end on a road OpenStreetMap calls Highway 10, about a mile southwest of the mapped site, which lies in the river. They were computed from OpenStreetMap and haven't been driven by us. We don't know whether the last roads are public or open. The Little Rock route turns from AR 138 onto AR 1 near Kelso; the state's Old Town of Napoleon marker stood 0.1 mile south of that junction, beside AR 1, in August 2017.

Base map: USGS The National Map (public domain). Routes: OSRM on © OpenStreetMap contributors data (ODbL), computed October 2026. Times assume dry roads.

Photos

Napoleon in pictures

Henry Lewis's "Mouth of the Arkansas," published 1857; Napoleon was the town at the river mouthNapoleon from the north bank of the Arkansas, engraving published 1861Napoleon in an 1871 wood engraving

Visitor reports

Been to Napoleon?

Been there lately? Tell the next visitor what you found: whether you could get in, the state of the road and what's still standing. Photos are welcome. We read every report before it appears here.

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Nearby

Other sites near Napoleon

Straight-line distance from the townsite to other mapped sites in our Arkansas index.

• Eunice18.6 mi SW · Chicot
• Arkansas Post20.5 mi NW · Arkansas
• Bolding81.3 mi SW · Union
• Palestine81.9 mi N · St. Francis
• Slonikers Mill84.5 mi N · St. Francis
• Old Austin95.7 mi NW · Lonoke
• Daleville112.3 mi W · Clark
• Crossroads115.2 mi NW · Pulaski

Sources

Sources and credits

1. Wikipedia, "Napoleon, Arkansas", retrieved October 2026: 1832 post office, first mass, county seat 1838–1874, Marine Hospital dates, Civil War events, 1868 erosion, Justice Daniel's letter, Twain's story, low-water ruins, coordinates (GNIS).
2. Encyclopedia of Arkansas, "Napoleon (Desha County)" by Steven Teske, updated May 20, 2025: Notrebe and the name, 1837 post office, 1839 railroad charter, population estimates and 1860 census, hospital, the seizure, occupation and courthouse, Selfridge's channel, 1874 flood and move to Watson, the bell in McGehee, the 1954 sandbars.
3. Encyclopedia of Arkansas, "Desha County", updated September 14, 2026: Notrebe's warehouses about 1820, the name Mouth of Arkansas and the 1837 renaming, the 1841 and 1843 county-seat dates, troops setting fire to the town, the three-story hospital.
4. Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi (1883), Project Gutenberg, chapters 31 and 32: the money behind a stone in the livery stable's foundation and the "fragment of a shanty and a crumbling brick chimney."
5. Ken Ziegenbein, trip report and photos of a boat visit to Napoleon on January 26, 2009, Arkansas Railroad Club members with the Desha County judge, read October 2026: the town under the Arkansas River, nothing found at the Marine Hospital site, the cemetery hill on Cat Island (Napoleon Island) with Henry Smith's 1859 tombstone and sunken graves, the 1970s washout, boat-only access, hunters and campers, the muddy landings, the judge's earlier low-water sighting of railroad ties and foundations.
6. Rivergator, Lower Mississippi River Water Trail, "Rosedale to Arkansas City", read October 2026 (the entry is undated): the townsite under the top end of the Arkansas Bar, the last evidence of the town seen at the low water of 1957.
7. Historical Marker Database, "Old Town of Napoleon", Internet Archive copy of April 11, 2026 (the live page blocks automated reading): the marker erected in 1959 by Desha County and the Arkansas History Commission, on AR 1 about 0.1 mile south of AR 138 near the Kelso-Rohwer Fire Station, photographed August 26, 2017.
8. Pictures: Henry Lewis's lithograph "Mouth of the Arkansas" in Das illustrirte Mississippithal (1857); Barber and Howe, Our Whole Country (1861), whose caption places the view on the north bank of the Arkansas with the U.S. Hospital at right; a Library of Congress wood engraving (1871), cropped here from its newspaper page, whose article, "From Vicksburg to Memphis," supplies the 1871 quote; all public domain by date of publication, via Wikimedia Commons.
9. Elevation: USGS 3D Elevation Program point query. Routes: OSRM on OpenStreetMap data, October 2026. Not field-checked.

Photo and map credits

• Henry Lewis's "Mouth of the Arkansas," published 1857; Napoleon was the town at the river mouth: Henry Lewis, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
• Napoleon from the north bank of the Arkansas, engraving published 1861: Unknown author, in Barber and Howe, Our Whole Country, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
• Napoleon in an 1871 wood engraving: Miscellaneous Items in High Demand, PPOC, Library of Congress, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
• Area base map, topo and aerial imagery: USGS The National Map (public domain).
• Historic maps: USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection (public domain): Big Island 1939, 1:62,500; Rosedale 1972, 1:24,000; Dumas 1986, 1:100,000.