Situated on the old channel of the Red River, Dooley’s Ferry (3HE12 and 3HE39) was an early American community in southwest Arkansas that became a significant strategic point during the American Civil War. Since 2007, intensive archaeological research on the site has helped illuminate the site’s history and given us a window on early American history in the Natural State.
The site known as Dooley’s Ferry was occupied at times for many centuries before the arrival of American settlers in the early 19th century. The earliest mentions we have of the site come in the early 1830s. The Territorial Papers make mention of settlements on Lost Prairie, in Lafayette County, in 1830. The land around Dooley’s Ferry was patented primarily in 1837. George Dooley, son of a large family that had arrived in Arkansas in 1818 or 1819, gave his name to the crossing.
Throughout the antebellum period, people moved both to and through Dooley’s Ferry. People came to the area both by choice and compulsion to work the rich Red River Valley soils in the production of cotton. The area became home to one of the first great cotton booms in Arkansas. Though the area proved fertile, the nature of the cotton trade locked Arkansas into a productive system that stunted the growth and diversification of the state’s economy.
During the Civil War, Dooley’s Ferry was a main crossing on the Red River, bringing troops and supplies into Arkansas. When the war turned against the Confederates, two sites were chosen to fortify against a Federal invasion of Texas; Fulton and Dooley’s Ferry.
After the war, the long economic troubles of Reconstruction largely doomed the site. By 1899, the community that had once called Dooley’s Ferry home had dwindled to a few households. The site, today, is an active farming and ranching area. Though once on the main road between Washington and Texas, though, the current road system has left the site remote and difficult to access.
The site was documented in 1960 by Ed Sanders, of Crossett, Arkansas. Robert Taylor, of the Southern Arkansas University station of the Arkansas Archeological Survey, revisited the site in 1970.
More recent fieldwork began in 2007 as a Survey research project and dissertation project for The College of William & Mary. Extant Civil War entrenchments, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, were mapped. We also shovel-tested the area
In 2010, the Arkansas Archeological Survey and College of William & Mary conducted a wide-ranging geophysical survey of the community, giving us an idea of the extent of the site. The results were subsequently tested via excavation in 2012. Those excavations uncovered four antebellum structures (three homes and one church).
The archeological fieldwork is ongoing, and Dooley’s Ferry has much more to tell us about the settlement and history of the site and the people who lived there.
Dissertations/Theses
Drexler, Carl G. (2013) Dooley’s Ferry: The Archaeology of a Civilian Community in Wartime. Doctoral dissertation, Department of Anthropology, The College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA.
Conference Papers
Drexler, Carl G. (2012) Surviving on the Confederate Home Front: Soldiers and Civilians in Southwest Arkansas. Paper presented at the 45th Annual Meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology, Baltimore, Maryland.
——————– (2010) Defending the Red: Archaeology of Conflict at Dooley’s Ferry, Hempstead and Lafayette Counties, Arkansas. Paper presented at the Nth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Archaeological Conference, Lexington, Kentucky.
——————– (2008) Crossroads of Conflict: Archaeology at Dooley’s Ferry, Hempstead County, Arkansas. Paper presented at the 41st Annual Meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology, Albuquerque, New Mexico.
