Helena, Arkansas
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Prairie Point

Helena, Arkansas, also, Prairie Point. Mississippi River Walk. , A) Helena, Arkansas , Mile 663.5 AHP, Sylvanus Phillips, an early influential settler, founded this community in 1795 near the site of an old Native American village. Originally called St. Francis, it was renamed for Phillip's daughter Helen in 1920. Roads were soon built connecting Helena with Little Rock, Arkansas and other settlements inland, and the town became a major landing for the steamboat trade. Much of Helena was destroyed in an 1852 fire, and the town was still recovering when the U.S. Civil War began. Union troops occupied the town in 1862. A year later, a large Confederate force attacked Helena in an attempt to divert Federal attention from the siege at Vicksburg, Mississippi. The Union garrison was badly outnumbered, but the U.S. gunboat Tyler arrived to bombard the rebels, and the attack failed. After the war, several railroad lines were built into Helena, but its river traffic was threatened by sandbars forming in front of the town's harbor. Eventually, the docks were moved south below Helena towhead, and a harbor channel and industrial port was developed. The harbor terminals handle petroleum, grain, and agricultural and industrial chemicals., B) Prairie Point , Mile 668.5 AHP, Bienville, Governor of French Louisiana, built Fort St. Francis here as a rendezvous point and supply depot for his 1738 campaign against the Chickasaws. The position proved vulnerable and was abandoned in favor of Fort Assumption, upriver on the fourth Chickasaw Bluff, at present day Memphis, TN. During Spanish rule in the late 1700s, a number of settlers came to Prairie Point, forming a small community name Big Prairie, it was devastated by the New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811 and 1812.