Local Information

Historic Camden

Camden, Arkansas, the county seat of Ouachita County, is located approximately 100 miles southwest of Little Rock and approximately 50 miles north of the Louisiana State Line. It is the head of navigation on the Ouachita River. The Indian meaning of the word “Ouachita” is: clear, sparkling water.

Camden traces its history as far back as 1541 when Hernando deSoto first landed on the Ouachita River bluff now known as Camden. The first settlement to locate here was in the year 1783 and was called “Ecore Fabre”, named for a Frenchman who had a trading post in the area.

In 1819, the Tate clan – consisting of three brothers, their families and slaves – keelboated their way up the river and settled at another bluff just a few miles beyond Ecore Fabre. It was five, maybe six years later that a man named John Nunn, a Georgia–born Missourian, reversed the immigration pattern and came from Washington or Fulton to take up permanent residence at Ecore Fabre. He too brought a large family and slaves. Nunn built his log house where Camden now stands. That house endured until 1903.

Nunn apparently was not the first settler at Ecore Fabre, as he bought the claim of squatter and trapper Jesse Bowman. However, he seems to have been the first to clear land or do any farming to speak of. With the Tates up river and an agrarian tribe of Choctaw Indians about five miles downstream, he made the first American dent in the looming Ouachita wilderness.

Camden itself claims 1824 as its date of birth. It was laid off as a town in 1839–40 and incorporated in 1844, at which time it scrubbed its old French moniker and renamed itself Camden. Some historians allege that it was named for Camden, South Carolina, but the prevailing view is that one of the prominent early citizens, a General Thomas Woodward, named it after his home town, Camden, Alabama.

By 1840, a cluster of stores and saloons had grown up around the steamboat landing. “The Bluff” was one of the leading cotton–shipping terminals, stacking steamer decks with up to forty thousand bales a season. One of John Nunn's sons, Ira, launched Camden's industrial history when he built a cotton gin near the landing in 1841.

Most of Camden's families came from Virginia, the Carolinas, Alabama, Georgia or Tennessee. During the Civil War, Camden was the site of the Fort Lookout Skirmish and the Battle of Poison Springs. There are many places in the city where you can walk down the corridors of yesterday. Much of Camden's history has been preserved, and many of the antebellum homes have been restored.

Article courtesy of the City of Camden’s official website, where you can also find useful links to other local places of interest such as the White Oak Lake and Poison Spring State Parks and the Arkansas Museum of Natural History.