Coordinates: 33°47′49″N 91°04′26″W / 33.797°N 91.074°W / 33.797; -91.074 Napoleon is a ghost town in Desha County, Arkansas, United States, near the confluence of the Arkansas and Mississippi rivers. Once the county seat of Desha County, Napoleon was flooded in 1874 when the banks of the Mississippi River burst through and destroyed the once-thriving river port town.
In 1852, Bolivar County, Mississippi, established its county seat, "Wellington," nearly opposite Napoleon, Arkansas, on the east bank of the Mississippi River. No record remains of how the name was chosen. There would have been a natural rivalry between business and civic leaders in Desha County, Arkansas, and Bolivar County, Mississippi, for river-related commerce at the confluence of the Arkansas and Mississippi rivers. In flooding after the Civil War, Wellington was flooded and destroyed as well as Napoleon.
The town was the subject of a chapter in Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi, in which $10,000 dollars had been hidden behind a brick in a building. Twain says he learned of the money's being hidden but, when he tried to retrieve it, discovered the entire town has been washed away in earlier floods.
Twain reports that the early explorers De Soto, Marquette and Joliet, and La Salle visited "the site of the future town of Napoleon, Arkansas" in their pioneering journeys.
Famous quotes containing the word arkansas:
“The man who would change the name of Arkansas is the original, iron-jawed, brass-mouthed, copper-bellied corpse-maker from the wilds of the Ozarks! He is the man they call Sudden Death and General Desolation! Sired by a hurricane, dam’d by an earthquake, half-brother to the cholera, nearly related to the smallpox on his mother’s side!”
—Administration in the State of Arka, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)