Lakeport Plantation

The Lakeport Plantation house, built in eighteen fifty-nine on the banks of the Mississippi River in Chicot County, Arkansas, was one of the largest cotton plantations in the state before the Civil War. Its owner listed a hundred and fifty-five enslaved workers in the eighteen sixty tax records. By eighteen sixty-four that number had fallen to twenty-four , an eighty-five percent drop as the enslaved population made their escape when Union gunboats arrived on the river.

Confederate troops burned a hundred and fifty-eight bales of cotton here in eighteen sixty-two to prevent Union seizure. The house survived the war and the river, which claimed the two previous county seats. Arkansas State University restored and opened it to the public in two thousand and seven. It is the only remaining antebellum plantation house on the Arkansas side of the Mississippi River.