Marks' Mills Battleground State Park

Visitors to Marks' Mills Battleground State Park have reported the sound of gunfire and marching soldiers carrying through the trees. On April 25, 1864, during the Camden Expedition, Confederate forces under General James F. Fagan overwhelmed a Union supply train of about 240 army wagons and some 1,800 guards near this site in Cleveland County and captured nearly the whole column, with Union losses estimated at between 1,133 and 1,600. Confederate soldiers also seized about 150 Black freedpeople who were traveling with the train and are believed to have killed more than 100 others, and were accused of massacring African Americans here, a week after the killing of Black soldiers at Poison Spring. The state park is one of the sites in the Camden Expedition Sites National Historic Landmark District, designated in 1994, and remains largely undeveloped woodland with picnic facilities and commemorative markers.