Before the Civil War, Searcy Landing was a steamboat stop with cotton warehouses. On May 9, 1862, Col. P.J. Osterhaus's 3rd Division of the Union Army of the Southwest built a bridge across the Little Red River and camped there while threatening Little Rock. Union forces remained for several weeks, fighting Confederates before retreating to Batesville and then marching to Helena. In August 1863, the U.S.S. Cricket captured the steamboats Kaskaskia and Tom Sugg at Searcy Landing and destroyed Gen. John S. Marmaduke's pontoon bridge across the river. As the war in Arkansas degenerated into guerrilla warfare in 1864, U.S. troops from Batesville and Little Rock often came to Searcy Landing searching for bands of cavalry operating in the Little Red River valley. In August, Union Gen. J.R. West led 3,094 men in search of Col. T.H. McCray's 2,000 Confederate cavalry in the valley, chasing them north and east of the landing before returning to Little Rock. Searcy Landing remained a steamboat dock and river crossing for about 50 years after the war until the first bridge was built in 1911.