In 1847, Benjamin Scott acquired a forty-acre tract on the east bank of Corney Bayou at the northernmost point navigable by steamboat on the bayou, then known as Corni Bluff, and developed it as Scottsville by surveying the property, drawing town plans, and selling lots to investors. A post office was established there in 1849, legislation was passed in 1850 under Governor Joseph Walker to clear Corney Bayou of obstructions to navigation, and Scottsville prospered for a time before being incorporated in 1857. Although steam commerce continued there until 1882, persistent difficulty keeping Corney Bayou navigable, along with the town's inaccessibility and growing competition from railroads, ended Scottsville's role as a port by the late 1880s; remnants survived until the 1940s before disappearing completely. Corney Bayou flows southeasterly about 76 miles from headwaters above Warnock Springs in Columbia County, Arkansas, to Bayou D'Arbonne in Union Parish, Louisiana. Early Louisiana maps called it Bayou Salutas, and its present name was not recorded until the mid-1800s. For hundreds of years it sustained Native American populations and served as transportation, and during Louisiana's steamboat era its lower reaches were navigable and linked local traffic to other markets. Often called Big Corney and also spelled Cornie or Corni, it is sometimes confused with Corney Creek to the west and Little Corney Bayou to the east. In the late 1930s, the Federal Government built a dam on Corney Bayou south of this site, creating the 2,350-acre Corney Lake, now part of the Kisatchie National Forest.