Old Campground near an ancient ford on Sugar Creek served for generations as a natural stopping place before or after crossing the stream. An early American Indian settlement stood nearby on Indian Branch Creek, and the Coushatta used the site as a trading post and campsite. Homesteaders and settlers camped there before moving farther west, Texas cowboys used its open pastures and tanning pit as a resting place on cattle drives, and early Methodist residents gathered there for outdoor religious meetings that often lasted several days and also served as important social occasions. In 1862, after Federal forces captured New Orleans and blockaded the mouth of the Mississippi River, General Richard Taylor's army around Alexandria depended on supplies arriving from Texas by wagon, and the Confederacy built a military road from Nibletts Bluff on the Sabine River to Alexandria that used Old Campground's wide, flat ground as part of the route. The place later became a cemetery, the oldest documentable one in southwestern Louisiana, containing many unmarked pioneer graves and, according to local belief, many Civil War dead. After the original wooden grave markers rotted away and no plot map or burial record could be found, families erected white crosses across the cemetery as a sign of remembrance rather than as exact grave markers. The cemetery fell into neglect after James Harper died in 1908, but Leon Harper later returned, cleared the old wagon road, cleaned the cemetery, and sought preservation of the site with the legal help of former Governor Sam Jones. Supporters have continued to maintain the property and have added a replica of an early church and a 10-acre wildlife refuge.