On October 11, 1838, 660 Cherokee led by John Adair Bell left Fort Cass, present-day Charleston, Tennessee, to begin an arduous 700-mile journey on the Bell Route of the Trail of Tears. Weak and miserable from being held in removal camps, the people in the Bell detachment who passed through here banded together and stayed close to family members for the long trek. It was a cold, wet November when they came through, not even halfway to their destination in Indian Territory. The Cherokee who passed through here had left their homes in North Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee with 56 wagons and 318 horses, and terrible road conditions had already slowed their progress. Along the route, the Bell detachment lost 23 of its members to exhaustion and illness before the weary travelers arrived in Evansville, Arkansas, on January 7, 1839.