The Spring Bank Ferry operated on the Red River, connecting Miller and Lafayette counties by way of State Highway 160, and was recorded as the oldest operating ferry in southwest Arkansas. According to records from Mrs. Kelly McCarty of the Blanton family, the first ferry was owned by an unidentified pioneer dressed in buckskin in the late 1820s to early 1830s, and this barge operated slightly north of what is now the Blanton home place on an old section of Highway 160, a little over two miles east of the junction of Highways 71 and 160. John Caffery was the second owner-operator in 1834, using a ferry boat built from cypress logs and rough lumber, and sometime in the late 1830s he sold the ferry to Col. William Blanton. Records indicate that the Blanton family received permits to operate the ferry, though no time frame or number of permits is known, and the family owned and operated it for the next 125 years through six generations until 1963, when the Arkansas Department of Transportation, previously known as the Arkansas Highway Department, took over; the state-owned ferry entered service in 1967. It was commissioned and licensed through the United States Coast Guard under inland navigational rules of western rivers. What is now known as ARDOT operated the Spring Bank Ferry from 1967 until it was replaced by the Highway 160 bridge in 1995. ARDOT had barge #1012 constructed on-site and purchased the original tug 1011 from Grafton Boat Company in 1982; the Spring Bank Tug #1011 was later replaced by the Saint Charles Tug #1016. On April 7, 1995, the Spring Bank tug #1011 was moved to Peel Ferry on Lake Bull Shoals in northern Arkansas, the ferry ceased operation and was decommissioned through the Coast Guard by Capt. Lonnie Hazel, and the Saint Charles #1016 was then also moved to Peel Ferry. Miller County acquired the original Spring Bank ferry barge from ARDOT in 1997, and in 2011, when ARDOT purchased two new tugs for Peel Ferry, Miller County and the Doddridge community acquired the original Spring Bank tug #1011 from ARDOT and brought it back home, where it now rests with the barge in the community park on Highway 160 in Doddridge.