The Arkansas Military Institute was chartered by the state legislature in 1850 and built on Chapel Ridge in Tulip. Cadets had to be over 14 and at least 4 feet 9 inches tall, and classes included Latin, Greek, surveying, math, military science, chemistry, and engineering. After Arkansas seceded from the Union in May 1861, the school closed and never reopened. Its cadets were among the troops recruited for the Tulip Rifles, Company I, 3rd Arkansas Infantry, in June 1861, and of the 150 men who served in that unit, only 13 remained at the end of the war. The Tulip area was settled around 1842 and, with colleges for men and women, was known by the 1850s as a center for higher education, the Athens of the South. With a thriving pottery business and bustling plantations, Tulip became a wealthy town, but the Civil War caused both schools to close and most businesses and farms to be abandoned. A skirmish took place there on Oct. 11, 1863, when Union cavalry routed a Confederate force, and after the war ended in 1865, few families returned to Tulip and it never regained its pre-war status.