DeValls Bluff was ideally situated to become an important Civil War location because its riverport stood on a part of the White River that was navigable in all seasons, unlike Arkansas River sites often cut off by low water, and it was also the head of the Memphis and Little Rock Railroad, allowing people and supplies to arrive by steamboat and continue by train to Little Rock. Union troops occupied DeValls Bluff in late August 1863 during the campaign to capture Little Rock, and it became a major supply depot for the rest of the war. Although the heavily fortified town itself never faced a serious attack, the railroad line was often struck by Confederate raiders. On August 23, 1863, Maj. Gen. Frederick Steele wrote that White River could be depended upon for more than 4 feet of water to that point and made operations against Little Rock easy from such a base, and on August 20, 1863, Capt. Edward Redington of the 28th Wisconsin Infantry Regiment called it a splendid town site that, with its railroad connection and navigable river, would have become a city of 25,000 inhabitants in one of the Northern states.