Louisiana Purchase State Park in eastern Arkansas preserves the initial survey point from which public lands in the Louisiana Purchase were laid out. Ordered in 1815 under President James Monroe, the survey established the Fifth Principal Meridian when lines run by Prospect K. Robbins and Joseph C. Brown met on October 27, 1815. From this swampy site, later survey work extended across most of Arkansas and into several northern plains and midwestern states. The park also protects a rare tract of forested wetland little changed since the surveyors' time. Rediscovered in 1921, the site later gained state and national recognition for both its surveying importance and its unusual natural landscape.