In 1862, Federal gunboats shelled the town of Prentiss and its courthouse. The ruins, buried for 100 years by river sand, were exposed by a caving bank in 1954 and later caved into the river. A memorial was made of bricks from the Prentiss courthouse ruins, and the cannonball came from the same source. Cornerstones came from the Rosedale courthouse, whose foundations were undermined by seep water from the Mississippi River, and a new building replaced it in 1923.