In January 1863, Confederate Fort Hindman stood atop a 25-foot-high bluff at the first high ground on the Arkansas River near the Mississippi, where its cannon could fire a mile up or down the river to protect the breadbasket of Arkansas and help disrupt vital Union supply lines. The Confederates hoped to control river traffic from this strategic position. Soon after the fort was finished, a massive Union army-navy force attacked. What the attackers did not demolish, the river washed away as the Arkansas River's changing course swallowed all traces of Fort Hindman, and today a shallow oxbow lake covers the site. In 1863 the shoreline was about 300 yards from this location, rifle pits began here and extended 700 yards to the west, the fort measured 100 yards on each side, three feet of oak reinforced with railroad iron protected the Dahlgren cannon, and walls 18 feet thick at the top rose out of an eight-foot-deep trench while pilings on the far shore forced attacking gunboats closer to the fort.