Throughout the Civil War, the Confederate Army struggled with shortages of military stores. After Vicksburg fell to Union forces in 1863, ordnance supplies from Richmond were cut off, and the Trans-Mississippi Department of the Confederacy, which included Texas, established arsenals and ordnance stores at four sites in Arkansas. By the summer of 1863 Arkansas had become strategically precarious, so the operation formerly at Arkadelphia was moved to Marshall at the end of August 1863. Buildings were erected there for manufacturing small arms, along with shops for smiths and carpenters, a magazine, and a powder mill. The powder mill was in full operation sometime between March and August of 1864, and by the war's end in May 1865 the arsenal produced gunpowder and repaired small arms for the Confederate Army. After Confederate forces surrendered, the installation at Marshall was abandoned, and after Federal forces occupied the town and began dismantling the machinery, an explosion killed three soldiers and wounded two others.