Near this site on Big Cypress stood a ferry point and the important town of Old Coffeeville, C. S. A., in the 1850s, with an academy, two dry goods stores, two groceries, a drug store, three doctors, Methodist and Presbyterian churches, a hotel, and a Masonic Lodge. During the Civil War, it lived up to its name by selling coffee when other towns had none. It also had a Confederate camp of instruction, one of three in Upshur County, established in response to Governor Edward Clark's June 8, 1861, call for such camps to be set up at the expense of local citizens, and it trained infantry and cavalry.