The Camp White Sulphur Springs Memorial Weekend will be held Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 13-14, at Camp White Sulphur Springs.
An annual living history and memorial service will be held at the camp located three miles southwest of Pine Bluff on the Sulphur Springs Road. The public is encouraged to visit, according to a news release.
The Sons of the Confederate Veterans will be dressed in period clothes and camped in civil war era tents. They cook their meals outdoors as soldiers did in the 1860’s. The civil war cannon will be fired periodically on Saturday.
A memorial service hosted by the United Daughters of the Confederacy (U.D.C.) and the S.C.V. will be held at 2 p.m. Sunday. The Ladies of the Order of the Confederate Rose will be in period dresses. The ceremony will be concluded with a 21 gun salute by the S.C.V., according to the release.
Camp White Sulphur Springs in Jefferson County was established and served as a recruiting and staging area for volunteers who came from Pine Bluff and surrounding areas after the Civil War started in April 1861.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
“Troops from Texas and Oklahoma were sent for training as well. These troops brought with them measles and smallpox. Attempts were made to isolate the infected soldiers and the Sulphur Springs Hotel, a female academy, and a Methodist church were all converted to hospitals. Many of the soldiers encamped at White Sulphur Springs were infected and eventually died before ever seeing a battlefield. The death rate was high and those who died were either buried in the White Sulphur Springs Camp or in the various encampments in the area,” according to the release.
The women of the David O. Dodd Chapter 212, UDC, began fund-raising efforts and a monument was erected Oct. 11, 1912, dedicated to those who died at Camp White Sulphur Springs and the surrounding area.
“The cemetery went relatively untouched until the mid 1980’s when combined efforts of the David O. Dodd Chapter 212, U.D.C. and the Major General Patrick R. Cleburne Camp 1433, Sons of Confederate Veterans, began a project to restore the cemetery and identify those buried there. In 1994 the Sons of the Confederate Veterans identified the dead and placed headstones on the graves. Today,” the two societies work in conjunction to preserve the cemetery,” according to the release.
On Jan. 19, 2005, the cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.