March 25-April 1, 1864. Steele'™s column having marched through Benton crossed the Saline River without difficulty and moved on to Rockport in Hot Spring County. Travelling on the Military Road with occasional skirmishes with Confederates, Steele reached Rockport on March 27. Using his pontoon bridge, he crossed the Ouachita River and continued on the Military Road through Hot Spring County to Clark County and Arkadelphia, having planned to meet Thayer's force from Fort Smith by April 1.

Adalbert Strauss, a native of Germany, established the Malvern Lumber Company in 1880. He purchased timberland, constructed a sawmill and planer mill and built housing for his employees. He named the new town for his oldest daughter Perla Marie Strauss. Though started as a timber town, clay deposits were in the area, and brickmaking also became a local industry. Acme Brick, started in Texas in 1891, built a plant in Perla in 1919 and purchased an older existing brickmaking concern in 1926. The coming of Acme Brick became the most important event in the town's history. With many African American workers in the industries, Perla also became the site of a Rosenwald School for the children of Black families in 1925-26.

Nearby Malvern, a railroad town founded by the Cairo and Fulton Railroad in 1873, is the next town on the Byway. A Cairo and Fulton railroad employee suggested the name "Malvern" for this railroad stop. The name came from Malvern Hills, a place in Virginia whose terrain reminded him of this stop in Arkansas. Malvern became the county seat in 1879. It too benefited from the timber and brickmaking industries and became the largest city in the county. Today it touts itself as the brick capital of the world and has celebrated the annual "Brickfest" since 1981. The festival is now held on the last full weekend in June. The Hot Spring County Museum is also in Malvern. Located in the Boyle House at 302 East Third St., this local history museum contains a variety of exhibits and is open from Wednesday to Friday from 12:30 to 4:30.

The Camden Expedition Scenic Byway runs through Perla and Malvern to the eastern bank of the Ouachita River at Rockport where the Union Army crossed using a pontoon bridge. Rockport derives its name from the boulders in the river and from being a port in the era when river travel was important, roads were poor or non-existent and rail travel was decades away. One of the early named places in Arkansas, Rockport served as the county seat of Hot Spring County from 1846 to 1879 and was a destination of Steele's force on its way to Arkadelphia and beyond. Today it is a mix of the old and the modern. Historic sites are near modern motels, fast food restaurants, convenience stores, strip malls and a Wal-Mart Super Center to serve the community and travelers on nearby Interstate 30.

The Byway continues southwest from Malvern on US 67 through Donaldson, a railroad town that did not exist at the time of the Civil War. Founded by the Cairo and Fulton Railroad in 1873, it is named for William Rhind Donaldson (1843-1917), a St. Louis lawyer, who in 1869 had married Elizabeth Larned Allen (1843-1909), the oldest daughter of Thomas Allen, the president of the Cairo and Fulton Railroad.

Located in southern Hot Spring County, Midway emerged along one of the roads associated with the Southwest Trail. It may have derived its name from being halfway between Little Rock in Pulaski County and Fulton, an early town on the Red River in Hempstead County on the way to Texas, or from being halfway between Rockport and Arkadelphia. Midway had a post office as early as 1850 but was bypassed by the Cairo and Fulton Railroad when it was built through the region in 1873. The importance of the community diminished over time, and it remained centered on agriculture. The citizens voted to incorporate in 2000. A recently installed historic marker stands in front of the Midway Town Hall and Community Center. It notes the early history of the town and its role in the Civil War and the Camden Expedition.

Social Hill was an early farming community near the junction of the Ouachita River and the Old Military Road. It is located in the hills seven miles southwest from where the Union Army crossed the Ouachita River on the Old Military Road. Many early roads in Arkansas stayed on ridge lines, and many early settlements started high on hills to avoid the mosquito-infested lowlands that produced malaria and other deadly fevers. Adam Blakely (1809-1860) settled in the area in the 1820s and built a dogtrot log house high on Social Hill in 1837 at about the same time that he acquired legal title to farmland along the Ouachita River by land patent. He could farm the rich river bottoms but reside in health and safety on the nearby highlands.

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Years later in 1935 Homer Martin Adkins (1890-1964) and his wife bought Blakely's old log house as a summer home. At the time, Adkins served as Arkansas collector of internal revenue under the Depression-era Roosevelt administration. Already deeply involved in state politics, Adkins, a Democrat, would later serve as the 32nd governor of Arkansas from 1941 to 1945. He and his wife also became interested in a nearby Methodist Church and aided in the rebuilding of the church. In gratitude the church took the name of the Adkins Memorial Methodist Church. The church is today a major landmark in the Social Hill community and has a sizeable cemetery behind it that includes the graves of some veterans of the Civil War. The church and cemetery are very near Interstate 30. Cars and trucks whizzing by on this busy Interstate are visible through the trees and bushes that border the church and cemetery. The Interstate and Highway 84 which comes up from the Ouachita River at Rockport are accessible from Social Hill. The Byway spur returns to Highway 67 via Midway Road.

After the spur, the next town on the road to Clark County and Arkadelphia at the time of the Civil War was Friendship. It was founded in the 1850s and took its name from the congenial relationships among the early settlers. Located some four miles from the confluence of the Caddo and Ouachita Rivers along the Clark County line, Friendship had another asset: salt deposits. With the men serving in the Confederate Army, the local women struggled to work the salt deposits near their town and to transport quantities of salt for their own use and for the support of regional industries. Salt was a valuable and much needed commodity that was in short supply in much of the South, and that shortage seriously hampered the efforts of Confederate industries. Before refrigeration, salt was important for the preservation of food and for use in the tanning of leather for shoes, harness, bridles and other leather products. Many of these items were produced in nearby Arkadelphia and required salt for tanning.

The Byway brings us to the next point of interest, Arkadelphia and Clark County.