Hot Spring County has long played an important role in Arkansas’s transportation heritage as a major corridor for river, land, and rail travel. The Ouachita River, the Southwest Trail (Military Road), Highway 67, Interstate 30, and the railroad, all illustrate that significance.

After the land that is now Arkansas became part of the United States with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, Americans trickled, then later streamed into the area. Cheap land attracted many to Arkansas. Most of the earliest pioneers who ventured into the area arrived by river. But after 1810, many new settlers chose to enter Arkansas via overland routes from the northeast, bypassing swampy eastern Arkansas. The primitive trail system now commonly called the Southwest Trail traversed Arkansas in generally a southwesterly direction, skirting the edge of the Ozark and Ouachita highlands. The route reached from Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, all the way to Texas and crossed Arkansas’s southeasterly-flowing rivers.

During the early 1800s thousands of people traveled this Southwest Trail (also known as Military Road). These individuals came from all walks of life and included pioneer settlers, legendary Texas figures such as Sam Houston, Stephen F. Austin, and Davy Crockett, as well as Native Americans on the Trail of Tears on their way to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). 

Points at which the road crossed rivers became well-known landmarks to travelers, such as Rockport. By the 1830s, travelers along the Military Road often used Rockport’s distinctive boulders as a foundation on which to cross the Ouachita River. However, Rockport is just one example of how a settlement grew up at a location where the early road crossed a river. Another is in adjacent Saline County, at a place aptly called Saline Crossing.

In 1815 William Lockhart and his family of North Carolina made their way to where the Southwest Trail crossed the Saline River and established Saline County’s first settlement there. The site became a significant transportation landmark, but it also became noteworthy in the history of Saline County. For example, it is believed that Saline County’s first religious sermon was preached at Lockhart’s home in 1817. And, one of the county’s earliest post offices opened there in 1831 with William Lockhart as postmaster. That same year, Lockhart was granted permission to build and operate a toll bridge across the Saline River by the Arkansas Territorial Legislature.

Although numerous other families settled in the vicinity, Saline Crossing began to decline after nearby Benton became the county seat in 1835. Saline Crossing eventually disappeared. Today, no tangible evidence of its early existence remains.