Napoleon was a river port and the county seat of Desha County, Arkansas, from 1838 to 1874. It was located at the confluence of the Arkansas and the Mississippi rivers. The town was badly damaged during the American Civil War and then finally abandoned after most of it had washed into the Mississippi. History Founding Napoleon was founded at the confluence of the Arkansas and Mississippi River, on the West bank of the Arkansas's mouth, by Fredrick Notrebe who named the town in honor of “his old commander”. The area was one of the most common thoroughfares that existed along the Mississippi but was sure to meet hardship due to the unwieldy Arkansas and Mississippi which would commonly flood and change course. The exact date of Napoleon's founding is not certain. A Post office was established in 1832. A primary school was founded on December 10, 1838. Bishop Joseph Rosati of St. Louis sent Father Peter Donnelly to establish a Catholic church in Arkansas where he purchased land and held the first mass there in May 1839. The leaders of Napoleon were ambitious, not only did they create a town with a large wharf, they lobbied to be the location of one of the Federal Marine Hospitals and aspired to a to build a railroad linking Napoleon to the Pacific Ocean. Despite such aspiration the town quick established a sour reputation for filth, bugs and crime. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Peter Vivian Daniel wrote to his daughter about his visit to Napoleon in 1851 calling it a “miserable place [that] consists of a few slightly build wood houses, hastily erected no doubt under some scheme of speculations, and which are tumbling down without ever having been finished…” In 1852, Bolivar County established Wellington, Mississippi, as its county seat, nearly opposite Napoleon, on the east bank of the Mississippi River. There would have been a natural rivalry between business and civic leaders in Desha County, Arkansas, and Bolivar County for river-related commerce at the confluence of the Arkansas and Mississippi rivers. From 1850 to 1860 the town had nearly doubled in population. Other nearby townships were recorded as using Napoleon's post office and the Marine Hospital had become the primary fixture of the town. While the population grew, floods levees were highly discussed but rarely constructed. Such levels were common work at other towns such as New Orleans and Baton Rouge