"Tar Camp"/White Bluff was actually a fairly import stop on the Arkansas River between Little Rock and Pine Bluff. One of the reasons for this was that a road on the North side of the river led to Brownsville, Arkansas and was a short cut to get to that place without having to go all the way to Little Rock. During the War this became an important factor. According to Capt Ethan Pindall's Journal of the 8th Missouri Infantry, General Daniel Frost considered fortifing that location for the defence of the Arkansas River after the fall of Arkansas Post.

Frost's Brigade camped there for a period of two weeks in January 1863, before it was decided that Days Bluff north of Pine Bluff would be a better location for a new Fort (Fort Pleasent) and would be easier to defend because of the more broken terrain by creeks and Bayous south and east of Pine Bluff.

In the Arkansas Historical Quarterly is the tale of 3 young boys (16 and 17) lead by a Benjamin Riggs in 1864 capturing a steamboat headed to Pine Bluff, with Union Soldiers and supplies, near White Bluff. After disarming the Guards and taking the Horse of (I believe) Col Clayton Powell at Pine Bluff, they set fire to the boat and sunk it. It has been some time since I read the account, but the incident has been widely circulated in publications.