James O. and Mary Snelson Nicholson, early pioneers, about 1900. J. W. Nicholson/Boone County Library Collection (S-87-38-7)

Ed Pendley house under construction, near Hill Top, 1913. Steve Erwin Collection (S-97-144-50)

In the 1830s and 1840s, homesteaders looking for free land came by river and military road to the area then known as Carroll County. They built log cabins, hunted and farmed, established post offices, and started businesses such as general stores and a bear-grease rendering plant (for lamp oil).

Senator James Townsend “Town” Hopper, sponsor of legislation to create Boone County, early 1900s. Jessalee Nash/Boone County Library Collection (S-87-127-69)

After the strife of the Civil War, Union and Confederate forces fought once again, but this time for positions of leadership.  James Townsend Hopper, a former Union soldier, was elected to the state Senate. There he sponsored legislation to create a new county, since local government was controlled by ex-Confederates. In April 1869, with the help of a Republican legislature, land from the east side of Carroll County was taken and Boone County was born.

Looking southwest at Harrison, with the courthouse in the center, about 1910. Mrs. F. L. Coffman/Boone County Library Collection (S-87-128-23)

When Boone County was created in 1869, Harrison became the county seat. Originally called Crooked Creek, the name was changed when Captain Henry W. Fick asked civil engineer M. LaRue Harrison, both former Union soldiers, to survey the town. Fick was Harrison’s postmaster and developed many business interests in the pro-Union, pro-Republican town.

A few years later folks petitioned to move the county seat to Bellefonte, a long-established community that had supported the Confederacy. Worried about losing business in Harrison, Fick found like-minded former Confederates to help him campaign. It was a close vote, but the seat stayed in Harrison. Residents’ fears of violence from the losing side came to nothing.

Courthouse construction crew, Harrison, about 1907. The previous courthouse burned down in 1906. Robert Flippo/Boone County Library Collection (S-87-128-50)

For many years the county seat of Harrison looked like the Old West with dirt streets, roaming livestock, and the dangerous “Dead Man’s Corner,” scene of many a fight and shooting.

Harrison grew dramatically in population with the coming of the railroad in 1901. More people meant more businesses, homes, and infrastructure—things like sewers, roads, and utilities.

The town’s first street improvement district was created in 1924. Streets in the business district were paved and a sewer system was built. But by 1936 only 10 percent of the town’s streets were surfaced. Believing Harrison couldn’t continue to grow without improvement, downtown merchant Layton Coffman successfully led a campaign to pave streets citywide.

Digging for sewer mains, Harrison, October 1925. W. Carl Smith, photographer. Ada Lee Shook Collection (S-98-85-1646)

Bellefonte Spring, about 1912. Bellefonte (“beautiful fountain”) was one of many communities founded around a spring. Eula Albright/Boone County Library Collection (S-87-127-58)

Springs and creeks were important to settlers. Creeks provided energy for grist mills and cotton gins. Springs offered medicinal and business opportunities. In the 1880s, Eureka Springs in nearby Carroll County became a prosperous health resort as people flocked to “take the waters” and cure their ailments.

Boone County had three resorts. The most popular was in the town of Elixir Springs, where the spring’s water was said to cure rheumatism and blood diseases. About 1,000 people lived and worked in the town in the early 1880s. But the resort and the town’s life were short lived. By 1892 it and another resort at Tom Thumb Springs were long gone.

One of the Valley (or Double) Springs, about 1925. Eula Albright/Boone County Library Collection (S-87-129-2)

Milum Spring, south of Harrison, early 1900s. Roger V. Logan Jr./Boone County Library Collection (S-87-129-59)

In April 1857, under the leadership of Captain Alexander Fancher, a large company of County residents and others formed a caravan at Milum Spring and headed for new opportunities in California.

In September they stopped at Mountain Meadows, a valley in the Utah Territory.  There they were attacked by Mormons and Native Americans.  They battled several days, after which the survivors where allowed to leave, only to be brutally attacked one more time.  Seventeen children deemed too young to tell the tale were allowed to live.

The reasons for this terrible massacre and the actions taken by the various parties is still hotly debated by historians, descendents, and church leaders.  After many years of denial, a small monument to the victims now stands in the valley.

James D. Dunlap home, early to mid-1900s. Some survivors of the Mountain Meadows massacre were raised in this home, built about 1854. Roger V. Logan Jr./Boone County Library Collection (S-87-60-8)

Richard R. and Nancy A. Hopper Capps, near Hopewell, early 1900s. Capps first served in Co. H, 2nd Regiment Missouri Light Artillery (a Union force). Roger V. Logan, Jr./Boone County Library Collection (S-87-129-44)

Colonel Eli Dodson, early 1900s. He served in the 14th Arkansas Infantry Confederate (organized in Boone County) and later as county judge. Martha Sisco/Boone County Library Collection (S-87-129-57)

In the hills of Northern Arkansas, where slavery wasn’t as common as it was in the Delta, most folks weren’t interested in leaving the Union. After much legislative debate and voting, Arkansas seceded in May 1861. County residents were forced to choose sides—Union or Confederate.

Most of the county’s men formed companies and went off to fight. Some saw action at the Battles of Pea Ridge and Prairie Grove. Those left behind faced hardships, too. Armies destroyed a gunpowder mill on Crooked Creek and a niter works (explosives) at Dubuque and they took livestock, food, and grain. Violent bushwhackers took what was left and often burned homes when they weren’t satisfied.

Reverend W.R. “Buck” Burnett family, Hill Top, 1908. Burnett was a Freewill Baptist minister who preached without pay. His daughter-in-law, who was ashamed of this house with its pigs in the yard, hid this photo for many years. Steve Erwin Collection (S-97-144-132)

Charles W. Czech home on South Pine Street, Harrison, early 1900s. Czech owned the Jersey Roller Mill which was known for its quality flours and meals (coarse-ground grains). Boone County Library Collection (S-87-128-28)

The first settlers built hand-hewn log cabins and lived a simple, hard life. As communities and towns grew, roads and a railroad were built. New architectural styles and fancy construction materials made their way into the county, allowing prosperous businessmen to build large, showy homes.

By the early 1900s many in the African American community in Harrison owned their own homes. They were often located in the less desirable parts of the town, although a few families lived in white neighborhoods.

Threshing on the Vol Denton farm, Alpena, June 30, 1911. As a stream-driven thresher moved its way through the fields, the top rails of a split-rail fence were often fed as fuel into the firebox; the rails were later replaced. Steve Erwin Collection (S-97-144-49)

Boone County’s prairies and cleared lands offered farmers a good place to plant crops and feed their livestock. An 1883 newspaper article declared that county soil was “well adapted to the production of corn, wheat, cotton, tobacco, grass, sorghum, oats, barley, etc., etc.”

Early settlers grew vegetables and grains to feed themselves.  It was only later that crops were grown for market. In 1905 the Lead Hill area shipped out about 5,000 bales of cotton. In 1913 “Black Ben Davis” apples were shipped from the Hickory Grove farm near Harrison.

E. G. Whitaker General Store, Alpena, circa 1909. Nancy Barron/Boone County Library Collection (S-87-128-44)

Bank of Harrison, Harrison, circa 1895. Garvin Fitton/Boone County Library Collection (S-87-127-37)

Soon after settlers first arrived in the county, businesses like general stores began to spring up. By 1885 Harrison had a number of stores that sold food, medicine, clothing, furniture, saddles, and hardware. Specialized shops included a bakery, ice cream and candy makers, and a man who made tinware. Residents from neighboring communities flocked to town on Saturdays to shop and socialize.

The coming of the railroad in 1901 meant that more goods were brought into the county and farm products and natural resources like lumber and ores were sent to market. In the 1910s fresh eggs were shipped to Memphis in railroad cars cooled with ice.

Sam Paul’s blacksmith shop, Gaither, circa 1902. Dr. Troy Coffman/Boone County Library Collection (S-87-128-21)

Cotton gin, Everton, circa 1900. Gladys McKay/Boone County Library Collection (S-87-127-55)

By 1847 four legal, tax-paying distilleries operated in Carroll County. Many more illegal stills were likely hidden in the hills by folks who refused to pay the alcohol tax. The manufacture of moonshine grew in the 1890s when the government raised alcohol taxes, and from 1915 to 1935 during Prohibition, when alcohol was severely limited nationwide.

After World War II, returning veterans found their county overrun with bootleggers. They re-sold alcohol illegally at a premium to folks who lived in a “dry” county like Boone which didn’t allow alcohol sales. Determined to put an end to the lawbreakers, one group pushed for the legalization of alcohol sales while another tried to rid local government of do-nothing officials.

In the end, it took a double murder on the Harrison square in 1946 before the town’s sheriff and city administration finally dealt with the lawlessness.

Legal still #51, near Hurricane Cave, circa 1900. Red Coffman/Boone County Library Collection (S-87-128-86)

Shady Grove School, October 10, 1913. Steve Erwin Collection (S-97-144-12)

Early county schools were one-room log buildings, with one teacher for all grades.  Rural students tended to complete fewer grades and had shorter terms than students in town.  This was due in part to community funding problems and the students’ need to work at home and on the farm.

In the 1870s academies were established in Bellefonte, Rally Hill, and Valley Springs.  The Harrison College and Normal Institute (a training school for teachers) was later established for females.  These schools provided a comprehensive education for those who could afford the fees.  Big towns like Harrison built impressive public schools.

During the 20th century consolidation reduced the number of school districts from 99 to six.  By 1935 every student had access to a high school education.

St. Louis and North Arkansas Railroad train on Long Creek trestle, Alpena, April 15, 1901. Carroll County Heritage Center Collection (S-84-211-94)

Alpena depot, 1902. Carroll County Heritage Center Collection (S-85-27-29)

In 1883 a railway line was built into Carroll County, spurring economic growth and tourism. Boone County wanted an extension of the line, but the expense and difficulty of building in the mountains kept financial backers away.

For 20 years folks made do with a daily stagecoach run between Eureka Springs and Harrison. Eventually backers were found and residents gave land and cash to smooth the way. In March 1901 the St. Louis and North Arkansas Railroad steamed into Harrison where it was greeted with band music and speeches. Later the line pushed eastward into the county and became the Missouri and North Arkansas Railroad.

The railroad brought goods and people into the county and sent produce, livestock, and natural resources like timber and mineral ores all over the nation.

Missouri and North Arkansas Railroad shops, looking northwest, Harrison, about 1915. Mrs. F. L. Coffman/Boone County Library Collection (S-87-129-47)

The Missouri and North Arkansas Railroad had a troubled existence. By 1921 financial problems led to a major wage cut. Union workers went on strike and the line closed down, causing hardship for many families and businesses. Although a group of investors bought the railroad and resumed operations, the workers remained on strike.

Tensions increased in Harrison as strike-breakers crossed the picket line and vandalism occurred. On January 14, 1923, hundreds of armed men arrived by train and car. They searched homes for union literature and firearms, threatened strikers, and burned the Union Hall. The violence grew. Before it was over one man was hanged from a railroad bridge. Fearing for their lives, strikers and their families fled. The union was busted.

Another strike in 1946 effectively ended the railroad line.

Vannie, a Harrison cook, about 1900. Garvin Fitton/Boone County Library Collection (S-87-38-2)

In 1900 just over 100 African Americans lived in Harrison, which had a total population of more than 1,500. Many had been in the area for a long time and had established churches, a school, and businesses. A division existed along race lines but, for the most part, life was peaceful. Things changed as racial intolerance spread across the country and “justice” increasingly meant the use of violence.

Tensions increased in Harrison when a number of homeless, unemployed African-American railroad laborers came to town. In 1905 a black man was jailed for breaking into a home. Mob violence erupted and blacks were beaten and their homes burned. Many fled for their lives, never to return. Three years later a youth was accused of robbery and rape. Once again the black community feared mob violence and fled. By 1910 “Aunt Vine” Smith was the only African American left in Harrison.

The 2010 census listed a few dozen blacks in Boone County, home to the Arkansas faction of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

Gloria Mines, Zinc, about 1916. Fay Hodge/Harrison Daily Times [published 11-14-1986] (S-88-36-3)

Town names such as Lead Hill and Zinc attest to the importance of mining in Boone County. In the1850s small mines near Dubuque and Lead Hill used crude smelters to extract lead from rock.

Mining began in earnest in the 1870s and it was hard work. Hand tools were used to dig pits in the ground or shafts into the sides of mountain. Tons of ore-bearing rock were processed on site or sent to distant smelters. In 1886, 33 wagon-loads of ore (34,320 pounds) were shipped from the Bonanza Mine near Lead Hill down the White River to Batesville, and then on to St. Louis by rail.

A zinc “rush” began around 1899. Zinc was used as a pigment in paints, for battery electrodes, and for galvanizing iron. During World War I zinc prices soared only to fall at war’s end. Many mines were abandoned and towns shrank or disappeared.

Cutting staves, Richland Creek, early 1900s. Earl Henry/Boone County Library Collection (S-87-128-34)

Early settlers found large stands of oak, hickory, cedar, walnut, cherry, and pine.  Railroads headed for Northwest Arkansas in the 1880s in part to take advantage of its vast timber reserves.  Logging became a major industry, creating jobs and boom towns along the line.

Once saws and axes felled the giant trees, teams of mules hauled the logs to sawmills and factories where the timber was turned into barrel staves, railroad ties, lumber, fence posts, and tool handles.  When the trees were gone in one area, operations moved to the next.  New settlers farmed the cleared land.

A circa-1883 forestry report predicted a 300-year supply of timber.  By the 1920s the forests were largely gone.  The timber boom was over.

Methodist Sunday School group enjoying dinner on the ground, Wilson Spring, early 1900s. Carroll County Heritage Center Collection (S-84-211-71)

People came together in a variety of ways.  Picnics on the Fourth of July were common, as were “dinners on the ground,” often organized by churches.  On Decoration Day families tidied up cemeteries and placed flowers on graves.  Log-raisings to build barns and homes were held when a new family moved into the neighborhood.  The Boone County fair started in 1887 and offered livestock contests, mule racing, and arts and crafts exhibitions.

Traveling preachers held meetings and sometimes debated one another.  Fiddle music and dancing were popular but some churches frowned on this pastime. “Play parties” were a way to get around this.  Rather than use instruments to make music, songs were sung and participants did a type of square dance.

In all of these activities, folks had a chance to get together to strengthen community and social bonds and meet eligible partners.

Independence Day celebration, Hill Top, 1910s. The women may be students of the Hill Top Mission School. Steve Erwin Collection (S-97-144-86)

For many decades Independence Day was a time for communities to come together and have a good time.

The town of Harrison was incorporated in March 1876.  In celebration, city fathers planned a grand event for the Fourth of July which, that year, fell on the Centennial of the nation’s founding.  Over 3,000 folks listened to bands, picnicked, heard readings of the Declaration of Independence and other patriotic speeches, and watched fireworks.

A joust was held at the race track.  Men riding horses and holding pointed sticks raced towards posts that held rings suspended by wire.  The winner was the first to spear the ring with his stick.  First prize was $20.

Riverside baptism at Omaha, 1909. Brother Voiles, minister. Carroll County Heritage Center Collection (S-84-211-125)

Early settlers brought their religion with them, often worshipping in their homes.  One of the first churches was Crooked Creek Primitive Baptist Church, founded in 1834.  Churches formed and split frequently as communities changed or members differed on church teachings.

Traveling preachers and circuit riders (pastors on horseback who visited the several churches in their care every few weeks) held services where they could—in homes, fields, and even the county courthouse.  A revival meeting at Harrison led to several baptisms and the 1890 formation of the First Baptist Church.

A mission school was founded in Hill Top.  In Harrison the Methodists built a college, only to have it burn down before school started.

William J. Meyers, early 1900s. Robert Raley/Boone County Library Collection (S-87-38-1)

Henry Starr, Harrison, February 1921. Robert Raley/Boone County Library Collection (S-87-38-31)

In February 1921 notorious outlaw Henry Starr was one of several men who tried to rob the Peoples National Bank on Harrison’s square.  Before the robbery they cut telephone lines and surveyed the bank and square.

The bank’s former president, William J. Meyers, happened to be in the bank that day.  Once the cashier opened the safe the thieves began grabbing money.  A distraction caused by an uncooperative patron turned their attention away from the safe, allowing Meyers a chance to grab the .38 caliber Winchester rifle stored in the vault.  He shot and wounded Starr.  Starr told his men to flee; eventually they were caught and tried.  Starr died a few days after the robbery.

James O. and Mary Snelson Nicholson, early pioneers, about 1900. J. W. Nicholson/Boone County Library Collection (S-87-38-7)

In the 1830s and 1840s, homesteaders looking for free land came by river and military road to the area then known as Carroll County.  They built log cabins, hunted and farmed, established post offices, and started businesses such as general stores and a bear-grease rendering plant (for lamp oil).

Senator James Townsend “Town” Hopper, sponsor of legislation to create Boone County, early 1900s. Jessalee Nash/Boone County Library Collection (S-87-127-69)

After the strife of the Civil War, Union and Confederate forces fought once again, but this time for positions of leadership.  James Townsend Hopper, a former Union soldier, was elected to the state Senate.  There he sponsored legislation to create a new county, since local government was controlled by ex-Confederates.  In April 1869, with the help of a Republican legislature, land from the east side of Carroll County was taken and Boone County was born.

Ed Pendley house under construction, near Hill Top, 1913. Steve Erwin Collection (S-97-144-50)

Looking southwest at Harrison, with the courthouse in the center, about 1910. Mrs. F. L. Coffman/Boone County Library Collection (S-87-128-23)

When Boone County was created in 1869, Harrison became the county seat. Originally called Crooked Creek, the name was changed when Captain Henry W. Fick asked civil engineer M. LaRue Harrison, both former Union soldiers, to survey the town. Fick was Harrison’s postmaster and developed many business interests in the pro-Union, pro-Republican town.

A few years later folks petitioned to move the county seat to Bellefonte, a long-established community that had supported the Confederacy. Worried about losing business in Harrison, Fick found like-minded former Confederates to help him campaign. It was a close vote, but the seat stayed in Harrison. Residents’ fears of violence from the losing side came to nothing.

Courthouse construction crew, Harrison, about 1907. The previous courthouse burned down in 1906. Robert Flippo/Boone County Library Collection (S-87-128-50)

For many years the county seat of Harrison looked like the Old West with dirt streets, roaming livestock, and the dangerous “Dead Man’s Corner,” scene of many a fight and shooting.

Harrison grew dramatically in population with the coming of the railroad in 1901. More people meant more businesses, homes, and infrastructure—things like sewers, roads, and utilities.

The town’s first street improvement district was created in 1924. Streets in the business district were paved and a sewer system was built. But by 1936 only 10 percent of the town’s streets were surfaced. Believing Harrison couldn’t continue to grow without improvement, downtown merchant Layton Coffman successfully led a campaign to pave streets citywide.

Digging for sewer mains, Harrison, October 1925. W. Carl Smith, photographer. Ada Lee Shook Collection (S-98-85-1646)

Bellefonte Spring, about 1912. Bellefonte (“beautiful fountain”) was one of many communities founded around a spring. Eula Albright/Boone County Library Collection (S-87-127-58)

Springs and creeks were important to settlers. Creeks provided energy for grist mills and cotton gins. Springs offered medicinal and business opportunities. In the 1880s, Eureka Springs in nearby Carroll County became a prosperous health resort as people flocked to “take the waters” and cure their ailments.

Boone County had three resorts. The most popular was in the town of Elixir Springs, where the spring’s water was said to cure rheumatism and blood diseases. About 1,000 people lived and worked in the town in the early 1880s. But the resort and the town’s life were short lived. By 1892 it and another resort at Tom Thumb Springs were long gone.

One of the Valley (or Double) Springs, about 1925. Eula Albright/Boone County Library Collection (S-87-129-2)

Milum Spring, south of Harrison, early 1900s. Roger V. Logan Jr./Boone County Library Collection (S-87-129-59)

In April 1857, under the leadership of Captain Alexander Fancher, a large company of County residents and others formed a caravan at Milum Spring and headed for new opportunities in California.

In September they stopped at Mountain Meadows, a valley in the Utah Territory.  There they were attacked by Mormons and Native Americans.  They battled several days, after which the survivors where allowed to leave, only to be brutally attacked one more time.  Seventeen children deemed too young to tell the tale were allowed to live.

The reasons for this terrible massacre and the actions taken by the various parties is still hotly debated by historians, descendents, and church leaders.  After many years of denial, a small monument to the victims now stands in the valley.

James D. Dunlap home, early to mid-1900s. Some survivors of the Mountain Meadows massacre were raised in this home, built about 1854. Roger V. Logan Jr./Boone County Library Collection (S-87-60-8)

Richard R. and Nancy A. Hopper Capps, near Hopewell, early 1900s. Capps first served in Co. H, 2nd Regiment Missouri Light Artillery (a Union force). Roger V. Logan, Jr./Boone County Library Collection (S-87-129-44)

In the hills of Northern Arkansas, where slavery wasn’t as common as it was in the Delta, most folks weren’t interested in leaving the Union. After much legislative debate and voting, Arkansas seceded in May 1861. County residents were forced to choose sides—Union or Confederate.

Most of the county’s men formed companies and went off to fight. Some saw action at the Battles of Pea Ridge and Prairie Grove. Those left behind faced hardships, too. Armies destroyed a gunpowder mill on Crooked Creek and a niter works (explosives) at Dubuque and they took livestock, food, and grain. Violent bushwhackers took what was left and often burned homes when they weren’t satisfied.

Colonel Eli Dodson, early 1900s. He served in the 14th Arkansas Infantry Confederate (organized in Boone County) and later as county judge. Martha Sisco/Boone County Library Collection (S-87-129-57)

Reverend W.R. “Buck” Burnett family, Hill Top, 1908. Burnett was a Freewill Baptist minister who preached without pay. His daughter-in-law, who was ashamed of this house with its pigs in the yard, hid this photo for many years. Steve Erwin Collection (S-97-144-132)

The first settlers built hand-hewn log cabins and lived a simple, hard life. As communities and towns grew, roads and a railroad were built. New architectural styles and fancy construction materials made their way into the county, allowing prosperous businessmen to build large, showy homes.

By the early 1900s many in the African American community in Harrison owned their own homes. They were often located in the less desirable parts of the town, although a few families lived in white neighborhoods.

Charles W. Czech home on South Pine Street, Harrison, early 1900s. Czech owned the Jersey Roller Mill which was known for its quality flours and meals (coarse-ground grains). Boone County Library Collection (S-87-128-28)

Boone County’s prairies and cleared lands offered farmers a good place to plant crops and feed their livestock. An 1883 newspaper article declared that county soil was “well adapted to the production of corn, wheat, cotton, tobacco, grass, sorghum, oats, barley, etc., etc.”

Early settlers grew vegetables and grains to feed themselves.  It was only later that crops were grown for market. In 1905 the Lead Hill area shipped out about 5,000 bales of cotton. In 1913 “Black Ben Davis” apples were shipped from the Hickory Grove farm near Harrison.

Threshing on the Vol Denton farm, Alpena, June 30, 1911. As a stream-driven thresher moved its way through the fields, the top rails of a split-rail fence were often fed as fuel into the firebox; the rails were later replaced. Steve Erwin Collection (S-97-144-49)

E. G. Whitaker General Store, Alpena, about 1909. Nancy Barron/Boone County Library Collection (S-87-128-44)

Soon after settlers first arrived in the county, businesses like general stores began to spring up. By 1885 Harrison had a number of stores that sold food, medicine, clothing, furniture, saddles, and hardware. Specialized shops included a bakery, ice cream and candy makers, and a man who made tinware. Residents from neighboring communities flocked to town on Saturdays to shop and socialize.

The coming of the railroad in 1901 meant that more goods were brought into the county and farm products and natural resources like lumber and ores were sent to market. In the 1910s fresh eggs were shipped to Memphis in railroad cars cooled with ice.

Bank of Harrison, Harrison, about 1895. Garvin Fitton/Boone County Library Collection (S-87-127-37)

Cotton gin, Everton, about 1900. Gladys McKay/Boone County Library Collection (S-87-127-55)

Cotton gin, Everton, about 1900. Gladys McKay/Boone County Library Collection (S-87-127-55)

By 1847 four legal, tax-paying distilleries operated in Carroll County. Many more illegal stills were likely hidden in the hills by folks who refused to pay the alcohol tax. The manufacture of moonshine grew in the 1890s when the government raised alcohol taxes, and from 1915 to 1935 during Prohibition, when alcohol was severely limited nationwide.

After World War II, returning veterans found their county overrun with bootleggers. They re-sold alcohol illegally at a premium to folks who lived in a “dry” county like Boone which didn’t allow alcohol sales. Determined to put an end to the lawbreakers, one group pushed for the legalization of alcohol sales while another tried to rid local government of do-nothing officials.

In the end, it took a double murder on the Harrison square in 1946 before the town’s sheriff and city administration finally dealt with the lawlessness.

Legal still #51, near Hurricane Cave, circa 1900. Red Coffman/Boone County Library Collection (S-87-128-86)

Shady Grove School, October 10, 1913. Steve Erwin Collection (S-97-144-12)

Early county schools were one-room log buildings, with one teacher for all grades.  Rural students tended to complete fewer grades and had shorter terms than students in town.  This was due in part to community funding problems and the students’ need to work at home and on the farm.

In the 1870s academies were established in Bellefonte, Rally Hill, and Valley Springs.  The Harrison College and Normal Institute (a training school for teachers) was later established for females.  These schools provided a comprehensive education for those who could afford the fees.  Big towns like Harrison built impressive public schools.

During the 20th century consolidation reduced the number of school districts from 99 to six.  By 1935 every student had access to a high school education.

St. Louis and North Arkansas Railroad train on Long Creek trestle, Alpena, April 15, 1901. Carroll County Heritage Center Collection (S-84-211-94)

In 1883 a railway line was built into Carroll County, spurring economic growth and tourism. Boone County wanted an extension of the line, but the expense and difficulty of building in the mountains kept financial backers away.

Alpena depot, 1902. Carroll County Heritage Center Collection (S-85-27-29)

For 20 years folks made do with a daily stagecoach run between Eureka Springs and Harrison. Eventually backers were found and residents gave land and cash to smooth the way. In March 1901 the St. Louis and North Arkansas Railroad steamed into Harrison where it was greeted with band music and speeches. Later the line pushed eastward into the county and became the Missouri and North Arkansas Railroad.

The railroad brought goods and people into the county and sent produce, livestock, and natural resources like timber and mineral ores all over the nation.

Missouri and North Arkansas Railroad shops, looking northwest, Harrison, about 1915. Mrs. F. L. Coffman/Boone County Library Collection (S-87-129-47)

The Missouri and North Arkansas Railroad had a troubled existence. By 1921 financial problems led to a major wage cut. Union workers went on strike and the line closed down, causing hardship for many families and businesses. Although a group of investors bought the railroad and resumed operations, the workers remained on strike.

Tensions increased in Harrison as strike-breakers crossed the picket line and vandalism occurred. On January 14, 1923, hundreds of armed men arrived by train and car. They searched homes for union literature and firearms, threatened strikers, and burned the Union Hall. The violence grew. Before it was over one man was hanged from a railroad bridge. Fearing for their lives, strikers and their families fled. The union was busted.

Another strike in 1946 effectively ended the railroad line.

Vannie, a Harrison cook, about 1900. Garvin Fitton/Boone County Library Collection (S-87-38-2)

In 1900 just over 100 African Americans lived in Harrison, which had a total population of more than 1,500. Many had been in the area for a long time and had established churches, a school, and businesses. A division existed along race lines but, for the most part, life was peaceful. Things changed as racial intolerance spread across the country and “justice” increasingly meant the use of violence.

Tensions increased in Harrison when a number of homeless, unemployed African-American railroad laborers came to town. In 1905 a black man was jailed for breaking into a home. Mob violence erupted and blacks were beaten and their homes burned. Many fled for their lives, never to return. Three years later a youth was accused of robbery and rape. Once again the black community feared mob violence and fled. By 1910 “Aunt Vine” Smith was the only African American left in Harrison.

The 2010 census listed a few dozen blacks in Boone County, home to the Arkansas faction of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

Gloria Mines, Zinc, about 1916. Fay Hodge/Harrison Daily Times [published 11-14-1986] (S-88-36-3)

Town names such as Lead Hill and Zinc attest to the importance of mining in Boone County. In the1850s small mines near Dubuque and Lead Hill used crude smelters to extract lead from rock.

Mining began in earnest in the 1870s and it was hard work. Hand tools were used to dig pits in the ground or shafts into the sides of mountain. Tons of ore-bearing rock were processed on site or sent to distant smelters. In 1886, 33 wagon-loads of ore (34,320 pounds) were shipped from the Bonanza Mine near Lead Hill down the White River to Batesville, and then on to St. Louis by rail.

A zinc “rush” began around 1899. Zinc was used as a pigment in paints, for battery electrodes, and for galvanizing iron. During World War I zinc prices soared only to fall at war’s end. Many mines were abandoned and towns shrank or disappeared.

Cutting staves, Richland Creek, early 1900s. Earl Henry/Boone County Library Collection (S-87-128-34)

Early settlers found large stands of oak, hickory, cedar, walnut, cherry, and pine.  Railroads headed for Northwest Arkansas in the 1880s in part to take advantage of its vast timber reserves.  Logging became a major industry, creating jobs and boom towns along the line.

Once saws and axes felled the giant trees, teams of mules hauled the logs to sawmills and factories where the timber was turned into barrel staves, railroad ties, lumber, fence posts, and tool handles.  When the trees were gone in one area, operations moved to the next.  New settlers farmed the cleared land.

A circa-1883 forestry report predicted a 300-year supply of timber.  By the 1920s the forests were largely gone.  The timber boom was over.

Methodist Sunday School group enjoying dinner on the ground, Wilson Spring, early 1900s. Carroll County Heritage Center Collection (S-84-211-71)

People came together in a variety of ways.  Picnics on the Fourth of July were common, as were “dinners on the ground,” often organized by churches.  On Decoration Day families tidied up cemeteries and placed flowers on graves.  Log-raisings to build barns and homes were held when a new family moved into the neighborhood.  The Boone County fair started in 1887 and offered livestock contests, mule racing, and arts and crafts exhibitions.

Traveling preachers held meetings and sometimes debated one another.  Fiddle music and dancing were popular but some churches frowned on this pastime. “Play parties” were a way to get around this.  Rather than use instruments to make music, songs were sung and participants did a type of square dance.

In all of these activities, folks had a chance to get together to strengthen community and social bonds and meet eligible partners.

Independence Day celebration, Hill Top, 1910s. The women may be students of the Hill Top Mission School. Steve Erwin Collection (S-97-144-86)

For many decades Independence Day was a time for communities to come together and have a good time.

The town of Harrison was incorporated in March 1876.  In celebration, city fathers planned a grand event for the Fourth of July which, that year, fell on the Centennial of the nation’s founding.  Over 3,000 folks listened to bands, picnicked, heard readings of the Declaration of Independence and other patriotic speeches, and watched fireworks.

A joust was held at the race track.  Men riding horses and holding pointed sticks raced towards posts that held rings suspended by wire.  The winner was the first to spear the ring with his stick.  First prize was $20.

Riverside baptism at Omaha, 1909. Brother Voiles, minister. Carroll County Heritage Center Collection (S-84-211-125)

Early settlers brought their religion with them, often worshipping in their homes.  One of the first churches was Crooked Creek Primitive Baptist Church, founded in 1834.  Churches formed and split frequently as communities changed or members differed on church teachings.

Traveling preachers and circuit riders (pastors on horseback who visited the several churches in their care every few weeks) held services where they could—in homes, fields, and even the county courthouse.  A revival meeting at Harrison led to several baptisms and the 1890 formation of the First Baptist Church.

A mission school was founded in Hill Top.  In Harrison the Methodists built a college, only to have it burn down before school started.

William J. Meyers, early 1900s. Robert Raley/Boone County Library Collection (S-87-38-1)

In February 1921 notorious outlaw Henry Starr was one of several men who tried to rob the Peoples National Bank on Harrison’s square.  Before the robbery they cut telephone lines and surveyed the bank and square.

The bank’s former president, William J. Meyers, happened to be in the bank that day.  Once the cashier opened the safe the thieves began grabbing money.  A distraction caused by an uncooperative patron turned their attention away from the safe, allowing Meyers a chance to grab the .38 caliber Winchester rifle stored in the vault.  He shot and wounded Starr.  Starr told his men to flee; eventually they were caught and tried.  Starr died a few days after the robbery.

Henry Starr, Harrison, February 1921. Robert Raley/Boone County Library Collection (S-87-38-31)

Poultry processing plant, Berryville or Green Forest, 1960s-1970s. Carroll County Heritage Center Collection (S-86-211-46)

The railroad was a driving force in determining whether a town prospered or faded. When Alpena Pass was created along the Missouri & North Arkansas Railroad in 1900, Carrollton merchants moved their businesses and buildings to the new town. The railroad allowed markets to grow. Farmers grew fruit and vegetables to take advantage of the many canneries springing up, while sawmill operators turned trees into such materials as lumber, railroad ties, and barrel staves. Eureka Springs faded as medical practices evolved and the railroad moved its jobs to Boone County.

Carroll County wasn’t wealthy in the early part of the 20th century, so its largely rural, self-sustaining residents were better prepared to weather the economic woes of the Great Depression. Federally sponsored New Deal projects helped employ citizens in the 1930s. Workers built a gymnasium for Berryville, a water tower for Green Forest, an elementary school for Osage, and the Lake Leatherwood Park complex for Eureka. The Rural Electrification Act of 1936 provided federal loans to install electrical distribution systems. In 1938 Carroll Electric Cooperative of Berryville began constructing power lines, bringing power to many. Today their lines stretch across Northwest Arkansas and Southeast Missouri.

During World War II residents left to serve in the armed forces or work in war-related industries. But several factors led to later growth in population and economic opportunities. Large-scale chicken and turkey farming began in the 1950s when Berryville businessmen formed Carroll County Food Products. After Tyson Foods purchased the plant in the early 1970s, the county saw an influx of Latino residents. The construction of Table Rock and Beaver Lakes to the north and west brought tourism and encouraged the growth of family-style attractions such as Dinosaur World and the Great Passion Play. Eureka rebounded as a tourist destination, especially after incoming artists and others reopened long-shuttered downtown shops in the 1970s.

“The tomato industry of Carroll county ranks along with that of dairying, cattle and poultry. …The plants come into bearing about the middle of July and bear up to the middle of October, giving employment on the farm and at the canning plants at a time when most of the farm work is out of the way.”
Berryville Arkansas promotional booklet, mid-late 1930s

Beaver Dam, May 2017.

Today there are nearly 28,000 residents, with Berryville, Eureka Springs, and Green Forest as the county’s largest towns. Folks in Berryville and Eureka are often seen as different from one another, by outsiders and by themselves. Eurekans have a higher per-capita income than folks in Berryville, lean liberal in their politics, and look to tourism and the arts for their economy and identity. Industry is the major economic force in Berryville, politics are more conservative, and the population is twice the size of its western neighbor. With its poultry-processing plants, Tyson Foods is the largest employer in Berryville and Green Forest. Both towns have sizable, foreign-born populations.

The Carroll County Collaborative is a nonpolitical group made up of governmental, private, public, and nonprofit entities and organizations. It works to improve life for county residents and provide greater opportunities. Some of its priorities include affordable housing, new business development, conversion charter schools, and workforce development through such means as academies, incubator and apprentice programs, and a culinary institute. The Collaborative believes the county is “poised to be the next NATURAL growth area in Northwest Arkansas.”

“The Kings River divides Carroll County, and that’s where Woodstock and livestock meet.”

State Representative Bryan King of Green Forest
Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, September 19, 2010

“The nice thing about being in Berryville is you can drive ten miles west [to Eureka Springs] and it’s like you’re in a different country. You have restaurants. You have entertainment. Then you can go back home to the real world.”

Berryville Mayor Tim McKinney
Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, September 19, 2010

Sneed Cemetery, Osage, mid-late 20th century. Saunders Memorial Museum Collection (S-86-211-74)

The first settlers were Native Americans, having moved west from their ancestral homes ahead of white migration. White chroniclers made mention of Delaware Indians on Long Creek, small bands of Shawnee near what is now Alpena, and a Cherokee settlement north of what is now Berryville. Some of these early residents married the white settlers who came from Tennessee and Kentucky primarily. Around 1820 William Sneed of Kentucky traveled to the Ozarks with his wife, children, and enslaved workers. But, before moving, he surveyed the available land, made his choice, and planted several acres of corn. Making “improvements” by clearing fields, planting crops, and building homes was an important first step when claiming land from the government. In 1830 Sneed and his son, Charles, claimed several thousand acres of the best farmland in Osage Township. Their slaves helped build the Dubuque Road—the first road in the county—from Lead Hill through Carrollton and beyond. Charles served as Carrollton’s first postmaster and as county sheriff. Early court cases were held in the Sneed home.

Some of the first businesses were grist mills, tanneries (to prepare leather), blacksmith shops, and trading posts for things the settlers couldn’t make or grow themselves. Tilford Denton and his brother moved to the county seat of Carrollton in 1837 and set up shop as merchants. One year later their merchandise was valued at $2,800. Some settlers stayed for a short while before moving on. In 1857 Captain Alexander Fancher of Osage led family members and others on a wagon train headed for new opportunities in California. When they stopped at Mountain Meadows, a valley in the Utah Territory, most were attacked and killed by Mormons and Native Americans. The reason for the massacre has been hotly debated since then.

Civil War veterans’ reunion, Basin Spring Park, Eureka Springs, circa 1900. Carroll County Heritage Center Collection (S-84-211-45)

Arkansas seceded from the Union in 1861. Soon, Confederate and Union troops formed, pitting neighbors and family members against one another. While no major battles were fought in the county, there were several skirmishes and much guerilla activity. A group of lawless bushwhackers strung “old and feeble” Lige Massingale over a tree limb and burned his feet to get him to tell of hidden valuables. Having no luck, they set fire to his house. One legend tells how a small band of Confederates were able to capture a larger group of Union soldiers at Hog Scald Hollow by tricking them into getting drunk on corn whiskey. The soldiers seized a wagon as it was driven by their camp and discovered the liquor that had been hidden (on purpose) under the hay.

The upland counties of northern Arkansas had fewer enslaved workers than the rest of the state, owing to the hilly terrain which made plantation-style agriculture impractical. In 1860 the county’s population was just over 9,000 residents, 330 of whom where slaves. While their labor contributed to the economy, it was not a major factor. Perhaps this helps explain, in part, the formation of several Peace Societies along the state’s northern border, including one in Carroll County. While members of the societies opposed the Confederacy, they generally didn’t work against it, often preferring peaceful dissent and home protection to active conflict.

“Alsie [Holland] gathered up a heap of stones…they heard the tramp of horses’ hoofs and the renegades arrived. They came blustering in and demanded food, money and anything of value… One ruffian noticed the pile of stones on the hearth and asked what they were there for; aunt Alsie replied ‘those are secesh [secessionist] biscuits; have one’ she then proceeded to pounce the rocks on the fellow…”

Nora L. Davis Standlee
Carroll County Historical Quarterly, June 1957

Tornado-damaged home, Green Forest, March 1927. Carroll County Heritage Center Collection (S-85-14-21)

Carroll County has endured several destructive and deadly tornadoes. In 1927 nineteen people were killed and one hundred injured in Green Forest as a storm damaged the business district and destroyed about fifty homes, wrecking many more. A train car of doctors and nurses came from Harrison to help the injured, taking many to the Eureka Springs Hospital. Ten years later, Green Forest was struck again along with nearby Alpena Pass, with one person dead and twenty injured.

The worst tornado in county history struck Berryville at 10:30 p.m. on October 29, 1942. Right before the storm hit the power went out. As the Wyrick family hid under a mattress, they felt no motion as the storm picked up their house and moved it several feet. At the railroad station the tornado knocked over fifty-ton railroad cars and wrenched a baby out of its mother’s arms, badly hurting the mother and killing the child. Several businesses were demolished, including wholesale grocery houses and canneries, part of the economic lifeblood of the community. Rescuers searched for victims “by torch, flashlight, lanterns, candles, or even matches.” In all, twenty-nine people were killed, with sixty-eight seriously injured. The devastation made national news.

“They’re laying the dead out on the lawns as fast as they can get there out of the wreckage and we’re making regular trips picking up the bodies. Most of them are so badly mutilated that we can’t hope to identify them until relatives start coming in.”
Rex Nelson, undertaker
Northwest Arkansas Times, October 30, 1942

Carroll County Courthouse—Eastern Judicial District, Berryville, about 1905. Carroll County Heritage Center Collection (S-84-211-148)

The first seat of government was in Carrollton which, by the mid-1800s, was a large, centrally located, thriving settlement. But when Carroll County land was taken to form Boone County in 1869, Carrollton found itself on the border. A “courthouse war” erupted, pitting Carrollton against Berryville to the northwest. Petitions, elections, lawsuits, and countersuits followed as the two towns struggled for the courthouse and the prestige and revenue it would bring. In 1875, by a narrow margin of twenty-eight votes, the county seat was moved to Berryville.

Carroll County Courthouse—Western Judicial District, Eureka Springs, about 1910. Siloam Springs Museum Collection (S-83-300-72)

Across the Kings River was the new boomtown of Eureka Springs. Its residents wanted the convenience of their own courthouse, in part to avoid impassable roads due to the frequent flooding of the Kings River. In 1883 they successfully petitioned the Arkansas Legislature to form two judicial districts with the Kings River as the dividing line. By the late 1880s Green Forest challenged Berryville for its courthouse, saying the building was unsuitable and in disrepair. The votes were tallied and Berryville kept its courthouse (later moving to a modern facility in 1976). The most recent dispute occurred in 2010 when a circuit court judge, a native of Berryville, ruled to consolidate the two judicial districts into one at Berryville. He was unsuccessful. Today the former Berryville courthouse is home to the Carroll County Heritage Center while the old Eureka Springs courthouse is home to the county clerk’s office and city offices.

“I have seen thousands of Texas Longhorn steers pass through town [in front of the courthouse] in droves nearly every week in the year, as well as horses, sheep, goats and one time there was a herd of 500 turkeys…some of the merchants didn’t like the flies the stock drew, especially in warm weather.”
D. Elmer Jones, 1957
Carroll County Historical Quarterly, December 1966

The first St. Louis & North Arkansas train pulling into Berryville, April 15, 1901. Carroll County Heritage Center Collection (S-84-211-81)

In order to continue the success of Eureka Springs, a railroad was needed to bring health- and pleasure-seekers. Former Arkansas governor Powell Clayton spearheaded a project to connect with the St. Louis & San Francisco Railroad eighteen miles north. In 1883 the Eureka Springs Railway steamed into town. Together the two railroads built and operated the magnificent Crescent Hotel. But the Eureka railroad began to lose money as the fad of “taking the waters” began to wane. It was purchased by the St. Louis & North Arkansas Railroad in 1900, which began expanding the line west. Berryville and Green Forest each offered a bonus to bring the railroad to their towns but the terrain was too difficult and therefore too costly. But Berryville persevered. Residents gave the railroad money, right-of-way, and materials to build a spur line to town. In 1901 residents greeted the train with flower-decorated carriages.

A few years later the new railroad was failing and the line switched hands again. In 1906 it became the Missouri & North Arkansas Railroad (M&NA), followed by the Missouri & Arkansas Railway in 1935 and the Arkansas and Ozarks Railway in 1949. While the railroads had some successful years, there were many problems. The line was abandoned in 1961. In recent years the county has been home to two short, standard-gauge tourist railroads. The Eureka Springs Railroad operated out of Beaver for a time in the 1970s and early 1980s, but didn’t prove successful. The Eureka Springs & North Arkansas Railway, begun in 1981, operates out of the historic 1913 M&NA depot.

“Eureka Springs and Green Forest turned out in masses to help Berryville celebrate the arrival of the first train within her borders and rejoices with her in her good fortune. There is a popular superstition that these towns are jealous of each other, but no suspicion of such a situation showed up on this wonderful day . . .”
Berryville Progress, June 1901

Clarke’s Academy, Berryville, 1913. Pennington, photographer. Carroll County Heritage Center Collection (S-85-18-18)

Early Carroll County schools were subscription-based, meaning that students paid for their education. Professor Isaac A. Clarke founded an academy in Berryville in 1867, growing from twenty-five students to one hundred by the end of the first term. In 1879 first level tuition was $10, while Latin and Greek was $12.50 extra. The academy served students for nearly forty years. The Carrollton Academy began in 1877 as a “normal school,” where young men and women trained to be teachers. Years later the school’s 200 students “lined up in front of [their] old building with slates, dinner pails and books to march across town and occupy [their] new building.”

Osage Elementary School students with teacher Naomi McMorris (middle row, far left), 1939-1940. The building was constructed by Works Progress Administration workers as part of New Deal relief efforts. Ruth Sisco Curnutt Collection (S-85-284-76)

Eureka Springs had several small schools in its early years, including one for the children of African-American servants of wealthy vacationers. By the 1900s there were many small public school districts throughout the county, some with fanciful names like Blue Eye, Welcome Home, Grassy Nob, Parrott, Bobo, Gobbler, Snow, Possum Trot, and Hottentott. When Mabel Cripps Wilson began her teaching career in 1923 in the White Oak community, students walked one or two miles to school, brought their lunches in Karo syrup buckets, and went without shoes until the weather turned cold. These rural, one-room schools faded as communities dwindled and schools were consolidated in 1965. Today’s schools are in Eureka, Berryville, and Green Forest.

“Parents and guardians, confiding their children and wards in our care, may rest assured no effort will be spared to secure the development of mental powers and the lasting influences of moral principles upon the mind.”
Isaac A. Clarke
Clarke’s Academy for Males and Females, August 15, 1879

Basketball team, Green Forest, 1916. From left: Hattie Belle, Ruth, Ethel, Eloda, Rhea, Hazel, and Augusta. James and Sue Eldridge Collection (S-96-2-940)

Baseball teams began to form in Carroll County in the 1880s in such communities as Beaver, Denver, Farewell, Eureka Springs, Oak Grove, and Rule. During the summer special excursion trains brought crowds to the baseball field near Beaver. Public schools in the county’s larger communities fielded sports teams, including basketball for girls. In 1924 Eureka Mayor Claude A. Fuller received $500 towards the construction of Harmon Park. Wealthy New Yorker William E. Harmon provided money to construct playgrounds, because he wanted to provide “inspirational and tangible help for young people.” The Harmon Foundation recently donated funds towards the construction of a skate park, an ADA-accessible playground, and a future spray park.

The Saunders Memorial Muzzleloading Shoot began in 1954 in honor of Colonel C. Burton “Buck” Saunders, a longtime Berryville resident who was a skillful marksman and collector of unique firearms. Activities at Luther Owen’s Muzzle Loading Park include firearm matches, camping, and the sale of black-powder merchandise. In 1930 Albert Ingalls, Eureka Springs mayor and president of Crescent College, wanted a basketball team for the girls’ school. Hearing about a winning team in Sparkman, Arkansas (southeast of Hot Springs), he sent his wife Leila to recruit the girls. The Crescent Comets practiced in the basement of the city auditorium, running the distance from the Crescent Hotel and back. The team won two national championships.

“We loved it… And even though the school was for rich girls, our team [the Crescent Comets] was accepted with kindness from the regular students. …We got to dance in the lobby with all the other girls and we looked just as nice. Mrs. Ingalls saw to it. Before the college’s first formal, she bought each member of our team a formal gown from a fancy dress shop in Springfield [Missouri] so we could go and feel like we fit in.”
Mabel Blakely Williams
1886 Crescent Hotel & Spa blog, posted September 29, 2012

Junior basketball team, Berryville Public School, 1947. Back, from left: Jack Edens, Jerry Hill(?), James Graim, and coach E. S. Bigham. Front, from left: Clyde Cummings, Gerald Spitz, unidentified, and Leslie Stidham. Ann Bigham Engskov Collection (S-2016-44-25)

Health seekers by spring, Eureka Springs, about 1881. F. F. Fyler, photographer. Eureka Springs Carnegie Public Library Collection (S-83-325-39)

Carroll County’s first doctor may have been Arthur A. Baker, a blacksmith who taught himself medicine by reading books. Working first out of Carrollton and later Berryville, he traveled many miles by horseback to treat neighbors in need. In 1879 Dr. Alvah Jackson treated a patient suffering from severe skin disease using water from a healing spring. His miracle cure at Basin Spring led to a massive influx of health-seekers and entrepreneurs into what would become Eureka Springs. More springs were discovered, their mineral content tested, and their curative powers touted. Eureka went from a campsite to a town of nearly 4,000 in the space of one year. Entrepreneurs built fancy hotels, bathhouses, and sanitariums to treat the infirm. The springs were said to cure a host of illnesses including rheumatism, catarrh (inflammation of mucus membranes), tuberculosis, hay fever, diabetes, dyspepsia (indigestion), asthma, jaundice, malaria, paralysis, neuralgia (intense nerve pain), gout, cancer, dropsy (excess fluid in tissues or body cavities), and “female troubles.”

Frances Kerens felt that Eureka’s Catholic community needed a religious order to “help solve the problems of those in need of spiritual replenishing.” In 1900 land was purchased for the Hotel Dieu Hospital. Run by the Sisters of Mercy Motherhouse in St. Louis, the facility included a convent, school, chapel, surgical wing, and twenty-five-bed hospital. Financial problems led to its closure in 1913. An infamous chapter in Eureka’s medical history began in 1937 when Norman Baker purchased the shuttered Crescent Hotel to open a cancer hospital. A long-time quack who made millions by swindling the ill with bogus cancer treatments, he was finally sent to jail in 1940.

Other early hospitals include the Don Sawyer Memorial Hospital (now the Eureka Springs Hospital) and the Gentry Hospital in Berryville. In the 1930s and early 1940s, Vera Gentry was a midwife who ran a hospital in her home, welcoming about 300 babies into the world. Doctors used her hospital to perform tonsillectomies and appendectomies. Gentry’s hospital closed when Dr. Parker and Dr. Carter’s eleven-bed hospital opened in town, which in turn closed in 1969, shortly before the opening of Carroll General Hospital (now Mercy Hospital Berryville). Money for the facility came from a county tax and a grant. In 2016 the hospital caused some concern when it ended several services, including emergency ambulance, home health, and hospice.

Eureka Springs Memorial Hospital administrator Leonard Pratt with staff, January 10, 1974. Springdale News Collection (SN 1-10-1974)

The rise of Eureka as a spa town coincided with the end of the nation’s interest in “taking the waters.” Many factors contributed to bring this about including major advancements in science, improvements in the standards of medical care, and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. By the 1910s the grand Crescent Hotel had closed its doors and fewer health-seekers came to town. As Eureka transformed into a tourist town, interest in saving the springs grew. Preservationists restored several springs and their protective structures. Today they are open to the public, although they bear signs warning folks against drinking contaminated water.

“People who have been bedridden sufferers for years come here, drink the waters, and get well, often in a very incredibly short time… Ladies who have languished for years in their terrible mind-wrecking and body-destroying ills arrive here and in a few months at the furthest, are seen with the bloom of health upon their cheeks and rejoicing in restored womanhood.”
Eureka Springs Daily Democrat, December 17, 1891

Young ‘possum hunters, Oak Grove, about 1917. From left: Ertie Allen, Gilbert Wiley, and Eli Shahan. At the time, a properly tanned hide could bring up to twenty-five cents. Larry Parmlee Collection (S-85-5-17)

When settlers first came to Carroll County they found abundant natural resources—timber and stone to build with, animal pelts to trade for cash and goods, and plentiful game and fish to eat. One story tells of two women from the Beaver community who, having lost food and livestock to Civil War bushwhackers, were desperate to feed their families. They killed a number of deer by herding them into the woods and flapping their aprons to drive the deer off a high bluff to their death. In recent years the deer population in Eureka Springs had grown so large that, after much opposition, an urban deer hunt was organized in 2013 for bowhunters.

Some of the earliest sawmills were located on the Dry Fork Creek in 1840s. In the days when land could be claimed from the federal government by “improving” and using it, Franzisca Massman of the fast-growing town of Eureka stayed one step ahead of the law. She would find a choice spot (even if it had already been claimed by someone else), erect a cabin, move in a few furnishings, cook a meal, and plow a patch of ground. Once the usable timber had been cut she moved to a new claim. By the 1900s an expanding railroad allowed sawmills to ship lumber, barrel staves, and railroad ties throughout the region. Sawmill operations continued well into the 20th century, with operators producing oak flooring, shipping pallets, and pine posts treated with creosote.

A. L. Hanby’s steam-powered sawmill, Winona, 1890s-1900s. Carroll County Heritage Center Collection (S-84-211-186)

Rumors of vast oil fields in Northwest Arkansas led to the Sure Pop oil well in Eureka in 1921. Promoted by a Texas driller who promised great wealth, business leaders raised $10,000 to buy land. A derrick was built, oil leases were sold, a barbecue was held for 2,500, and newspapers told of the progress at the well site. But the well was never drilled and the Texas promoter left town after the derrick burned down mysteriously. Sure Pop shareholders with left with worthless leases.

The Crescent Hotel and other buildings in Eureka were built using high-quality, local limestone. The Eureka Stone Company, founded in 1904, used the railroad to ship its product throughout the region. When building projects grew scarce, the company fell dormant. In the late 1970s stonemason Don Underwood bought modern equipment and reopened the quarry. Today the company supplies stone for commercial and residential projects throughout Northwest Arkansas and the region. It also takes on restoration projects of some of Eureka’s old buildings and walkways.

“…Ab [Hanby] inherited a disposition to work…he acquired the habit of greasing his muscles with brains, so to speak, and as a result he has sawed more lumber for homes in the Eastern District of Carroll County than any other three men who have been engaged in the lumber business here. He has in time owned no less than forty different mills, having a dozen or more in operation at one time.”
Green Forest Tribune, December 19, 1913

Dr. Alonzo E. Quinn (left) and stonemasons, Grandview, 1890s. June Crane Collection (S-89-12-1)

Cans stacked outside the Hays Canning Company, Oak Grove, 1910s. Larry Parmlee Collection (S-85-5-29)

By 1913 there were large-scale canneries at Berryville, Urbanette, and Green Forest, with the latter shipping 8,000 cases of apples, 6,000 cases of tomatoes, and 6,000 cases of peaches that year. Wheat was an important crop and kept the flour mills in Green Forest, Urbanette, Yocum, and Berryville grinding away. Flour was shipped regionally and even overseas during World War I. By the 1920s the boom-and-bust cycle of crops forced farmers to diversify. Tomatoes were grown in the 1930s, supplying around thirty canneries before the industry declined from disease and the “labor-intensive nature of the tomato business.”

Dairy herds became big business for a time. In the early 1930s the Berryville Cheese Factory operated out of the basement of a hardware store. Later a large stone building was purchased where cans of milk were brought, pasteurized, and made into cheese. Kraft Foods purchased the business in 1946 and modernized the plant, offering high-paying jobs to local workers. The plant closed in 1985, in part due to improvements made to Kraft’s Benton County facility.

Tomato harvest, Oak Grove, 1910s. Larry Parmlee Collection (S-85-5-34)

While Eureka Springs’ economy shifted from healing springs to tourism over the years, agriculture-related businesses continue to be a mainstay in the rest of the county. In the 1960s Green Forest was home to two of the state’s thirty beekeepers who rented their hives to commercial fruit growers for crop pollination. Three Berryville businessmen started Carroll County Food Products in 1951, processing chickens and turkeys. By 1971 the plant was owned by Tyson Foods. Today Tyson employs nearly 3,000 county residents in several poultry-related businesses, including processing plants in Berryville and Green Forest, making for an annual payroll of $138 million. Tyson, Walmart, Carroll Electric Cooperative Corporation, and Mercy Hospital are the county’s largest employers.

“…the short nutritious grasses have proved to not only contain sufficient nourishment to sustain the life of large herds of cattle, but to actually fatten them during the winter months, and it is an actual fact that thousands of cattle and hogs are bred, born, and raised on the large areas of free range, brought to town, and shipped to market without ever seeing a grain of corn in their lives.”
Oak Leaves, 1914

African Methodist Episcopal Church members at Harding Spring, Eureka Springs, late 1910s. Harding was the only spring open to African Americans. Eureka Springs Historical Museum Collection (S-99-66-359)

Carroll County’s African American population has always been small in comparison to its white population. In 1860 there were a little over 9,000 residents, 330 of whom were enslaved workers. After the Civil War only thirty-seven former slaves stayed in the area. But the new boomtown of Eureka Springs offered economic opportunities. Blacks owned boarding houses and worked in bathhouses, hotels, laundries, and barbershops. They improved their community by building homes, establishing a school, and organizing an African Methodist-Episcopal Church. But they were segregated from the white community—limited by where they could live, work, shop, and spend leisure time. As the health resort faded in the early 1900s, many moved away.

Berryville was considered a “sundown town.” It’s said that signs were still posted in the 1950s warning blacks not to stay past nightfall. Today the county is largely white, with a few folks self-identifying as African American, Native American, Asian, and Pacific Islander. There is a sizable Latino population, many of whom work in the poultry industry.

“Uncle Dick Fancher . . . was buried in the colored people’s cemetery [in Eureka Springs]… He was sold as a slave at auction here in Berryville when he was but ten years old and was bought…for $400 [in 1848].”
Benton County Democrat, May 11, 1911

“First Dance” at the Ozark Mountain Folkfair, Eureka Springs, May 1973. A singer with the Lewis Family (center) dances with a Folkfair staff member. Albert Skiles, photographer. Courtesy Albert Skiles.

In the 1970s Northwest Arkansas saw an influx of young adults seeking a simpler, more meaningful life. Edd Jeffords of Eureka Springs published the Ozark Access Catalog, with tips about buying land and planning a garden. He told newcomers to work hard and “learn about the lives and customs of the people they were living beside.” Over twenty folks lived in the Lothlorien commune near Berryville. They helped their neighbors with farm chores and paid their electric bills by working as waitresses, artisans, and the like. In 1973 Jeffords helped put together the Ozark Mountain Folkfair, a three-day event featuring such musicians as John Lee Hooker and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Thousands of youngsters braved heavy rain, mud, and ticks to attend.

Some folks accepted and helped the newcomers while others saw them as immoral hippies and drug addicts who took advantage of the welfare system. In 1972 the Eureka Springs Times-Echo warned of a “well-oiled plot” by the “longhairs” to take over city government. Back-to-the-landers moved into Eureka’s vacant storefronts, selling such things as health food, handmade leather items, and even a “Christ of the Ozarks marijuana cigarette clip.” While some moved away in the 1980s, others stayed and became teachers, artists, and city-council members. Richard Schoeninger, who came to Eureka to edit an underground newspaper, served as mayor in the late 1980s. He jokingly reported two problems with his job—following rules and wearing underwear.

“In not voting, you gave up your right to vote for someone else—who, for all you know, was a Communist, an extremist of one sort or another, or a hippie who has added nothing to the community…”
Dick Fisher, editor, Eureka Springs Times-Echo
Arkansas Gazette, June 25, 1972

“The polite woman who waits on you in any café may likely as not be ‘an extremist of one sort or another’ during her free time. People here are employed making looms, rewiring houses…dishwashing…teaching horseback riding… We certainly haven’t hurt the town economically.”
Maren Statts
Arkansas Gazette, June 25, 1972

Joanie O’Bryant performing at the City Auditorium, Ozark Folk Festival, Eureka Springs, October 1962. Ernie Deane, photographer. Frances Deane Alexander Collection (S-2012-137-628)

James Braswell of Green Forest has been called the “Stephen Foster of the Ozarks” after the 19th-century’s great American songwriter. In 1890 at age seventeen he became the director of the Green Forest Cornet Band. He wrote his first song, “Meet Me at the Basin While in Eureka Springs” when he was hired one summer to play cornet in the resort town. Back then, Eureka residents enjoyed special July 4th excursions on the Eureka Springs Railway, riding on flatcars across the White River bridge near Beaver to picnic, play baseball, and watch fireworks.

Recreation lovers use Carroll County as their jumping-off point to take advantage of camping, hiking, fishing, hunting, and boating opportunities at Beaver Lake to the west and Missouri’s Table Rock Lake to the north. But the powerhouse of county tourism is Eureka Springs. When Eureka faded as a spa town, population and business declined. In the late 1940s Dwight Nichols and a partner bought the Crescent Hotel on the cheap, only to realize that vacationers were few and far between. Nichols offered a six-day package for $40 through a Chicago travel agency. About 150,000 tourists visited in 1958.

The first Ozark Folk Festival was held in Eureka in 1948 to preserve and continue the area’s native arts of music, dancing, and craftsmanship. Many musical legends have performed at the festival including Doc Watson, Almeda Riddle, Fred High, and Jimmy Driftwood. The festival features many beloved traditions such as the Barefoot Ball, a Queen’s Contest, a parade, and a square-dancing presentation by the HedgeHoppers, third-grade students from Eureka Springs Elementary School. Newer festivals celebrate bluegrass, jazz, blues, art, film, and Mardi Gras.

Performers prepare for the Great Passion Play, Eureka Springs, 1968. Dwight Nichols, photographer. Frances Deane Alexander Collection (S-2012-137-173)

Tourism increased during the 1960s with the coming of Beaver Lake and other tourist attractions like Dinosaur World, Quigley’s Castle, and Gerald L. K. Smith’s Christ of the Ozarks statue and the Great Passion Play. Residents had mixed feelings about Smith, a minister who supported anti-Semitic and fascist causes throughout his life. But the play, based on the last days of Jesus Christ, was popular. Economic downturns and changing visitor interest nearly closed the complex in 2012, but operators trimmed costs to stay open.

In the 1970s a number of artists moved to town, opening downtown stores to sell their work. Back then, Eureka advertised itself as the “Little Switzerland of the Ozarks.” Today it bills itself as the “Wedding Capital of the South.” In fact, Eureka made headlines in 2014 when it issued the first same-sex marriage license in Arkansas. Recently there has been an effort to promote the town as gay- and motorcycle-friendly, with some opposition. With 1.5 million visitors annually, Eureka is appreciated for the quality of its visual art and musical offerings. It has kept up with the times, offering such activities as ghost hunts, zip-line adventures, and winery tours.

“Now some folks just don’t care for oldtime fiddle music. . . . I reckon the more sophisticated run of people wouldn’t find it funny when Toby [Baker’s] gourd ‘gittar’ bursts into flame and smoke smack in the middle of a ditty [at the Folk Festival]. But these men and others are preserving some of the things that made the mountain country what it was before paved highways, television and electric washing machines brought upheaval to the hills.”
Ernie Deane
Arkansas Gazette, October 21, 1958

“We want the town full, not congested. Our economy depends on tourism. But we’re no shopping mall. We’re a community. Eighty-five per cent of us, non-natives, came here because we fell in love with it. I didn’t want the town to go totally commercial. We need stewardship, not to devalue our history or ruin the legacy.”
Eureka Springs Mayor Richard Schoeninger
Arkansas Gazette, January 31, 1989

Baptism at the White River, possibly the Mundell Community, about 1915. Eureka Springs Historical Museum Collection (S-99-66-379)

Most early Carroll County settlers were Baptist or Methodist. A Union Baptist church was organized at Joel Plumlee’s Green Forest home in 1838. Services were held once a month, from Saturday morning to Sunday night. There was preaching, Holy Communion, foot washing (a ritual of humility), and river baptisms. Eureka Springs’ fast-growing and diverse population brought new denominations.

Founded in 1882, St. Elizabeth Catholic Church moved into an impressive limestone building in 1909, complete with Italian mosaic floors and marble altars. Christian Science was introduced in the late 1880s by Lou Aldrich. Finding no relief from Eureka’s waters, she used prayer to treat her illness. She went on to become a healer herself, only to face legal action for “practicing healing without a medical license.” The case was dismissed after her attorney asked those healed by the new religion to stand (most stood) and then asked the same for those healed by doctors (nobody stood).

Today there is a wide variety of denominations in the county—Lutheran, Presbyterian, Pentecostal, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Unitarian—even Native American. In Green Forest there are two Spanish-language Southern Baptist churches for the local Latino population. The Rock Springs Baptist Church near Berryville may be the oldest still-active church in the county. It was founded in the early 1850s by Dr. Alvah Jackson, discoverer of Eureka’s famous Basin Spring. But as congregations dwindle, country churches face uncertain futures. Recently the Historic Preservation Alliance of Arkansas put the 1895 Possum Trot Church near Osage on its “Six to Save” list.

“We didn’t have a college education, but we did have a lot of kneeology. You get down on your knees and pray to God for knowledge and understanding.”
Anita Hudson, speaking about Possum Trot Church
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, June 8, 2009

Carroll County storytellers Melvin Anglin (left) and Coy Logan, whose tales were included on the 1981 album, Not Far From Here.

Between 1970 and 1980 George West and William K. McNeil recorded folk narratives and folksongs of the Ozarks, resulting in the 1981 album, Not Far From Here. The project was sponsored by the Carroll County Historical Society and funded in part with grants from the Arkansas Arts Council, the Arkansas Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Endowment for the Arts, Folk Art Division.

Two of the project’s participants—Melvin Anglin (1906–1992) and Coy Logan (1906–1984)—were from Berryville. Both men learned their tall tales and stories of the Civil War from their grandparents. Thanks to George West, William K. McNeil, and the UALR Center for Arkansas History and Culture, we offer the recorded stories of Anglin and Logan here for your listening pleasure.

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Governor Bill Clinton speaking at the dedication of the Huntsville-Madison County Airport, September 27, 1986. Springdale News Collection (SN 9-27-1986)

Timber and commercial canneries were the biggest industries in the county going into the 20th century. By the Great Depression in the 1930s the timber was largely gone, along with many industry-related jobs and the railroad. County residents received aid in the form of jobs, training, and facilities through government-funded New Deal “make-work” programs and projects. In downtown Huntsville, two large barracks and a woodworking shop were built in the city park in 1939 by the National Youth Administration. Working in conjunction with the local school district and the State Vocational School, young men aged 18 to 25 were charged with building a $50,000 grade school as part of a skill-training program.

Electric lights came to downtown Huntsville in 1914, when a dynamo (generator) was installed at the Huntsville Roller Mill. The town was largely electrified by the late 1920s. It took the help of the federal Rural Electrification Administration (REA) to bring power to the rest of the county. To receive $200,000 in funding for the initial construction of 210 miles of power lines, in 1938 residents of Washington County and western Madison County formed the consumer-owned Ozarks Rural Electric Cooperative Corporation (now Ozarks Electric). Other towns like Kingston, Clifty, and Marble were served by the Carroll Electric Cooperation. As power lines came closer, eager folks had their homes wired for electricity. When the new gymnasium opened at the St. Paul High School, a newspaper ad for a basketball tournament exclaimed, “REA Lights!”

Many county residents left for work in California and other states during the Depression and World War II, with an additional 2,000 folks leaving in the decade following the war. Beginning in the 1940s roads and highways were built or improved, the work helped, in part, through the efforts of Madison-county native and 36th governor, Orval E. Faubus. Roads helped move merchandise and agricultural products to market and encouraged tourism. Livestock production became a major source of income after the war—first dairy cattle and then beef, followed by poultry as companies like Tyson Foods which relied on local growers to produce chickens and turkeys.

In the 1980s Huntsville was touted as a town on “the edge of an explosion.” A golf course and twenty-acre baseball park were built, a new airport opened, and the local Butterball turkey plant expanded its workforce. Measures were taken to fend off further school consolidation like the construction of a new high school.

“From all this it would seem that Rural Electrification for Madison County is ‘just around the corner.’ Now, let everyone get his shoulder to the wheel and ROLL, because it is going to take all hands and the cook to finish the job.”
Bert Jackson
Madison County Record, May 25, 1938

Kings River below Ray Branch, near Marble, 1950s. A. T. Shuller Collection (S-92-157-45)

Today the county remains largely rural and agricultural in nature. In fact, it wasn’t until 2016 that the county’s first stoplight was installed in Huntsville. While neighboring counties generally have a declining birthrate, the county’s birthrate is the highest in the state, going from 10.7 births per 1,000 residents in 2011 to 14.8 births in 2018. Demographics are changing slowly. According to the 2010 census, ninety-three percent of the population was white, with the largest minority population of Latino origin at nearly five percent. Nearly nineteen percent of residents live below the poverty line. Recently there’s been a small influx of folks from Benton County, some of whom are leaving a higher cost of living for cheaper land.

While the timber industry is strong, the county’s largest employers are the Butterball turkey processing plant, the Huntsville School District, and Ducommun LaBarge Technologies, which manufactures circuit boards and electronic assemblies. But businesses are struggling on the Huntsville square. Factors include the relocation of Walmart away from downtown, the US 412 bypass around town, and online shopping. Many residents commute beyond the county’s borders to work, in some ways making the county one large “bedroom community.”

Tourism is on the rise. Miles of winding, scenic roads beckon motorcyclists, especially during the fall. The county’s four rivers—the White, Kings, Mulberry, and War Eagle—have their headwaters near the town of Boston. Along with those, nature-based resources such as Withrow Springs State Park, Ozark National Forest, Kings River Falls, Sweden Creek Falls, and the Ozark Natural Science Center offer places for hiking, camping, hunting, fishing, swimming, canoeing, and education.

“I hope it [business in downtown Huntsville] turns around. We have some good businesses down here—some unique things. I have regular customers that come all the way from Rogers. And they come about once a month, just for all of the little, quirky little shops and because our prices are so much better than the Springdale/Fayetteville areas.”
Pamela Montoya
Madison County Record, November 29, 2018

George Washington Vaughan with his grandsons, about 1881. Vaughan came with his family from Tennessee by 1830. Ada Lee Smith Shook Collection (S-2008-86-48)

Settlers began arriving in the late 1820s, generally traveling overland from Missouri or up the Arkansas River to Fort Smith (Sebastian County). Henry King was one of the first. He came from Alabama to scout out possible farm land, only to be killed when his wagon went over a cliff. In tribute, the Kings River was named after him. George Tucker explored the southwest part of the future county in 1827 with the Vaughan brothers, who settled Vaughan Valley near Hindsville in 1831. John Holmesley came with his family in 1828, after rumors spread about him being involved in the theft of a hog. “After hearing the story of his misdemeanor several times, he began to believe it and thought best to find a place to live elsewhere.

Early homes were usually built of hand-hewn logs with puncheon floors (half-round logs, with the flat side up). John Williams, who settled along the White River, was described as “a great trader who dealt largely in horses, slaves, etc.” By 1840 there were eighty-three enslaved workers in the county and 296 by 1860. Most did farm work, but a few were household servants. After the Civil War a little over half of the African-American population decided to stay in the county, many working for their former “owners.” By 1900 only forty-four blacks remained, many living in Whorton Creek Township, southwest of Huntsville.

Bruce and Joan Johnson with baby Jesse, Burrdog (left), and Sparky at their home under construction near St. Paul, July 24, 1974. Courtesy Bruce and Joan Johnson

A new type of settler came in the 1970s. They were young adults, seeking simpler, more meaningful lives by establishing small homesteads and communes. For some of these back-to-the-landers, living off the land was hard. Rural isolation, primitive living conditions, non-stop hard work, a lack of electricity and running water, and inter-group squabbles caused some groups like Yellowhammer, a women’s communal-living farm located near Patrick, to disband after only a few years. Others met the challenges and stayed on their land. Bob and Eileen Billig settled near Pettigrew in 1972 and did odd jobs like sign painting before building a business selling pressed-flower collages. They were part of the Headwaters School, formed in the early 1970s “to provide a balanced educational environment for rural students who were homeschooling.”

Gary Davidson and Cindy Cadwallader Davidson Arsaga with their homegrown vegetables at Glen Haught’s home, Witter, 1974. Nancy Marshall Collection (S-2013-58-17)

“It was in the year 1851 when we arrived in Madison County [from Tennessee] and all this world’s goods that my father and mother possessed when we got there was provision [food] enough to last us three days, one coon dog and 5 cts [cents] in silver. The town of Huntsville . . . contained a few business houses and several residences.”
E. B. “Ben” Hager
From a July 5, 1906, interview by Silas Claiborne Turnbo

Madison County Courthouse, Huntsville, about 1937. This was the town’s fifth courthouse, built in 1905. Mr. and Mrs. Sherman Hinds Collection (S-87-63-14)

Before Huntsville became the county seat in 1839, county government operated out of a log barn on Evan S. Polk’s farm, close to the present Huntsville square. Six courthouses were built through the years, three of which burned down; one was abandoned due to poor construction. During the early 1900s there was continual talk of moving the county seat to the more populous St. Paul, the beneficiary of the area’s timber boom economy and the county’s only railroad. Some even suggested dividing the county into two. But as the timber industry began to slow in the 1920s, such talk died out. The current Art Deco-style courthouse of brick, concrete, and stone was built in 1939 by the federal Public Works Administration at a cost of roughly $150,000.

Madison County Courthouse, Huntsville, 1891. This was the fourth courthouse to be built, the only one made of brick. It was lost in 1902 when the part of the downtown square was destroyed by fire. Dorothy Ware Wilson Collection (S-83-147)

Madison County was home to two governors. Elected to represent Madison County during the state’s Secession Convention, Isaac Murphy famously voted against Arkansas seceding from the Union before the Civil War. He was appointed to serve as provisional governor in 1864, in the section of the state held by Federal forces, and later was elected governor statewide for one term. Orval E. Faubus served six terms, beginning in 1955, and is most remembered for blocking the desegregation of Little Rock’s Central High School. Both men’s homes were located on “Governor’s Hill,” just east of Huntsville.

The county went “dry” in 1946, meaning that the sale of alcohol was prohibited. In 2012 the group “Keeping the Money in Madison County” gathered enough votes to put the issue on the ballot. An opposing group lobbied against alcohol sales, worried that they would lead to safety issues. To illustrate their point, a wrecked car with a sign, “Your future with alcohol,” was towed around the county. The ballot passed and three new liquor stores opened in 2013.

Madison County Jail employees, May 2, 1981. Morris White, photographer. Springdale News Collection (SN 5-2-1981)

Today Madison County and local city governments face economic uncertainty. While a highway bypass around Huntsville was hoped to spur business north of town, the results have been mixed. At the county jail in Huntsville, since prisoners can’t be held more than twenty-four hours, the county must pay to house them in neighboring counties. On three occasions voters rejected funding the renovation or construction of a new jail.

“While summer term was in session [in 1836 or 1837] a youth of 17 or 18 years of age was on trial for a serious offense. The trial Judge was in sympathy with the boy. While the court was in session the boy slipped through a crack in the back of the room. The Judge called to the boy saying ‘Run, damn you, run.'”
Oscar S. Johnson
Madison County Record, June 10, 1965

Turkey drive near Kingston, early-mid 1920s. Rev. Elmer J. Bouher, photographer. Hidy Bouher Eby, Butch Bouher, and Lota Dee Bouher Lagan Collection (S-2001-2-95)

In the 19th century most families grew what they needed to survive—things like corn, hogs, and vegetables. Some farmers grew cash crops such as tobacco and apples, but without easy transportation to get their product to market, they couldn’t make a business of it. The problem was solved in the mid-1880s when a railroad was built through the southern half of the county. By the 1900s turkeys were shipped by the thousands for the Thanksgiving market. In 1929 more than 1,200 birds were gathered “from Kingston to Marble, Alabam, and Huntsville.”

Garrett Williams (left) in his apple orchard with son-in-law Robert Bedford Wilson, Buckeye community (near Whitener), 1900s–1910s. Dorothy Ware Wilson Collection (S-82-209-10)

Farmers like Garrett Williams of the Buckeye community planted large-scale apple orchards. In 1903 he had one-hundred acres under cultivation and was putting in eighty more. A nurseryman as well, he grew and sold trees for other growers. He even shipped some of his apples to be exhibited at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis. The region’s apple industry was so large that in 1907 a newspaper account enthusiastically valued the combined apple crop of Madison, Washington, and Benton counties at $2.5 million. In response, the Four Rivers Mutual Orchard Company near Red Star was organized around 1910. Investors bought thousands of acres of land, hiring locals to clear it and plant orchards. But insect damage and an unscrupulous land buyer forced the company to sell its assets a few years later.

After World War II many residents left, seeking better jobs. An “On the Farm Training” program for veterans began in Huntsville in 1946. It paid the men to learn such skills as how to build fences, deliver calves, clear land, weld metal, and treat cows suffering from milk fever. To further combat population loss and a decreasing economy, county leaders created a development plan. It included such endeavors as developing strawberry fields, establishing a grower’s association, and growing the dairy industry, whose producers sold milk to the Pet Milk plant in Huntsville.

Turkey processing at Swift Dairy and Poultry Company, Huntsville, 1974. Beatrice Foods Collection (S-86-122-39)

In 1974 Swift Dairy and Poultry Company opened a processing and freezing plant in Huntsville for its Butterball-brand turkeys. Back then, the 200-employee plant processed thirty birds a minute, or 150,000 pounds daily. Now known as Butterball LLC, the plant employs about 650 people and contributes much to the local economy. But the rise of poultry production has its cost. Tired of odor and fearful of water contamination, in 1989 residents near Clifty fought a winning battle against a sludge lagoon filled with poultry waste. In 2018 Butterball agreed to change how it dealt with wastewater, to reduce the unpleasant smell lingering over town.

Today, beef cattle and poultry are the county’s main agricultural industries, with farmers producing eggs and broilers for businesses like Tyson Foods. However some poultry growers have switched to raising beef cattle and harvesting hay, because, they say, the companies think their operations are too far from feed plants and processing facilities.

“As the timber disappeared, the people turned mostly to farming and raising cattle, but since the rugged hills would not support as many farmers and stockmen as it did timber workers, many had to leave and seek a livelihood elsewhere.”
Governor Orval E. Faubus
Ozarks Mountaineer, June 1957

River baptism, Pettigrew, 1930s. With David Carlson (preacher, with hand in air), Elva Barker Martin, and Orville Martin. Wayne Martin Collection (S-86-83-1)

Established in 1833, the Kings River congregation of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church was the first known religious group in the county. Since they arrived late in the year and didn’t have time to build homes before winter set in, the congregants set up a campground in a sheltered valley with a large spring, staying in wagons and lean-to structures. The area came to be known as Upper Campground and was used for many church gatherings over the years. Other early churches include the Big Fork Free-Will Baptist Church near Aurora, the (Primitive Baptist) New Hope Church near Kingston, and the Fairview Christian Church near Wesley. Some early preachers were circuit riders, traveling hundreds of miles by horseback to minister to a widespread group of congregants. Baptisms were frequently held outdoors, in a creek or river.

Kingston Community Presbyterian Church, mid-1920s. With Rev. Elmer J. Bouher (far right, with hands in pockets). Fred and Anna Berry Collection (S-84-113-23)

In the 1910s the Reverend Elmer J. Bouher of Indiana undertook a massive project to “improve” the lives of residents in rural Kingston. His “King’s Plan” involved building a church, school, and community building, improving local roads and farming methods, and teaching the principles of health and hygiene at a community medical clinic. Funded in part by the Brick Church in New York and local contributions of money, materials, and labor, the Kingston Community Presbyterian Church was begun in 1922. The project had its detractors, as some folks resented outsiders telling them how to live. Many factors contributed to the gradual decline of the project, including Bouher’s departure and the financial problems of the Great Depression. Use of the church and school buildings ended in 1948. The buildings were torn down three years later.

As religious needs expand, so do religious offerings. Begun in the 1990s, the Madison County Ministerial Alliance is a collaboration of ten to fifteen churches and religious organizations which hosts special religious services and collects food donations for a food pantry and the Pregnancy Center. In 2015, $4,920 was donated to families in need. St. John the Evangelist (Catholic) Church in Huntsville offers a Spanish-language mass for the county’s growing Latino population. The Madison County Cowboy Church was founded in 2010 to “[Serve] God the Cowboy Way.” Featuring a come-as-you-are attitude, the church’s sermons, country gospel music, and family-oriented dances and events may take place around a campfire or at the rodeo grounds. The Land of Infinite Bliss Retreat Center was built near Crosses in 2011 by the Tibetan Cultural Institute of Arkansas. The center offers classes on meditation, non-violence training, and Tibetan Buddhism.

“The great event of my visit was the church service on Sunday morning. . . . I preached as well as I could to an audience which included a large proportion of babies in arms and of restless little rascals who insisted on taking a walk in the aisles once in awhile . . .”
Dr. W. R. Taylor, “Our Investment in Arkansas”
Brick Church, Rochester, New York, June 1922

Confederate soldiers reunion, Huntsville, 1913. Washington County Historical Society Collection (P-1423)

Prior to the Civil War, Madison County had relatively few enslaved workers as compared to several neighboring counties. The enslaved population barely grew from 1840, when three percent of residents were slaves, to 1860 at four percent. Like the rest of Northwest Arkansas, folks had divided loyalties. As war loomed on the horizon, schoolteacher, lawyer, and state senator Isaac Murphy of Huntsville was elected on a Unionist platform to serve at the Arkansas Secession Convention of 1861. He alone voted against leaving the Union. At first his fellow county residents approved of his action, but sentiments changed as the war came closer to home.

His life threatened, Murphy left for Missouri and joined the staff of Union General Samuel Curtis. Murphy made arrangements for his daughters to travel to Missouri as well, but two of them remained in Huntsville, where they were harassed continually. Perhaps their treatment led to the execution of nine men (one of whom survived) by Union soldiers in 1863. The soldier in command was arrested for his actions but the charges against him were later dropped.

While no major battles were fought in Madison County, there were a few small-scale skirmishes. Near war’s end, several hundred folks moved to four fortified “Union Colonies” set up at Huntsville, Richland, War Eagle, and Brush Creek. Meant to offer physical protection and a safe place to farm, the colonies were open to all who pledged allegiance to the United States. Lawless bushwhackers preyed on the county’s citizens even after the war. One legend has it that folks living in a valley near Hindsville were so tired of having their food carried off that they cleared the timber from the top of a hill and planted potatoes and other vegetables. According to the story, raiders never bothered “Tater Hill.”

“Shortly after [the battle at Prairie Grove] the Yankees came to Kings River and commenced their dreadful slaughter of men and horse stealing. Then there was raised in our settlement, independent companies of lawless bands who went about over the country, stealing and robbing every lady without distinction, and then after they got everything in our country, then turned in and burned our houses, turned out widows and orphans in the winter’s snow. They entirely robbed me out, never left me narry a single horse nor nothing that was worth anything.”
Jane Page
Kings River, November 14, 1866

Howard Rufie Martin with his log truck, Pettigrew, about 1928. Wayne Martin Collection (S-85-322-48)

The county is heavily forested, with nearly two-thirds of the land covered by trees, even into the 21st century. A large portion of the southern section of the county is part of the Ozark National Forest, created in 1908 by President Theodore Roosevelt as a way to place its valuable hardwood timberland under government protection. The county’s timber industry was made possible when the first railroad branch line was built in the 1880s.

At one time, more lumber was shipped out of Pettigrew than anywhere else in the country. Three generations of the Martin family—Rufie, Orville, and Wayne—worked in the timber industry, cutting whatever wood they could sell and processing it at their sawmill near Pettigrew. Some of their work included white oak for railroad ties and wagon tongues (large poles used to connect a team of horses to a wagon), cherry for Singer sewing machines, and gum for bed rails made by Fulbright Wood Products in Fayetteville (Washington County).

As much profit as the timber industry brought to people and businesses, it also brought hardship. Working the timber was dangerous work and some men were maimed or killed in sawmill accidents. The influx of workers with ready cash encouraged saloons and brothels to spring up in the timber boomtowns. St. Paul’s longtime Frisco railroad agent, Mrs. J.M. Williams, recalled drunken fistfights between hundreds of men erupting on Saturday nights. The wholesale clear-cutting of trees led to soil erosion, which affected farms.

Carl Wright (near top of ladder) at his gold mine, Combs, 1918. Chloe Thomas Collection (S-97-1-215)

There have been several—largely unsuccessful—attempts to find other valuable resources in the county. Jasper H. Combs claimed that he had found a “long, lost Spanish [gold] mine” and the remains of a smelter on the Kings River, but nothing came of it. In 1918 Carl Wright sunk a sixty-foot mine shaft at Combs, looking for gold. Investors bought stock and the town’s population increased, but the venture failed a few months later. Wright tried again in 1933, paying miners $2 a day to haul, crush, and smelt rock in order to extract the metal. Only a few flecks of gold were found.

Oil and gas drilling tests occurred at Witter, Clifty, Huntsville, and nearby Georgetown from the 1920s to the 1950s. The most successful mining operation in the county was that of the War Eagle Lime Company near Huntsville. It excavated and crushed lime in the 1950s and 1960s for use as an agricultural soil amendment.

Girl Scouts at Camp Noark near Huntsville, June 1979. Charles Bickford, photographer. Springdale News Collection (SN 6-1979 #8)

The land itself is a natural resource for learning opportunities. In 1964 the NOARK (North Arkansas) Girl Scout Council purchased over 1,000 acres of land just north of Huntsville. When Camp Noark opened three years later, scouts learned such skills as how to take initiative and be self-reliant. As a way to learn resourcefulness, early campers made do with “lashing instead of tables, wood fire instead of stove, lantern instead of electricity, [and] singing instead of TV.” The Girl Scouts-Diamonds Council closed the camp at the end of the 2016 season because of high costs and declining use. However Girl Scout troops, church groups, and others can now rent the facilities, with the fees going to help maintain the camp. At the 15,000-acre Ozark Natural Science Center near Forum, students experience “hands-on and minds-on outdoor science education” by experiencing the “beauty and unique biodiversity of the Ozarks’ natural environment.” Developed by Ken and RuAnn Ewing and a small group of folks in 1989, the center now serves yearly over 3,000 students from Arkansas and Oklahoma. Specialty programs include yoga retreats, a Father’s Day camping weekend, eco-art, and caving.

Ken Ewing (right) at the Ozark Natural Science Center near Forum, December 11, 1992. Travis Doster, photographer. Springdale News Collection (SN 12-11-1992)

“Green Burgess and Luker [Luke] Carter were killed instantly about noon Tuesday near Wharton when the boiler of a sawmill, which they were operating, exploded. . . . Burgess was blown through the roof of the mill shed and his horribly mangled body fell only a few feet from where he had stood. . . . So terrific was the explosion that the boiler was blown about 25 feet from its base.”
Green Burgess’ obituary
Rogers Democrat, August 26, 1915

St. Louis and San Francisco Railroad car at the Yount Stave Mill near the Frisco depot (far left), Pettigrew, 1900s. Mary Harrell Collection (S-99-17)

Water-run gristmills were among the first businesses in the county, grinding corn and wheat. Hawkins Mill on War Eagle Creek and the Withrow Mill at Withrow Springs were both established in the mid-1830s. The first steam-powered mill was built in 1881 by F. M. Sams in Huntsville for $6,400. It produced twenty barrels of flour daily. The Kingston Roller Mill was built by J. D. Basore Sr. and his sons in 1898. It took eight wagons to bring the heavy machinery from Springdale.

When Joel N. Bunch moved to Kingston in 1880, he opened a general store. But the poor roads and rugged terrain kept salesmen away. So he hauled his merchandise from Springfield, Missouri, sometimes taking three weeks to cover the over-200-mile-round trip. He also purchased materials gathered or produced by his neighbors. He sold mink, possum, and fox pelts to fur merchants, plants like goldenseal and ginseng to pharmaceutical companies, and honey and sorghum to his customers. Bunch began the Kingston Spoke Plant in 1907 and made wheel spokes for buggies and wagons for over twenty years. He also established and built the Bank of Kingston in 1911, complete with beautiful wood tellers’ cages and a vault advertised as “Fire, Mob, and Burglar Proof.” Today the building is home to Anstaff Bank.

For a long time the county’s industry and economy were tied to its forests. In 1887 the railroad shipped out 15,000 carloads of railroad ties and props for mine pits, valued at $2 million. One of the biggest players was the Phipps Lumber Company which, at its peak, received hundreds of wagons of lumber, barrel staves, and ties daily at its Pettigrew facility. At Drakes Creek, Noah Johnson manufactured about 40,000 wagon bows annually (woods supports used to hold up the canvas coverings of wagons). The timber industry still plays a role today, with at least seven major sawmills county-wide. The Richland Handle Company started in Delaney in the mid-1950s but moved to Wesley in 1964. It makes handles for such items as garden tools, shovels, and hammers. At St. Paul, Willhite Forest Products produces slats for shipping pallets, lumber for flooring, and railroad ties. The Royal Oak Charcoal plant near Huntsville uses waste slabs from sawmills to make charcoal for outdoor grills.

In 2016 the Huntsville Economic Development Commission created a plan to address local needs, including developing an industrial site, retaining and expanding businesses, and increasing tourism. Over in Hindsville, Arkansas Hemp Genetics had partnered with the University of Arkansas to study hemp flowers, a source of cannabidiol (CBD), a non-addictive substance that some believe has medical potential. But plans for a farm and production facility seem unlikely to come to pass.

“In 1919, [S. D.] Albright was the first man to order trucks to be used in the timber business [in Red Star]. Two GMC service trucks arrived in Pettigrew by train, but nobody knew how to drive them. However, after some practice, the men took the trucks to the woods with visions of returning loaded with wood. Gayle Edwards Eversole told me that instead, they returned with mules hooked to the front of the trucks because the trucks couldn’t pull the load.”
Wayne Martin
Pettigrew, Arkansas, Hardwood Capital of the World, 2010

Schoolgirls from War Eagle township, early 1890s. From left, Stella Mae Brodie, Norah S. Routh (front), Jodie True, and Myrtle Routh. Mark Strube Collection (S-93-66-4)

The county’s first school was said to have been built of logs on Sweden Creek in 1833, near present-day Kingston. Schools in Huntsville and old St. Paul soon followed. At the time there were no state-sponsored schools, only three-month-long, private subscription schools. The private Huntsville Masonic Institute, one of the first colleges in Arkansas, was built in 1855. The Pleasant View Female Seminary was chartered the same year, with five-month terms costing $8 each. The young ladies studied such subjects as history, grammar, spelling, and “mental arithmetic.” The former institution was run by future governor Isaac Murphy while the latter was run by at least two of his daughters. Both institutions closed in 1861 with the outbreak of the Civil War.

The first county school district was formed in Huntsville in 1868 and by 1897 there were 125 districts. In 1879 the county had 4,397 school-age children, but a little less than one-quarter were enrolled, with roughly half that amount (484) attending classes on any given day. There were a number of private and specialty schools during the late 1800s and early 1900s. The Huntsville Academy offered grades one through eight as well as training for teachers. Jesse Bird organized the Hindsville Academy and later Bird College, a private high school in Huntsville.

“Old Main” at Huntsville State Vocational School, 1930s. Lucille Phillips Collection (S-99-1-262)

In the 1920s the Kingston school came under the guidance of the Reverend Elmer J. Bouher, who was developing the large, progressive Kingston Community Presbyterian Church to “improve” the lives of local residents, in part through education. As school superintendent, Otto Ernest Rayburn worked hard to create a four-year accredited high school. The Huntsville State Vocational School opened in 1929 and trained students in life skills and trades such as “domestic arts” and agriculture. It was the first school in the county with indoor bathrooms, but there was one problem—the town didn’t have a sewer system. So the students’ first learning opportunity involved digging a hole for a septic system. In 1934 the school wanted to begin a football program, but there was opposition. In protest, students boycotted classes one day, going to nearby Governor’s Hill for a picnic. They won their battle. A team was formed, even though the school didn’t have uniforms or equipment. The players wore their overalls.

Whorton Creek School students and teacher, 1948. Back, from left: J. Mathis, Blenda Mathis (teacher), and LaVerne Cook. Front, from left: Joyce Mathis, Barbara Fowler, and Barbara Carlock. Courtesy Barbara Robertson and the Madison County Genealogical and Historical Society

Up until 1954 state laws mandated segregation between the races. Shady Grove School District (near Whorton Creek) was created by the Madison County Court in the early 1870s as a “colored school” for the children of those freed blacks who had stayed in the county after the Civil War. But by 1946 there was only one African-American child of school age, and setting up separate accommodation for her would have been costly. So Laverne Cook was quietly enrolled into the Lower Whorton Creek School where by all accounts she was treated like the other students, participating in all school activities for the year she attended.

The state’s large number of small, often rural school districts led, in part, to school consolidation, beginning in 1948. The plan was favored by the county board of education but not by parents, who wanted to keep their community schools. The county’s supervisor of schools received several threats against his life. But, with careful explanation and time, folks began to see the benefits of grouping funds and resources into a few schools. The county went from 122 school districts to two, with only one today. The Huntsville School District is geographically the third-largest in the state. It operates six schools in Huntsville and St. Paul. But enrollment is dropping, with some students transferring to Elkins, Springdale, and Fayetteville schools, all in Washington County.

“The Kingston High School is a school with a soul.  . . . It is earnestly trying to meet the educational needs of a people typically American, in the unhampered environment of the beautiful Ozark Hills.  . . . Its goal is to give to the youth of the mountain sector of Arkansas such an appreciation of beauty, such a thorough knowledge of principles, such a vision of things worth while that, having taken hold of the handles of the plow, they will not look back.”
Otto Ernest Rayburn and W. Gordon Ross
Ozark Life, Kingston, Arkansas, 1925

St. Louis and San Francisco passenger train, Patrick, 1920s-early 1930s. James Bayles Collection (S-88-73-10)

The county’s vast hardwood forests were a magnet for railroad development. The first to be built into the county was the Fayetteville and Little Rock Railroad (soon purchased and expanded by the St. Louis and San Francisco Railroad, the “Frisco”). In 1886 the initial line ran twenty-five miles southeast from Fayette Junction (Washington County) to Crosses, before pushing on to St. Paul and later Pettigrew by the end of the century. The short-lived Combs, Cass, and Eastern Railroad was built out of Combs by the J. H. Phipps Lumber Company of Fayetteville, to take advantage of a large stand of oak in nearby Franklin County.

The Frisco’s St. Paul Branch was important to the development of southern Madison County. Boomtowns and businesses grew along the line, including the timber and canning industries. Cash crops were shipped out as well, such as watermelon and tomatoes. By the 1930s the nation had entered the Great Depression. Much of the available timber had been cut down and the workers were gone, reducing the need for freight and passenger service. Without revenue, the railroad couldn’t afford to replace its worn-out infrastructure. The last scheduled train ran in July 1937.

Dedication of Highway 68, Huntsville Square, November 10, 1949. With future governor Orval E. Faubus (speaking) and Governor Sid McMath (seated, fourth from left). Gov. Orval E. Faubus Collection (S-90-48-37)

In the 1940s portions of Highway 68 (now Highway 412) west of Huntsville had yet to be paved. When the work was finished in 1949, a grand celebration was held in Huntsville. Thousands of residents, visitors, and dignitaries, including Governor Sid McMath, came together for prayers, speeches, a parade, a ribbon cutting, and a homemade lunch on the square for a crowd of nearly 5,000. In later years, Governor Orval E. Faubus, a native of Greasy Creek (near Combs), continued to improve or build area roads and highways, in an effort to make Madison County an important “crossroads” for Northwest Arkansas.

Highway 68 dedication community dinner with food tables in center, November 10, 1949. Golda Skaggs Collection (S-97-1-102)

Located on a shaved-off mountaintop at 1,748 feet above sea level, the Huntsville Municipal Airport is the highest airport in Arkansas. It was completed in 1986 with LaBarge Electronics in mind. The manufacturer of high-performance electronics needed a place for potential clients’ to land their corporate jets. Mayor Charles E. Coger led the effort to secure grants and other funding. He and others put in volunteer hours surveying the property, operating a bulldozer, and building a security fence.

“Remember, folks, bring enough [food] for yourself and some for our visitors [at the Highway 68 dedication]. . . . The least we can do for all our visitors is to feed them. That might look like a difficult job, but we know that when a Madison County housewife cooks an ordinary ‘dinner-on-the-ground’ meal, that it will feed at least two families beside her own. All we have to do is for each to do his own little part and there will be a super abundance.”
Orval E. Faubus
Madison County Record, November 3, 1949

Kingston High School students exercising on the basketball court, mid 1920s. Rev. Elmer J. Bouher, photographer. Hidy Bouher Eby, Butch Bouher, and Lota Dee Bouher Lagan Collection (S-2001-2-124)

Doctors came to Madison County in the mid-1800s, some with college degrees, others having learned their craft by working with experienced physicians. Dr. George Counts started his forty-eight-year practice in Wesley in the late 1890s, visiting his patients first by horseback, then horse-drawn buggy, and later by car. He was said to have delivered two thousand babies. In Pettigrew, Dr. William Henry Mooney charged twenty-five cents to pull a tooth. Like most doctors, he took payment in the form of goods or labor, such as cured hams, horse feed, or a plowed garden. Mooney encouraged his son-in-law, Arthur Barker, to move his drugstore from Kingston to Pettigrew. The Mooney-Barker drug store opened in 1917, offering more than medicine over the years, including gasoline, poultry supplies, a soda fountain, bananas, and pawnbroker services.

Following the rapid rise of Eureka Springs (Carroll County) after the discovery of “healing waters” in 1879, other towns tried to establish their own health resorts. A two-story hotel and several cabins were built at Aurora on Grand Mountain, so patrons could take advantage of the Chalybeate Spring with its iron salts. In 1887 Hugh McDanield planned a hotel and spa at Big Spring near St. Paul, but died before construction could begin.

Beulah Frederick, a trained Red Cross nurse, came to Kingston around 1919 at the behest of the Reverend Elmer J. Bouher of the Kingston Community Presbyterian Church. It was part of his mission to see to the health needs of the community. Frederick taught hygiene to students and childcare to mothers, delivered babies, and ran a children’s clinic. A small health center began operating in 1926 with its first patient, a young man with typhoid. The standard treatment was medicine and three glasses of buttermilk daily. Healthful practices extended to the school as well, which had active exercise and sports programs for boys and girls.

Huntsville Memorial Hospital under construction, Summer 1950. Roy’s Photoshop, photographer. May Reed Markley Collection (S-84-155-108)

In 1949 voters approved the construction of a county hospital in Huntsville. With the passage of an $80,000 bond issue and donations of construction materials, equipment, and labor, and cash and furnishings supplied through local clubs, the twenty-one bed Madison County Memorial Hospital soon opened. But questions about finances and management plagued the hospital and it closed around 1954. Hometown native Dr. Austin Smith opened a clinic in the building and was largely responsible for reopening the hospital in the mid-1960s. He was on hand in 1980 for groundbreaking ceremonies for the new Huntsville Memorial Hospital. But financial problems persisted. The hospital closed in 1992.

Since then several clinics and health centers have opened their doors including the Boston Mountain Rural Health Center and the Madison County Medical and Surgical Group. The latter was begun by Dr. Tom Whiting in part with community support of $40,000 in fund raisers and funding and equipment from an anonymous benefactor. The Madison County Health Coalition began in 2000 with the goal to “maintain and seek local resources to achieve better health for our community.” A recent campaign featured high school students recording anti-tobacco radio ads. The Madison County Health Unit offers many services such as family planning, vaccinations, public health preparedness, and environmental health issues such as general sanitation, water-well testing, and West-Nile virus surveillance.

“‘Everybody drank likker [liquor] then but nobody got drunk,’ Uncle George continued, ‘My daddy made us kids drink a tablespoonful of whiskey every morning before breakfast to keep the chills off. . . . I didn’t like the stuff.'”
George Hogg Brashears (as quoted by Steele T. Kennedy)
Ozarks Mountaineer, August 1961

Aftermath of the May 29, 1925, Huntsville fire.  J. C. Hawkins, photographer. Lucille Phillips Collection (S-99-1-277)

Madison County has seen its share of disasters. Major droughts in 1854, 1874, and 1901 caused much hardship and crop destruction. In 1884 sheets of rain fell for six hours, flooding Hock and Cobb creeks. A cabin housing two families was caught in the torrent and floated downstream. While the men were able to escape through the roof, the eight people trapped inside were drowned. In 1886 a heavy snow left twenty-four inches on the ground. Several years later, folks in the Drakes Creek area experienced a “black snow,” where a layer of dirt covered about fifteen inches of white snow. It was so cold that winter that the snowfall didn’t melt until April.

County records were lost each time the courthouse burned. When Huntsville was set on fire by Union forces during the Civil War, the records were taken by the Union Army to Springfield, Missouri, only to be lost or destroyed. Kingston was also destroyed during the war. Much of downtown Huntsville was lost to fire on two other occasions in the early 1900s.

Tornado damage at Marble, April 1945. Carroll County Heritage Center Collection (S-85-67-5)

A 1945 tornado caused much devastation in the southern part of the county. In Crosses, only two buildings were left standing. At Japton, two women “were left sitting on a bed [uninjured] after the walls and roof had blown away.” A bolt of lightning hit a tree stump and blasted a large hole in the ground at Mt. Pleasant (near Whitener). In Aurora, nearly all the older buildings were blown down, including the school. At Wharton’s Creek “a valuable brood mare was blown a great distance” and had to be put down because of her injuries. In all, ten people were killed and many injured. Property damage was widespread, with about one hundred buildings destroyed.

“Not a thing could be salvaged [at the Sam Doss homestead in Marble]. The bodies of the mother and [her six] children were scattered promiscuously among the ruins. . . . The wind had whipped the clothing from their bodies, one of the children had been blown to the top of a bush. Keeping a strange watch over the place was the family dog, that walked in circles about the debris.”
Madison County Record, April 19, 1945

Outhouse race at Hawgfest, Huntsville, August 7, 1993. J. D. Watkins, photographer. Jay-Dee Studio Collection (86101)

Fiddlers contests were popular county-wide during the 1800s and up into the mid-1900s. Musicians competed in categories such as “old time,” stunt, jazz, or classical. Prizes included cash, merchandise, and services such as a sack of tobacco, a set of fiddle strings, or a “haircut, shave, massage, tonic, etc.” In 1926 seventy-seven-year-old John C. Calico of Drakes Creek was awarded the champion-fiddler title for Arkansas. During the 1920s and 1930s folks living in Marble gathered on the banks of the Kings River for fish fries. In 1929 a huge turkey and goose shoot was held in Huntsville, just in time for Thanksgiving. The tradition carried on there and in other communities like Alabam and Kingston for many years.

Rodeos were popular as well and included many offerings. At the two-day rodeo and picnic in Hindsville in 1927 there were speakers, races, ball games, a band concert, barbecue dinners, bronco-busting, and airplane stunt-flying by the Quinn-Willard Flying Circus. Huntsville held its first amateur rodeo in 1949. Organized by the Huntsville Riding Club, the event featured a parade with horse riders and floats and traditional rodeo contests such as calf roping and bull riding. In 1962 the new Sky-High Arena opened on Governor’s Hill. Today’s rodeo offers events for women, including barrel-racing and breakaway-roping.

The Huntsville city park (now Polk Square) was the scene for many community activities during the 20th century. In the 1930s the park was home to turkey shoots, Easter egg hunts, celebrations of local veterans, political speeches, concerts, carnival rides and shows, Farm Bureau picnics, and reunions of former residents. In 1986 the Chamber of Commerce organized “Hawgfest,” a celebration held at the park and other venues. Over the years the event included food such as “Pig-Out Barbeques” and “Hawgdogs” and such activities as outhouse races, a rodeo, a golf tournament, arts and crafts booths, a “Hawgshoot” with muzzle-loading shotguns, music, a 5K run, contests for lip-syncing to songs, “hillbilly hawg-calling,” and the catching of greased pigs. The last festival was held in 2004.

“The canning factory at Delaney is almost completed. . . . A dance was given and two hundred and seventy-five people were present and most all took part in the dance. Even though some were opposed to this gathering, it was a very successful affair . . . there being not a bit of trouble from any cause.”
Madison County Record, April 25, 1925

Visitors at Richland Creek, Ozark National Forest, Madison County, Arkansas, 1980s. Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism Collection (S-85-247-6)

Madison County became a member of the Ozark Playgrounds Association in the 1920s, a regional group out of Missouri which promoted tourism in the “Land of a Million Smiles.” Newspaper articles touted the charms of the county but also told about the need for better roads. Tourist camps were established in Kingston and Brashears Junction to meet the needs of the motoring public who wanted to stop and camp awhile. Although Huntsville leaders discussed creating such a camp, it appears that one was never built.

The Crossbowettes strike up a pose, Governor’s Hill, Huntsville, October 1962. From left: Beverly Alverson, Shirley Duncan Franklin, Susie McDonald Montgomery, Linda Owens Womack, Diane McKinney Johnson, and Juanita Thompson Shephard. Pat Donat, photographer. Northwest Arkansas Times Collection (NWAT D-62-10)

In 1957 shooting enthusiast Arlis Coger worked to lure an annual crossbow tournament from Blanchard Springs in north-central Arkansas to Huntsville, donating land on Governor’s Hill for the festivities. Medieval-themed activities included costumed contestants, crossbow shooting, a queen and her court, and a banquet. The Crossbowettes, a high-school girls’ organization, performed archery tricks for an enthusiastic crowd. The tournament moved to Withrow Springs State Park in 1966, where the event’s pageantry lessened over time, only to resume again in the late 1990s as Renaissance festivals gained in popularity. The last tournament was held in 2003.

Swimming pool at Withrow Springs State Park near Huntsville, June 1968. Charles Bickford, photographer. Springdale News Collection (SN 7-1968-8)

Much of the county’s tourism is nature-based. Just north of Huntsville, Withrow Springs State Park opened in 1965, following a gift of land from timber baron Roscoe Hobbs. Featuring campsites, picnic areas, trails, and the county’s only public swimming pool, the park was a popular destination. Attendance has declined in recent years, especially with the 2018 closure of the pool because of repair costs. Other outdoor attractions include the Kings River Falls Natural Area near Venus, Sweden Creek Falls near Kingston, and the Ozark National Forest. The forest covers much of the southern part of Madison County, extending through sixteen counties in total.

The county’s small, winding roads through farmland and forests are a great draw for motorcyclists, especially in the fall. A few community events have popped up, including Huntsville’s first “Bluegrass and BBQ” event, which began in 2017. In Kingston, performers play in the downtown gazebo as part of “Music on the Square.” Realizing that tourism should be regionally based, rather than by city or county, Madison County economic development officials joined a 2012 initiative to brand four counties with the slogan, “Explore Northwest Arkansas.” A website includes such Huntsville attractions as the farmers’ market, Oakridge Golf Course, and Mitchusson Park Bike Course, designed for riders to hone their mountain-biking skills. Volunteers helped build several stunt features “designed to mimic natural elements found in the region.”

“The cotton pickin’ government is trying to take us over. . . . It’s already taken over the Buffalo (River). Now they’re trying to work down and take both sides of the Kings River. . . . Now they’re making the area a tourist attraction, so bureaucrats can come in here and lollygag and kick us out. I came out to here to get away from civilization, not to pile up in the middle of the big mucky mucks.”
Al Bergstrom
Arkansas Democrat, May 7, 1979

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Logging truck, Newton County, 1970s-1980s. Carl P. Hitt, photographer. Shiloh Museum Collection (S-2016-24-32)

By 1900 the population had swelled to 12,538, due in part to land speculators and new, out-of-state homesteaders. Timber harvesting joined mining as a major economic force. Large lumber companies and many local individuals bought thousands of acres of timber land. Numerous sawmills and logging camps were set up to harvest and process logs into railroad ties, mine props, barrel staves, pencils, dimensional lumber, equipment handles, furniture, and the like. It wasn’t long before the county’s extensive virgin forests were cut-over.

At the turn of the 20th century, cotton was a primary source of income for area farmers, but boll weevils decimated this cash crop. Other important agricultural products included livestock, wheat, corn, oats, and fruit. But without reliable and inexpensive transportation, these industries failed to thrive as long-term sources of revenue.

Newton County experienced a brief industry boom during World War I, fueled by the need for metals in the manufacture of cartridge and shell casings. Land rich in zinc and lead fostered the establishment of mines in Ponca, Pruitt, and Bald Hill. But a drop in prices and the inability to easily export these resources after war’s end lead to their demise.

The population of Newton County dropped steadily from 1900 to 1960, with an all time low of around 5,700 residents. It began a slow recovery beginning in the 1960s with the influx of newcomers arriving with the back-to-the-land movement. This growth continued in the 1980s.

Canoeists on the Buffalo River, Newton County, about 1989. Shiloh Museum Collection (S-2016-24-41)

The county’s rugged geography has had a significant impact on its history and people. The progressive changes brought about in the past 100 years for most of the U.S. were late to arrive. Rural electrification was introduced as late as 1937; the first high-power lines weren’t installed until 1949. The first modern roads did not come until the 1950s, preventing sustained growth in manufacturing and industry.

However, it is the very nature of Newton County’s geographic seclusion which is largely responsible for the preservation of the natural beauty which attracts visitors from all over the world. Today tourism is the county’s major industry. Attractions include dude ranches and the Buffalo River which draws over 800,000 visitors each year. Ecotourism activities like hiking, camping, caving, outdoor cookouts, rock-climbing, and zip-lining in the Ozark National Forest and Lost Valley are popular. Many retirees come to the county to enjoy an easy-going lifestyle and beautiful scenery.

Timber continues to play an important economic role. While production has dramatically decreased over the decades, small-scale sawmills and other wood-product companies are still found amongst the hillsides.

The 2010 census reflects the relative isolation of Newton County. With 8,330 residents it is the 7th least-populated county in the state. Its population density is just 10 people per square mile. The largest city is the county seat of Jasper, with 466 people. Countywide, the median income is about $17,000 per person. More than 8,000 people self-identify as white, 9 as African-American, 90 as Native American, 25 as Asian, and 141 as having Hispanic origin.

Newton County’s rural past is still evident in the small, isolated communities tucked amongst its hillsides and valleys. This way of life is recognized and treasured in many ways, from the designation of the Buffalo as the country’s first National River in 1972 to the creation of the Big Buffalo Valley Historic District at Boxley in 1987. Fayetteville author Donald Harington immortalized the long-gone community of Murray via his mythical and magical “Stay More” novels. In them he blended the speech and manners of rural Newton County with plenty of tall-tales involving six generations of the Ingledew clan.

Newton County courthouse, Jasper, July 3, 1927.  John Robinson Collection (S-99-66-291)

“Most everyone became panic stricken, rushing down the main aisle for the door, screaming and shouting. . . . All was in wild confusion and the noise was so loud that it was heard a mile or more away.”

J. Town Greenhaw
(Jasper, AR) Informer, February 28, 1948

There have been several courthouses in Newton County over the years. The first was a log structure, burned during the Civil War. After the war, court was held in several places, including a doctor’s office, a school building, and a saloon. Around 1873 Robbie Hobbs was charged with building a courthouse that would “last forever.” He built it out of cobblestone and coated the walls with mortar, polishing them until they were smooth and hard. Supposedly, a woman picked at the finish one day and made a hole. Some townsfolk, unsatisfied with the quality of the builder’s work, are said to have killed Hobbs.

A Christmas Eve party in the mid 1880s was held in the courtroom, even though a few cracks had begun to appear in the building’s walls. As the people awaited their gifts, someone shouted, “The courthouse is falling!” Panic struck. Some ran into the wood stove, knocking down the stove pipe. Many made a dash for the door while others leaped from the windows. Out on the lawn, women screamed for their children as doctors examined the wounded. Eventually the crowd quieted enough to receive their gifts. Apparently the building was strong enough to last another 15 or so years.

In 1902 land was purchased on the town square to build a new, two-story, limestone-veneer structure. In 1938 the courthouse burned to the ground, possibly as a result of arson. Many records were destroyed. A new courthouse, built by the Works Progress Administration, was begun in 1939 and completed three years later. Billed as fireproof, the Art Deco-style building has a concrete foundation and is made of stone quarried from the Little Buffalo River. It cost $42,000. The building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994.

Jasper’s courthouse square has been the scene of many celebrations including the Newton County Fair and the dedication of the paving of Highway 7.

Newton County courthouse, Jasper, Arkansas, circa 1984. Mary Parsons, photographer. Shiloh Museum Collection (S-84-90-17)

Susie Villines with a kettle from the saltpeter works at Bat Cave, Boxley Valley, about 1960. It was used as a wash kettle for many years and first came into the family from Mrs. Villines’ grandfather, Abraham Clark. Courtesy Kenneth L. Smith, photographer.

“The enemy, surprised, barely attempted to form and scattered. …They fled in dismay, a race for life. In the charge and in pursuit for 8 miles, 30 were killed, a number wounded, and 8 taken prisoners. 23 heads of horses captured, and some 25 stand of arms, the larger portion of which was destroyed.”

Col. John E. Phelps
Second Arkansas [Union] Cavalry
April 23, 1864

The 1860 census listed 25 enslaved African-Americans for Newton County, less than one percent of the total population. Although there were no major Civil War battles in Newton County, skirmishes, bushwhackers, guerrilla bands, and divided families took their toll. Like the rest of Northwest Arkansas, some residents allied with the Union while others joined the Confederacy. The area’s many caves and isolated valleys hid men and supplied cover for military activities.

Malinda Newberry Logan lived on Kenner Creek near the Hopewell Community. During the war bushwhackers came to her home to steal food. They also ripped open the feather mattresses and rode their horses over them. The bedding was re-stuffed with dried leaves, causing a later band of marauding bushwhackers to remark, “Look here at this damn hog bed.” Malinda heard about a neighboring family who tried to hide their cured meat within a wall. The meat was discovered when grease stains penetrated the wood during warm weather.

The area’s natural resources were vital to regional war efforts. Lead deposits were mined to make bullets. Confederate forces established a saltpeter works at Bat Cave, near the headwaters of the Buffalo River. Saltpeter (potassium nitrate) is used to make gunpowder. It’s often found in the soil of caves heavy with bat and bird droppings. The soil was dug out and removed to wood vats. Water was filtered through and then boiled in large, iron kettles for hours, causing the formation of nitrate crystals. In January 1863 the First Iowa Cavalry destroyed the works, burning and smashing the equipment. The kettles were rescued by locals and put to use for washing clothes and scalding hogs, well into the 20th century. A few still sit in yards today.

The county’s biggest skirmishes occurred in April 1864. During the battle of Whiteley’s Mill (now Boxley), Confederate guerrilla bands, including one lead by Captain John Cecil, fought a scout patrol lead by Captain William Orr of the Second Arkansas (US) Cavalry. Cecil, a Confederate, was Newton County’s former sheriff; his brothers fought for the Union. After two hours of fighting, the Union side withdrew due to lack of ammunition.

A few days later Orr joined with Major Melton and others to search for Confederates whose mission was to disrupt Union supply trains passing through the county from southern Missouri. The Union forces tried to sneak up on the Confederates, who were camped in Limestone Valley, but were spotted by a scout. Still, the Confederate camp was in disarray when it was attacked on either side by Union soldiers, who pursued the fleeing Confederates for eight miles through wooded mountains.

Workers possibly threshing oats, with a cornfield in the background, Western Grove, 1910s. Boone County Library/Edith Welburn Collection (S-87-127-88)

“The only obstacle in raising turkeys in those days was that the woods was full of wild turkey, and my turkeys would mix with them and refuse to return to their home.”

James Villines
History of Newton County, 1950

Early settlers generally raised enough food and livestock to meet their immediate needs. Most farms were small, given the steep and heavily forested hills. Farmers grew clover, sorghum, corn, peas, and beans in the river bottoms and along the mountain “benches,” narrow shelves of land. Larger farms existed in the northeast section of the county and along the river bottoms, where fields of barley, oats, rye, corn, alfalfa, and wheat grew well. Around the turn of the 20th century cotton was the principal crop, but boll weevils took their toll.

Families ground their corn into cornmeal at home or, more likely, took it to their local grist mill, such as the Whiteley Mill in Boxley Valley. Hogs were fattened up and slaughtered in the fall. The dead hog was scalded in a vat of hot water and hung up by its back legs. The hair was scraped off, the blood drained out, and the entrails removed. Then the carcass was butchered. The meat was salted down and hung in the smokehouse for curing. The fat was rendered into lard, the skin fried into cracklings, and the remaining bits turned into sausage and head cheese. “Hog-killing time” was often a time for neighbor to help neighbor. They’d share both work and meat. Children enjoyed playing with the “balloon” made from the hog’s bladder.

In the late 1800s, James “Beaver Jim” Villines grew corn in the rich bottomland of Boxley Valley. But first he had to clear the land of a thick growth of river cane. It was hard work because, after the cane had been dug out, it had to be burned. But the soil was rich and Villines could get 50 bushels of corn or more per acre. He raised turkeys, grew sweet potatoes, and sold seed and plants to his neighbors. Villines was a successful hunter, trapping otter, mink, and beaver. Beaver skins sold for $3 each while high-quality otter pelts went for $20.

Over in Low Gap, Isaac Whishon grew fruit trees and berries on a hillside bench. He was so good at it that he had excess fruit. He purchased an evaporator and began drying fresh apples and peaches. Sometimes he would spread cut fruit to dry on the roof of his home. His wife Cynthia turned the fruit into preserves and fruit butters.

Some farmers ran small-scale beef operations for the cash it would bring. In the early 1900s there were concerns about southern cattle being infected by ticks carrying Texas fever, a contagious and deadly disease. While local cattle might have some immunity, midwestern and northern cattle did not. It was feared that cattle shipped north for slaughter might bring the disease. In 1906 the federal government began a tick eradication program, asking farmers to dip their cattle biweekly in vats of pesticide. While some farmers welcomed the effort, many were against the program, angry about the government’s intervention. In Newton County, tick inspectors met resistance. One inspector noted, “Some trouble here at first, as many refused to dip cattle.” But in 1914 the county was considered free from Texas fever.

Dinner on the ground at Easter, Plumlee, 1910s. Newton County Times Collection (S-88-234-97)

“This little church [at Walnut Grove, in the Boxley Valley] has been the scene of worship and weddings, revivals, and funerals for many years. . . . Near the church is a cemetery where our babies, our spouses, our parents, and our grandparents rest in peace.”

Orphea Duty (1969)
Old Folks Talking, 2006

The first churches were small, log structures. As communities prospered, larger, wood-frame buildings were built. These buildings were often shared by churches, schools, and fraternal organizations. They were places where the community gathered for all kinds of events, from revivals to school pageants to fund-raising pie suppers.

Religious activities occurred outdoors as well. Baptisms were held in the Buffalo River and other county streams. In the summer and fall, brush arbor revivals were held under a rough wood structure roofed with brush and leaves. Participants often sat on wood benches to sing, testify, and listen to sermons. Dinners on the ground were social affairs held by the members of a congregation. Sheets and blankets laid on the ground in a long row held all kinds of wonderful food.

Circuit-riding preachers traveled by horseback from one country church to another, preaching to and praying with the locals. Families fed and housed the preachers whenever they passed through their community.

In Lurton, Uncle Dan Hefley tended to his flock at the Lurton Assembly for over 20 years, beginning in 1944. He could baptize up to 40 people a day. When she was young, Hefley’s daughter Lillie often traveled with him by foot or horseback to participate in revivals at Hasty, Low Gap, Jasper, Mt. Judea, and Gum Springs. Some revivals lasted over two weeks. Lillie remembered a few Sundays when her father couldn’t preach because the church’s altar, where he stood, would be filled with people seeking the Lord, wanting to be saved.

Jim Tate driving a log wagon, William Armer’s place, Osage Township, 1910s-1920s. Eva Taylor and Wally Waits Collection (S-85-51-6)

“The breaking of the log jam [on the Buffalo River] became a risk for the floaters. . . . As long as the logs are in a jammed stage, a person can run across them with ease, but when they begin to separate, stepping on them causes the logs to turn. This is what happened to my brother [Craft J. Lackey]. When he finally made it to the bank, he lost no time in locating the foreman to tell him that he had no further desire to float logs.”

Daniel Boone Lackey
Arkansas Historical Quarterly, 1960

Early settlers in Newton County found virgin forests full of ancient oak, ash, walnut, pine, and hickory. Red cedars lined the banks of the Buffalo River. One amazing cedar tree near Pruitt was about 42 inches in diameter at the ground and around 85 feet tall.

Besides using timber for building homes and barns, wood had commercial value. Local farmers could cut logs or barrel stave bolts for a much-needed infusion of cash. In the Low Gap area, Amos B. Lackey cut cedar trees during the winter in the 1880s. One year he was able to buy luxuries for his family including a metal washboard and clothes wringer for his wife, a set of harnesses for himself, and a “Hot Springs” diamond ring (quartz) for his daughter.

Logging was hard work and held many risks. Portable sawmills and stave mills were set up throughout the county, moving from section to section. Without a railroad line running through the county, transporting logs to market was difficult. Mule teams were used to snake logs out of the woods and haul log wagons over rough roads to neighboring counties and their railroad depots. Beginning in the early 1900s, tens of thousands of red cedar logs were floated down the Buffalo River to be turned into pencils.

The timber woods were soon depleted. After operating out of Boxley Valley for over two decades, the Malnar brothers of Austria left around 1940 once they could no longer find white oaks big enough to turn into barrel staves. By the 1950s most of the first- and second-growth trees were gone. Without reliable timber sales, the local economy faltered. Today many county farmers still use their timber woods to supplement their income, whether by cutting firewood or selling logs to manufacturers.

In 1989 several local environmental groups opposed a large-scale logging operation east of Jasper by Mountain Pine Timber. They were concerned about its impact on water quality, wildlife, and soil conservation. But some residents were in favor of the logging, both for the work the industry would bring and to protect property rights.

The southern half of Newton County is part of the much larger Ozark-St. Francis National Forests. When it was created in 1908, what was then the Ozark National Forest was, for a time, the nation’s only major hardwood timber land protected by the government. Purchasing cut-over land where virgin timber once stood, the U.S. Forest Service aimed to provide a renewable hardwood source for the area’s wood-based industries. Under today’s multiple-use management system, the forests’ 1.2 million acres are used for timber harvesting, recreational activities, grazing, and protection of wilderness and wildlife management areas. Counties receive 25% of revenues from use of resources. Much of these funds come from timber sales.

Mrs. Garrett Jones and children at their home, Newton County, 1933-1935. Opal and Ernest Nicholson, photographers. Katie McCoy Collection (S-95-181-31)

“We heard a lot about the depression on the radio and in the newspapers, how it was so hard on everybody across the country. But we weren’t bothered by it that much. . . . Maybe out in the eastern part of the county people might have been on welfare, but here in Boxley we had our good farms, and we raised about everything that we needed.”

Orphea Duty (April 1, 1996)
Old Folks Talking, 2006

In the 1930s timber was playing out, jobs were becoming scarce, and a regional drought affected farming severely. In some ways, the Great Depression hurt city folks more than country folks. The latter were used to being self-sufficient, producing their own food and making or repairing much of what they needed.

Cash might be earned by selling animal skins, stave bolts (used in barrel making), or goldenseal roots and ginseng, medicinal plants which grew in the wild. ‘Seal was used as an antiseptic and to stop bleeding while ‘seng was prized in Asia for its believed ability to restore and prolong youth.

But for some, their farms were too poor or their luck too rotten to make things work. They left the county, seeking employment elsewhere. Over in Boxley Valley, Tom and Gracie Fults moved to Ohio while the children of Tim Villines, a former enslaved worker, relocated to Oklahoma.

Some county residents received aid from the federal government. Ernest and Opal Nicholson ran a relief program in Newton County. They worked with several caseworkers to administer to the needs of their clients, many of whom were widows or people with disabilities who had no way to earn an income. Help came in many forms. Some clients were issued beef or canned goods, provided with reading material, supplied with clothing and household necessities, or given funds to purchase windows and screening materials.

A few clients were found jobs at sawmills or driving trucks. Clients received encouragement and advice from the case workers. One child was told “how nice she would look with her face washed nice and clean” while a woman was encouraged to plant flowers “because of the social value to [the] home.” Caseworkers were said to have “accomplished some desirable results by mentioning the nice things which the clients had done and suggesting other improvements.”

Through its many programs, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) gave employment to a variety of folks. The Federal Writer’s Project hired people to create travel guides and interview settlers and former slaves. In what was then the Ozark National Forest, the Civilian Conservation Corps created miles of trails. The courthouse at Jasper was built by WPA work crews, as was the gymnasium at the Newton County Academy and the Little Buffalo River Bridge, both in Parthenon. In Boxley the crews built concrete outhouses.

Rural Electrification Administration meeting, Newton County courthouse, Jasper, late 1930s. Newton County Times Collection (S-88-234-89)

“My dad [C. V. Burdine] went from house to house almost day and night for several weeks signing up people as members of Carroll Electric Cooperative so that electricity could be brought into our area. . . . One of Dad’s favorite sales pitches and reasons for wanting electricity . . . [was] to have good lights in schools and churches. That reason just about won everyone—even if they weren’t too interested in getting electricity for their home.”

Kathryn Burdine Wheeler
Rural Arkansas, May 1984

In 1940 when the state population stood at 1.95 million, only 112,050 Arkansans had electricity, mostly in larger towns and cities. While there were several power-generating facilities, distribution was a problem. The federal Rural Electrification Act (REA) of 1936 was meant to improve that situation, along with improving the lives and incomes of farmers struggling with flood, drought, and the Great Depression.

Rural electrification was costly. Farms and homes were spread out, sometimes with just a few potential customers per mile. It often wasn’t profitable for privately owned power companies to take on rural customers. But with REA loans electric cooperatives could be formed, sharing the costs amongst their members. One such co-op is Carroll Electric Cooperative Corporation, incorporated November 1937.

In October 1938, 150 Carroll County customers were able to turn on electric lights in their homes for the first time. Seeing the success of the new venture, neighboring counties, including Newton County, petitioned the cooperative for similar service. County extension agents and volunteers went from home to home, explaining the work of the cooperative and signing up members for $5. Local residents were hired to clear brush and trees from right-of-ways, earning a whopping $2.40 a day during a time when the going daily rate for farm work was about 75 cents or $1.00. Soon utility poles and giant spools of wire were being brought in on big trucks.

Early co-op members were wired for one outlet per house with one drop light in each room. Over in Vendor, young Kathryn Burdine and her family waited anxiously for the electricity to be turned on, pulling on the light-bulb chain every now and then to check. When the electricity finally came one August night in 1940, she thought the folks at church seemed a little self conscious in the brightly lit building.

Electricity allowed Kathryn’s mother to use an electric iron for the first time while Kathryn and her siblings could listen to the Grand Ole Opry on the radio without fear of running down the battery. Later on, she and a sister saved money from their jobs and, with their brother’s sale of a pig, the three of them were able to buy a refrigerator for their parents. It was such a luxury for her dad to be able to have a thermos of ice water when he worked his farm fields.

In 1948 the REA began surveying the route for a proposed 33,000-volt high-power line to Jasper.

Jasper mayor A. B. Arbaugh introducing Governor Orval Faubus at the Newton County dedication of Highway 7, Jasper County courthouse, September 7, 1956. Newton County Times Collection (S-88-234-87)

“All this weekend there has been lots of activity around the Town Square when folks have been working like beavers, cleaning up, getting ready for our ‘Big Day.’ . . . Every day we’ve seen folks washing windows, cutting grass . . . and a whole crew, directed by Mayor A.B. Arbaugh were raking leaves on the Court House lawn and sweeping all gutters clean.”

Jessie Lu Abell
(Jasper, AR) Informer, September 1956

Early roads were often maintained by local governments. Able-bodied men armed with shovel, pick, and pry bar were expected to work on their community’s roads four days each year. Those who could afford it hired men to do the job for them. Many of these roads were poorly built, constructed under an elected township road overseer with little engineering or construction experience.

As the automobile gained prominence, road building took on greater importance. The Arkansas State Highway Commission was created in 1913 to address the need for a statewide system of roads. During the first half of the 20th century, Highway 7 was a rough, gravel road. But the need to improve it grew.

Road crews paved the road between Boone County and Jasper first. At the June 1951 dedication of this stretch of highway, onlookers enjoyed a parade and listened to the Harrison High School band. They also heard from speakers such as U.S. Representative J. W. Trimble, U.S. Senator J. W. Fulbright, and Governor Sid McMath and his aide, Orval Faubus. A noon dinner was served complete with “fried chicken, roast pork and roast beef, potato chips, bread, pickles, coffee and cake.” Festivities were paid for by local merchants. Both the Harrison and Russellville chambers of commerce sent car caravans. A similar celebration was held in September 1956 to celebrate the paving work from Jasper on south.

With its completion, Highway 7 became the first paved road to traverse the whole county. It linked Jasper to the larger cities of Harrison in the north and Russellville in the south, with all of their job opportunities, professional services, and shopping choices. The highway wasn’t a boon for all. Small towns like Lurton which once had a booming economy, due in part to the local wood-handle mill, suffered when it was bypassed by the highway.

The road linked Arkansas to Newton County, ushering in many tourism opportunities. Traveling south from Boone County, visitors would have had a chance to visit Dogpatch U.S.A., Paradise Hill with its craft and gift store, the county seat of Jasper, Diamond Cave, Arkansas’ “Grand Canyon,” Lost Valley with its six waterfalls, the Buffalo River and canoe outfitters at Ponca, and the Ozark National Forest. Highway 7 became the state’s first scenic byway in 1993.

Several landslides have damaged the road in recent years. In 2009 an area of highway just south of Jasper collapsed due to heavy rain. A few years later, repair work to fix the earlier damage caused a section of road to collapse again. In 2011 the state proposed changes to enlarge and realign the road and to replace the historic 1931 steel through-truss bridge over the Buffalo near Pruitt. A new bridge is expected to be built, but debate continues regarding the old bridge. While many want it preserved, neither the county nor the National Park Service can afford its maintenance.

Canoeists at the take-out spot, Buffalo Point, Buffalo River, June 25, 1972. Mary Stockslager, photographer. Springdale News Collection (SN 6-25-1972)

“Everything you see here, everything except the tops of those bluffs, would have been submerged beneath a reservoir behind one of two dams the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had planned to build. …Wild rivers, I’m afraid, are a vanishing species.”

Neil Compton
National Geographic, March 1977

“Movin’ out o’ here would mean givin’ up all I’ve got, all I’ve ever had. I hope to stay just as long as the Lord and those Government folks allow.”

Eva “Granny” Barnes Henderson
National Geographic, March 1977

Flowing about 150 wiggly miles east from its headwaters near Boxley towards its confluence with the White River, the Buffalo River has been many things to many people. Native Americans and later settlers used the river for food, water, and transportation. Entrepreneurs harnessed the river’s energy to run mills and float raw materials like cotton, minerals, and red cedar logs (for pencils) to market in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

As early as 1897 the U.S. Corps of Engineers looked at making the river navigable through a series of locks and dams, but the cost was too high. In 1936 a dam was proposed for power generation and flood control but never materialized because of the Great Depression and World War II. The Corps revised their plan in 1954, proposing two dams and the construction of Lone Rock Lake. While supported by many locals and members of the U.S. Congress, legislation to dam the river failed repeatedly.

In the late 1950s, Kenneth L. Smith, a University of Arkansas student, began a personal campaign extolling the beauty of the Buffalo through newspaper and magazine articles. His work helped popularize the notion that the river was worth saving in its natural state. U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright obtained an appropriation to fund a survey of the river by the National Park Service, which later declared that, as one of the last free-flowing rivers in the country, it should be preserved.

Dam proponents and opponents geared up for battle. Governmental agencies such as the Corps and Park Service opposed one another’s plans. Local organizations were formed, including the pro-dam Buffalo River Improvement Association and anti-dam Ozark Society, lead by Dr. Neil Compton of Bentonville. In Newton County some citizens wanted the dams for the progress and jobs they would bring, while many who lived along the river wanted neither dams nor a National River.

After many years of struggle, in 1972 the U.S. Congress officially designated the Buffalo a National River, the first in the nation. But opposition to a National Park continued. Many river-valley residents were upset with Park Service plans because it meant that they would be forced to sell their land to the federal government, leaving the homes and farms their ancestors had worked so hard to build.

In later years, Compton came to believe that pollution was the river’s greatest threat. In 2013 the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality awarded a permit to build a major hog farm near Mt. Judea. Concerns quickly grew about the potential for damage to the river from accidental runoff of hog waste. After years of protest and litigation, in 2019 the State of Arkansas agreed to a $6.2 million buyout of the company. The land is now protected under a conservation easement.

Joe Cowell and family at their cannery, near Deer, 1900s. Bill Bohannon Collection (S-86-250-91)

“No son of mine will ever sit down, fold his hands, and live off the Government. . . . I can’t keep the government from adding taxes and telling me how to run the plant I’ve spent half a lifetime building, but I can teach my sons to get out and hustle for themselves. By golly, the small business is the backbone of America . . .”

I. C. Sutton
Arkansas Gazette, October 16, 1949

Like churches, country stores were the heart of many a community. People collected their mail there and purchased or bartered for goods they couldn’t produce at home. Eggs could be traded for such things as baking powder, sugar, and salt. Store owners also bought animal skins and medicinal plants, selling what they gathered to traveling purchasing agents.

Boxley was named after William Boxley, the merchant who delivered goods to the valley stores and who later operated his own store there. The town of Ponca owes its name to the Ponca City, Oklahoma, Mining Company, which mined lead and zinc ore in the area in the early 1900s. As mining increased in the county, so did blacksmith shops which built and repaired equipment.

In 1929 I. C. Sutton bought a rough turn-handle mill and moved it to Lurton, renaming it the Lurton Furniture Factory. To keep the factory running during the Great Depression, it switched to making barrels and then handles for things like hammers, railroad picks, and axes. World War II bought prosperity to the newly renamed I. C. Sutton Handle Factory, the only war-related business in the county. After the war the business expanded its production to baseball bats, telegraph spade handles, and pike poles used for logging. The business relocated to Harrison in the late 1950s to keep down shipping costs. The move turned Lurton into a ghost town.

The paving of Highway 7 in the 1950s brought some prosperity to the towns along its path. New businesses sprung up. But the highway took away business, too. Some traveled to larger towns in neighboring counties, such as Harrison and Russellville, to conduct their business and do their shopping.

In the 1940s politics was the frequent topic of discussion in Jasper’s two cafés. Pearl’s Café was home to the Democrats while Upton’s Café hosted the Republicans. Today Upton’s is now the Ozark Café, and politics are still discussed.

In 2010 the Jasper Commercial Historic District, including the courthouse, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. The simple, rockwork structures were influenced by the availability of the area’s plentiful stone and the town’s relative isolation, free from outside architectural trends. Five of the buildings were built by Gould Jones, a local blacksmith and builder. He constructed a small reservoir in town in the early 1940s to provide water to a tomato-canning factory. The factory was closed by the Arkansas Department of Health when tomato juice was found in local wells.

Commercial Hotel, Jasper, 1910s-1920s. A 1922 ad noted that the hotel offered, “electric lights, clean rooms, good meals, [and] special attention to tourists and [the] traveling public.” Newton County Times Collection (S-88-234-67)

Boy Scouts at Camp Orr, near Jasper, July 1967. Springdale News Collection (SN 7-1967)

“We seek to create a camp where a boy will have opportunity for instruction and practice in woodcraft skills. We seek to develop physical fitness and resourcefulness to adapt himself to his surroundings and to live out of doors.”

L. M. R. Rogers
Scout Executive, Westark Area Council
Ozarks Mountaineer, September 1955

“Being on staff [in the mid 1960s] was kind of a dream for a teenage boy.  We’d work for four or five hours, then spend the rest of the day in this wilderness playground.”

Jack Butt
Morning News of Northwest Arkansas, May 25, 2003

Camp Orr was developed in the early 1950s by the Westark Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America, based out of Fort Smith. Located a few miles northwest of Jasper, along the banks of the Buffalo River, the camp is named after Raymond F. Orr, a Fort Smith industrialist and former Council president who was instrumental in the camp’s development.

When it came time to find a camp site, Orr and a few other men are said to have paddled the Buffalo in search of the perfect spot. Orr purchased parcels of land from local landowners and then sold hundreds of acres to the Council for $15,000.

The first organized camp activities were held in the summer of 1955. Early structures included a trading post, a dining hall housed in a large Army tent, and a 34,000-gallon concrete water reservoir. Today the camp hosts a few thousand campers each summer, making it Newton County’s second largest “town” after Jasper. Troops come from Arkansas and across the country to gain skill in such things as knot tying, fire building, and woodworking.

The camp’s natural resources are plentiful—a river for canoeing, forests for camping and backpacking, rocks for climbing and rappelling, and flora and fauna for studying. The camp even has its own haunting legend, that of Smokey Joe, a former scoutmaster who is said to have lost his sanity after being hit in the head with a rock.

When the Buffalo National River Wilderness Area was established in 1972, the camp found itself within the area’s boundaries, the only Boy Scout camp in America in a national park. At first there was concern over whether or not the camp could remain. Negotiations went on for five years. In the end it was decided that as long as the camp followed National Park Service guidelines, like keeping the road into the property unpaved, it could stay. In 2003 the camp celebrated its 50th anniversary in true camp fashion, with food, fun, and stories around the campfire.

“Piano” formation, Diamond Cave, near Jasper, 1921-1925. Hidy Bouher Eby, Butch Bouher, and Lota Dee Bouher Lagan Collection (S-2001-2-12)

“There is a thrilling slide down Lover’s Leap to a point in the cave where visitors may behold the Pipe Organ . . . The calcite stems, or pipes of the organ, are so tense and delicate that the scale of music can be run by deftly tapping the rigid rock, and the cave is thus made to ring with melody.”

Playgrounds in Arkansas
1920s

Newton County is known for having a significant number of caves: Beauty Cave, Bat Cave, Civil War Cave, Beckham Creek Cave, and Hurricane River Cave. Perhaps the best known is Diamond Cave, located near Jasper. Likely named for the sparkling beauty seen as light glistens off of the cave’s dripping water and many-colored formations, the cavern is thought to have at least 20 miles of passageways.

The cave is said to have been discovered in 1834 by Sam and Andy Hudson, Tennessee migrants who homesteaded nearby. As the story goes, they were out hunting when their dogs disappeared into a hole in a hillside. Venturing into the cave with burning pine knots for torches, they found dogs and bears fighting. After killing the bears the men explored the cave for about three miles and saw its many wonders.

Early visitors explored with the aid of torches. They were guided by the son of one of the discoverers, who charged $2 for a group’s daylong tour. In 1922 W. J. “Jonah” Pruitt bought the cave and made improvements to it and the land. Three years later he sold the property to the Diamond Cave Corporation, maintaining a majority share of the stock. Walkways were created and protective handrails put in place. At first the cave’s electric light came from a gasoline-powered generator. Only one tour group could visit the cave at a time, as there wasn’t enough power to light multiple rooms simultaneously.

The trail through the cave was about two miles long. Fanciful names were given to various passages and formations—Crystal Lane, the Sugar Room, the Auditorium of Rome, the Statue of Liberty, and Fat Man’s Agony (a tight passageway). Baloney Pool owes it name to a tourist who didn’t believe the guide’s word that the water in a pool was deeper than it looked. Crying “Baloney!” he stepped into the pool only to realize the guide spoke the truth.

At various times the park had campgrounds and a bath house, rental cabins, a museum, and the Panther Inn, which sold refreshments and offered a hall for dances and parties. The rollerskating rink, built in 1939, was a popular place for local youngsters, who would often catch a ride to the rink on logging trucks from nearby communities like Deer, Ponca, and Low Gap. At its peak the cave had 10,000 visitors annually. On busy weekends the guides were given hamburgers as they left the cave with one tour group and immediately entered with another, eating on the go.

The cave closed to the public in 1988. In 1995 it was sold to the Mas Suerte Corporation of Texas. At the time the company indicated that it wanted to preserve and protect the cave and the surrounding property. Plans included restoration of native plants and trees and a wildlife refuge. The cave is closed at present.

Statue of Jubilation T. Cornpone, Dogpatch U.S.A., Marble Falls, June 1968. The fictitious Cornpone was an incompetent Confederate general and founder of Dogpatch. Bob Edmiston, photographer. Springdale News Collection (SN 6-1968 #1)

“Dogpatch is really something else. People in the East think all the creativity and action is on the coasts, but the Midwest comes up with some fantastic ideas—like Dogpatch. It is a fine thing for Arkansas and it doesn’t hurt me either.”

Al Capp
Baxter (AR) Bulletin, May 16, 1968

Al Capp, creator of the “Li’l Abner” comic strip, was approached by a group of Boone County investors for permission to recreate his imaginary town of Dogpatch in the wilds of Arkansas. In 1966 they purchased a 160-acre trout farm near the town of Marble Falls, north of Jasper.

The first phase of Dogpatch cost over $1.3 million. Opened to the public in May 1968, the park featured buggy rides, a miniature railroad known as the “West Po’k Chop Speshul,” a trout farm, Ozark arts and crafts, a honey shop and apiary for bees, 1800s-era log cabins, and various hillbilly characters. Over 300,000 people visited the first year. Adults were charged $1.50, children 75 cents.

Soon there was a change in leadership; businessman Jess Odom gained controlling interest. New rides were added and a campsite developed. A few years later Odom broke ground on the Marble Falls resort, next to Dogpatch. The resort included a convention center, an indoor ice-skating rink, and—surprisingly—ski runs kept white with machine-made snow. Financial problems and mild winters led to the resort’s closure in 1977, the same year Capp retired his comic strip.

An economic feasibility study of the park in the late 1960s suggested that, by its tenth year of operation, the park would see over one million visitors a year. At best it attracted 200,000 annually. Competition with the nearby Silver Dollar City theme park in Branson, Missouri, didn’t help. Times were changing. In 1980 fiscal debt, changes in leadership, a decrease in tourism, and two money-losing summers forced the owners to file for bankruptcy.

Even as it struggled, the park stayed open. It added new attractions and featured country music stars like Reba McEntire. Owners came and went. In an effort to rebrand itself, in 1991 “Li’l Abner” and the other cartoon characters were replaced with a generic Ozarks theme. Dogpatch closed October 1993. A year later the Carr brothers of Boone County bought the property but didn’t do anything with it. Over the years vandals and souvenir hunters took their toll on the former park. The statue of Jubilation T. Cornpone was taken to Branson and may still be there on the bed of a trailer.

In 2005 a father and his teenage son were riding their four-wheelers on the property when the son ran into a steel cable strung across the road and was hit in the neck. There were questions about whether the property’s caretaker, another Carr brother, knew about trespassers and deliberately put up the cable as a deterrent. In 2011 the Arkansas Supreme Court upheld an earlier jury’s verdict to award money to the injured family. As the Carrs didn’t pay the judgment, the Dogpatch property was transferred to the family and their lawyer. Since then, the land has been in limbo. The current owner is anxious to sell.

Elk, Boxley Valley, January 24, 1993. Jill Smith, photographer. Springdale News Collection (SN 1-24-1993)

“They’re mean, wild and stout. . . . A lot of people here would never get a chance to see them if we hadn’t brought them in. I’m just tickled to death with the way they’re doing and with having them here.”

Robert Harrison
Arkansas Gazette, February 11, 1985

Elk once roamed North Arkansas, as evidenced by name of the old Elkhorn Tavern in Benton County, which displayed a pair of elk antlers on its roof. But overhunting in the late 1800s and loss of habitat as prairies were transformed into farmland first reduced, then wiped out, the once-large population.

A century later, hunters petitioned the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission to reestablish the elk. When Hilary Jones joined the Commission in 1980 and saw Oklahoma’s successful elk reintroduction, he figured it could work in Arkansas. The Buffalo National River valley near his home in Pruitt seemed ideal.

In 1981 local volunteers brought the first seven elk from Colorado, where the animal was plentiful. The elk were transported in cattle trailers lined with sheets of plywood in order to reduce stress and minimize injuries. More elk were relocated over the next four years. Soon calves were being born. Today the population stands around 450.

The elk are quite a draw. Tourists often line Highway 43 in Boxley Valley to watch for elk, especially in October during the animals’ mating season. They also visit the new Elk Education Center in Ponca. Each year thousands vie for one of a few dozen permits for two five-day hunting seasons.

But not everyone is happy. Some locals have complained about the growing herd and their impact on cattle-grazing land and the region’s plants. There are also concerns about the danger to roadside tourists. A few worry that Boxley Valley is becoming a kind of zoo.

In 2012 several water, wildlife, and conservation agencies and groups sought to halt the U.S. Forest Service’s expansion of elk habitat into Bearcat Hollow, just east of the Newton County line. They claimed that the clear cutting, road building, and herbicide use needed to thin and manage the forest would be excessive and would endanger lands protected by the Arkansas Wilderness Act of 1984.

Kilgore Mine, Ponca, 1916. From left: Hope Strong, Lick Greenhaw, Lynn Jones, Hobert Criner, Frank Cheatham, unidentified, and Carol Greenhaw. Willie Bohannan Collection (S-83-82-56)

“Usually only about four men could work in a small tunnel [at the Panther Creek Mine].  One man was engaged in wheeling out the waste and collecting the ore worth saving. . . . From the ‘diggings’ a . . . track capable of supporting a small hand gondola car extended some 300 yards to the ore mill.  At the end of the track the mined ore, a combination of dirt, rock, and ore, was dumped in the grill screen grates where it was broken . . . [and] fed to the crusher.”

Walter F. Lackey (1960)
Newton County Times, August 25, 1983

In the late 1850s, lead ore was mined and processed near the mouth of Cave Creek and at the headwaters of the Buffalo River near Ponca and Boxley. Over 18,000 pounds or more of ore was extracted, mainly for making lead bullets for rifles. The process was crude. Ore was dug out by hand from open cuts or shallow shafts. A crude smelter (furnace) made of stone was used to separate the metal from the rock. With the advent of the Civil War came the need for even more lead. The Cave Creek operation was worked by Confederate forces.

Lack of easy transportation limited the growth of mining. In the early days, raw ore and processed minerals were hauled by wagon over rugged terrain and then shipped down the Buffalo River. When railroads came to neighboring counties by the turn of the 20th century, materials were transported by wagon north to Harrison or west to St. Paul for shipment by rail.

By the end of the 19th century zinc mining had surpassed lead mining in importance. Zinc was used as a paint pigment, for battery electrodes, and to galvanize (coat) iron to protect it from corrosion. A 5,200-pound sample of nearly pure zinc from the Panther Creek Mine near Diamond Cave was said to have been sent for display to the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, winning first honors in its class.

The need for zinc further increased by 1915, as World War I was underway in Europe. During this time the Panther Creek Mine produced about 3,000 tons of zinc concentrates. Prices began to decrease in 1917 due to a glut of minerals on the market, the high production costs of refining the ore, the area’s poor transportation options, and the loss of an able labor force as young men were recruited to fight. After the war, North Arkansas mines and their adjacent boomtowns were often abandoned.

Lead and zinc mining occurred off and on over the years, mostly small shovel-and-pick operations. In the 1940s miners were back at the old Confederate mine near Cave Creek, extracting large quantities of zinc and lead ore.

While lead and zinc were the primary materials mined or quarried in Newton County, there are also significant deposits of limestone, sand and gravel, and sandstone, as well as some coal and iron. Between 1895 and 1936 1,500 tons of coal were extracted from two mines in the northeastern corner of the county. Perhaps the first recorded instance of quarrying involved a 45-ton limestone block quarried in 1836 near Marble Falls for the Washington Monument in Washington D.C. A century later, a limestone quarry southeast of Jasper produced an estimated 50,000 tons of crushed rock during the construction of Highway 7.

Members of the Herculean Society, Newton County Academy, Parthenon, mid 1920s. Formed in 1920 as a literary society, the Herculeans gave programs and performances and participated in debates. Elmer Casey Collection (S-83-115-14)

“We admit we were freshmen, Much greener than the grass, But now we’re glad to say, We’re the sophomore class.”

Thomas Ryker
Newtonian, 1922

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, one-room schools dotted the countryside, serving to educate students in communities and towns. Schools operated for only a few months each year, when the children weren’t needed for farm work. But there wasn’t an avenue for higher learning until October 1920, when the Newton County Academy opened with 144 students. It was part of the Southern Baptist mountain mission school program, dedicated to bringing education and civilizing influences to rural areas. Describing Newton County as “the most destitute field in Arkansas,” the Baptists worked with community leaders to establish the school.

Donations in the form of cash, trees, and sawn lumber were used to build a two-story, native rock building. A girls’ dormitory was built to house out-of-town students as the Academy was, for a time, the only high school in the county. A rockwork gymnasium was built in 1936 as part of the Works Progress Administration program. The stage was paid for in part by area businesses in exchange for advertisements on the curtain.

The school offered coursework in music, mathematics, business, Latin, and the social sciences. Student societies focused on literature and religion. Tuition was staggered, depending on the grade the child attended. Seniors paid $4.50 per month, or $36 for the entire session.

Keeping the school going financially was a struggle. Money was still owed for the main building, so some of the school’s land was sold to help pay the debt. Many individuals and groups stepped up to help. Womens’ Missionary Unions in Arkansas and Texas helped fund tuition fees. The women of the Second Baptist Church in Little Rock assisted with dormitory furnishings and clothing. Baylor University in Texas, which directed the Baptist Mountain School program, provided equipment and maintenance.

The state took over the Academy in 1930, switching it to a public school. School consolidation in the 1940s and 1950s forced many of the local schools to close, moving students to larger, more centralized schools. At the Academy, students were transferred to the Jasper Public School district. The last high school class graduated in Parthenon in 1948; the last year of grade school was 1954.

Over the years the dormitory burned to the ground, the school building was dismantled for its rocks, and the gymnasium lost its roof. In the mid 1990s, Beulah Shelton began a campaign to save the gym. Through the donation of labor and money, including state capital improvement funds, the structure was rebuilt and rededicated October 2005. Today it’s used for community functions. The Academy was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.

James Braswell (far left) with members of the Jasper and Parthenon bands playing at a spring picnic, Diamond Cave, near Jasper, about 1910. Ardella Braswell Vaughan Collection (S-89-81-15)

“ . . . by this time Highway 7 had been upgraded considerably and people came from miles around to shake their shaves, get boozed up, and let their hair down.”

Henry Sutton
Mid-American Folklore, 2000

James T. Braswell was born in Carroll County, but lived in Jasper for about 25 years. A carpenter by trade, he also made furniture and musical instruments such as mandolins and violins. On Saturday afternoons in the summer, he led Jasper’s town band from the bandstand next to the courthouse. Braswell was also a songwriter, penning “In the Land of a Million Smiles” in 1925. The song was written on behalf of the Ozark Playgrounds Association, which used it for many years to boost its tourism efforts in the Arkansas and Missouri Ozarks.

Community picnics were a frequent summer event in the early 1900s. Some picnics were quite elaborate with concession rights sold to the highest bidder. The day before the picnic, underbrush was cleared and booths set up for lemonade, ice cream, fruit, hot dogs, souvenirs, and the like. A horse- or mule-powered wooden “swing” gave round-and-round rides for a nickel. “Happy Jack” Moore of Swain was one of the best-known swing operators. He drew customers in with his singing, dancing, and snappy patter.

In Lurton, the picnic lasted for three days, drawing up to 1,000 people. Folks had a chance to catch a greased pig, dance to live music, or look for coins in a giant pile of sawdust. They could also pay for a ride in an airplane. In the 1930s, Lurton was the scene of some rowdy Saturday-night dances, courtesy of the local loggers and the workers from the Civilian Conservation Corps. As the nickelodeon played Western Swing music, couples courted and moonshine flowed.

Shooting matches were popular. In the early 1900s men and boys in the Low Gap community would lie on the ground with their muzzleloaders propped up on a log and take aim at paper targets tacked onto clapboards. Their rifles had names such as “Old Bangum,” “Yellow Jacket,” and “Old Countabore.” Contestants were given seven shots throughout the day, with the winners being declared after much scrutiny of the shot-up targets. Prior to the event, the contestants chipped in to purchase a steer for about $12. During the match, the animal was slaughtered. The winners received certain cuts of beef, depending on their ranking, with some selling their winnings to others.

In Low Gap, Isaac and Cynthia Wishon where known for their keen enjoyment of visiting with friends and neighbors. Cynthia was a good cook. The noon meal might include dried smoked beef and venison, sauerkraut, apple and pumpkin pies, fried chicken, potatoes, and turnip greens, all washed down with coffee, milk, and spicewood or sassafras tea. While the women gathered to quilt, knit, and share neighborhood news, the men played card games (“pitch” and “seven up”) and pitched horseshoes. Often folks tuned up their instruments to play songs such as “Buffalo Gals” and “Arkansas Traveler.”

Ted Richmond (right) at the Wilderness Library, Mount Sherman, 1940s-1950s. Flossie Smith Collection (S-98-88-525)

“I literally started with a Bible and a prayer. It has not been easy, but I have had the most remarkable answers to prayers. One summer when the drought burned up the gardens, I used nearly all my slender grocery money for the library, and lived on wild roots, wild onions, berries, and the like. But the books kept coming, and that was what I wanted.”

Ted Richmond
Christian Science Monitor, April 5, 1947

Born in Nebraska, James Theodore “Ted” Richmond lived in many places and had several jobs. But he grew tired of living in a fast-paced world, isolated from his neighbors. Eventually he found his way to Mount Sherman, a few miles northwest of Jasper.

With the help of his neighbors, in 1930 or 1931 Richmond cleared some land, built a small log cabin, and started a goat herd. His aim was to establish the Wilderness Library, a place where his neighbors could have access to the knowledge of the world. At first the only book he had to lend was the Bible. But he wrote to friends and publishers and soon books and magazines began arriving.

As word of the library spread, folks made the trek to pay a visit and borrow a book. For those who couldn’t make it, Richmond hauled 60-70 pounds worth of books in a canvas sack along rugged mountain roads and trails. He visited neighbors, sharing books, preaching and praying, and gathering news to bring to the next family on his route. Seeing a need, he began the “Wilderness White Christmas,” gathering and delivering small toys, clothing, medicine, shoes, and other necessities to his neighbors.

The Wilderness Library grew. Shelves of books were placed in schools and churches. A few branch libraries were established, including the Raney Branch further up the mountain from Richmond’s place. In the early 1950s it held about 1,500 volumes, including The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and the Boy Scout Handbook. Light was provided by oil lamps. Borrowers recorded their loans in a notebook. If someone wanted to contact Richmond, he or she could holler for him using an old phonograph horn, hoping that the wind was blowing in the right direction for him to hear.

Richmond knew the value of a good story. He wrote articles about the library, which he sent to newspaper and magazine editors, and went on publicity tours. A few major publications sent reporters to interview him. A 1952 article in the Saturday Evening Post positively delighted in the tale of a backwoods hermit tending to the literary needs of his hillbilly neighbors. The locals weren’t pleased, going so far as to create the Newton County Betterment Group to fight this unfair portrayal.

Years of rough living and poor diet may have taken their toll, along with the arrival of a regional library system in 1944. In 1953, Richmond married longtime friend Edna Gardner of Texarkana, Texas, whom he had met through the Ozark Artists and Writers Guild. Not long after that, Ted Richmond left his cabin and library and moved to Texarkana. He died there in 1975.

Pearl Wilhemina McGowan Holland with a stringer of goggle-eyed perch, largemouth bass, and catfish, by the store at Shady Grove Campground, Pruitt, 1930s. Richard and Melba Holland Collection (S-98-2-340)

“I love it here. . . . You are so close to God you can just see it all around you. The birds sing all the time . . . and you should hear the whippoorwill at night. It’s the most peaceful place in the world.”

Pearl Holland
Tulsa World, June 20, 1965

Today, much of Newton County’s businesses are tourism related. Whether folks are camping in the Ozark-St. Francis National Forests or floating the Buffalo River or riding their motorcycles down scenic Highway 7, tourism dollars are important to the county’s economy.

The area’s rivers, especially the Buffalo, have always drawn anglers. For decades, visitors often stopped at the Shady Grove Campground at Pruitt to fish or swim the Buffalo. The camp was established in 1920 by F. A. Hammons. It offered a bathhouse, bathing suit and towel rentals, campsites, a dance hall, and a well-maintained river sandbar. When the new bridge was built in 1931, Hammons built a few rental cabins on the old bridge. Famous artist Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri was a campground regular. A sign at the camp read, “No hard drinks, shouting or unlawful acts allowed.”

For many years Hammons’ step-daughter Pearl McGowan Holland was the camp’s manager. Pearl’s son, Richard, grew up on the river—swimming, fishing, hunting, and exploring caves. At age 16 he quit school to become a fishing guide for tourists for a time. In 1973 the Holland family made a heartbreaking decision. They sold their land along the Buffalo to the National Park Service. They greatly missed the river and the opportunities the campground gave them to meet new people and visit with old friends.

In Boxley Valley in the late 1930s, Clyde Villines and others worked to clear many years of silt and vegetation out of the millpond which fed his grist and flouring mill. He stocked the revitalized pond with fish and built five small cabins to rent to weekend anglers from Harrison and other nearby towns.

Ponca is the headquarters for folks wanting to float a popular stretch of the Buffalo. On spring and summer weekends the river is lined with canoes and paddlers, many transported to the river by either the Lost Valley Canoe Service or the Buffalo Outdoor Center, the area’s two major outfitters. Locals sometimes see it as an “aluminum stream,” both for the canoes and beer cans that float on by.

In 2004 Randal and Debbie Phillips purchased a few of the buildings at the old Marble Falls ski resort next to Dogpatch, and began transforming them into a motorcycle resort complete with motel and restaurant, convention center, campground, and motorcycle-related shops. The Phillips hope to make Newton County the biker capital of Arkansas.

Men with sacks of corn at the Bat House Cave distillery, Wells Creek, near Hasty, 1900s-1910s. Newton County Times Collection (S-88-234-94)

“Several men were lounging around each still, but it was noticeable that none of them were drunk or even drinking. . . . [T]hey probably considered that they were at work, and a man cannot very well get drunk and work at the same time.”

Wayman Hogue
Back Yonder, 1932

For much of the 1800s, making alcohol didn’t require legal permits or taxes. Just the proper equipment, a few sacks of dried corn, and a good supply of water. Aside from the pleasures of home brew, distilling whiskey was a good way to use surplus corn and make some cash.

One of Newton County’s first stills was run by Alfred Carlton at a spring on his father’s homestead near Parthenon. At Henson Creek, John Dale put his still under a rock shelter. For 35 cents a customer could get a large gourd-full of “mountain dew.” Squirrel hunter Tom Reynolds stopped to visit with Dale one day, only to have the stopper from his powder horn pop out as he bent to light his pipe from a cooking fire. After the ignited gunpowder produced a loud bang, Reynolds said, “That White Mule sho do have some kick.”

In 1897 the U.S. government passed the Bottled-in-Bond Act, in part to guarantee that spirits were unadulterated (not diluted or impure). Only legal, government-bonded distilleries were allowed to manufacture and sell alcohol. Revenue stamps were affixed to barrels and bottles to show that the proper taxes had been paid. The taxation caused many distillers to hide their operations from the revenue agents, leading to the rise of moonshining. However, there were two legal distilleries in Newton County. One was Bill McDougal’s distillery near the Big Hurricane Creek.

Over at Bat House Cave at the head of Wells Creek, between Hasty and Yardelle, owners Charles Bethany and Newton Sanders operated their distillery within a natural rock shelter that had a good spring. One way to make whiskey was to soak corn kernels in water for a couple of days and let them sprout. The corn was crushed into bits or “chops” and placed in a wood barrel along with coarse-ground cornmeal to create a mash. After a few days of fermentation the starch in the corn was converted into sugar. The mash was placed in an enclosed metal cooker and heated. The rising steam was trapped in a coiled copper tube or “worm” which was cooled by water. What dripped out as liquid was further cooked and condensed to make whiskey.

The distiller at Bat House was Tom Raney. After fermentation the mash was dumped into a wood trough as hog feed, leading to a few tipsy pigs. Gaugers George Ray and Newt Jones weighed the whisky and placed government stamps on the barrels, proof that the distillery had paid its taxes. The distillery was allowed to make 12 gallons a day.

The distilleries closed in 1917, when Arkansas’ “bone dry” liquor law went into effect, which prohibited the “transportation, delivery, and storage of liquor.” The night Bat House closed, the liquor barrels were stolen from the warehouse. Moonshining continued as national prohibition went into effect in 1920.

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Logging truck, Newton County, 1970s-1980s. Carl P. Hitt, photographer. Shiloh Museum Collection (S-2016-24-32)

By 1900 the population had swelled to 12,538, due in part to land speculators and new, out-of-state homesteaders. Timber harvesting joined mining as a major economic force. Large lumber companies and many local individuals bought thousands of acres of timber land. Numerous sawmills and logging camps were set up to harvest and process logs into railroad ties, mine props, barrel staves, pencils, dimensional lumber, equipment handles, furniture, and the like. It wasn’t long before the county’s extensive virgin forests were cut-over.

At the turn of the 20th century, cotton was a primary source of income for area farmers, but boll weevils decimated this cash crop. Other important agricultural products included livestock, wheat, corn, oats, and fruit. But without reliable and inexpensive transportation, these industries failed to thrive as long-term sources of revenue.

Newton County experienced a brief industry boom during World War I, fueled by the need for metals in the manufacture of cartridge and shell casings. Land rich in zinc and lead fostered the establishment of mines in Ponca, Pruitt, and Bald Hill. But a drop in prices and the inability to easily export these resources after war’s end lead to their demise.

The population of Newton County dropped steadily from 1900 to 1960, with an all time low of around 5,700 residents. It began a slow recovery beginning in the 1960s with the influx of newcomers arriving with the back-to-the-land movement. This growth continued in the 1980s.

Canoeists on the Buffalo River, Newton County, about 1989. Shiloh Museum Collection (S-2016-24-41)

The county’s rugged geography has had a significant impact on its history and people. The progressive changes brought about in the past 100 years for most of the U.S. were late to arrive. Rural electrification was introduced as late as 1937; the first high-power lines weren’t installed until 1949. The first modern roads did not come until the 1950s, preventing sustained growth in manufacturing and industry.

However, it is the very nature of Newton County’s geographic seclusion which is largely responsible for the preservation of the natural beauty which attracts visitors from all over the world. Today tourism is the county’s major industry. Attractions include dude ranches and the Buffalo River which draws over 800,000 visitors each year. Ecotourism activities like hiking, camping, caving, outdoor cookouts, rock-climbing, and zip-lining in the Ozark National Forest and Lost Valley are popular. Many retirees come to the county to enjoy an easy-going lifestyle and beautiful scenery.

Timber continues to play an important economic role. While production has dramatically decreased over the decades, small-scale sawmills and other wood-product companies are still found amongst the hillsides.

The 2010 census reflects the relative isolation of Newton County. With 8,330 residents it is the 7th least-populated county in the state. Its population density is just 10 people per square mile. The largest city is the county seat of Jasper, with 466 people. Countywide, the median income is about $17,000 per person. More than 8,000 people self-identify as white, 9 as African-American, 90 as Native American, 25 as Asian, and 141 as having Hispanic origin.

Newton County’s rural past is still evident in the small, isolated communities tucked amongst its hillsides and valleys. This way of life is recognized and treasured in many ways, from the designation of the Buffalo as the country’s first National River in 1972 to the creation of the Big Buffalo Valley Historic District at Boxley in 1987. Fayetteville author Donald Harington immortalized the long-gone community of Murray via his mythical and magical “Stay More” novels. In them he blended the speech and manners of rural Newton County with plenty of tall-tales involving six generations of the Ingledew clan.

Newton County courthouse, Jasper, July 3, 1927. John Robinson Collection (S-99-66-291)

“Most everyone became panic stricken, rushing down the main aisle for the door, screaming and shouting… All was in wild confusion and the noise was so loud that it was heard a mile or more away.”

J. Town Greenhaw
(Jasper, AR) Informer, February 28, 1948

There have been several courthouses in Newton County over the years. The first was a log structure, burned during the Civil War. After the war, court was held in several places, including a doctor’s office, a school building, and a saloon. Around 1873 Robbie Hobbs was charged with building a courthouse that would “last forever.” He built it out of cobblestone and coated the walls with mortar, polishing them until they were smooth and hard. Supposedly, a woman picked at the finish one day and made a hole. Some townsfolk, unsatisfied with the quality of the builder’s work, are said to have killed Hobbs.

A Christmas Eve party in the mid 1880s was held in the courtroom, even though a few cracks had begun to appear in the building’s walls. As the people awaited their gifts, someone shouted, “The courthouse is falling!” Panic struck. Some ran into the wood stove, knocking down the stove pipe. Many made a dash for the door while others leaped from the windows. Out on the lawn, women screamed for their children as doctors examined the wounded. Eventually the crowd quieted enough to receive their gifts. Apparently the building was strong enough to last another 15 or so years.

In 1902 land was purchased on the town square to build a new, two-story, limestone-veneer structure. In 1938 the courthouse burned to the ground, possibly as a result of arson. Many records were destroyed. A new courthouse, built by the Works Progress Administration, was begun in 1939 and completed three years later. Billed as fireproof, the Art Deco-style building has a concrete foundation and is made of stone quarried from the Little Buffalo River. It cost $42,000. The building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994.

Jasper’s courthouse square has been the scene of many celebrations including the Newton County Fair and the dedication of the paving of Highway 7.

Newton County courthouse, Jasper, Arkansas, circa 1984. Mary Parsons, photographer. Shiloh Museum Collection (S-84-90-17)

Susie Villines with a kettle from the saltpeter works at Bat Cave, Boxley Valley, about 1960. It was used as a wash kettle for many years and first came into the family from Mrs. Villines’ grandfather, Abraham Clark. Courtesy Kenneth L. Smith, photographer.

“The enemy, surprised, barely attempted to form and scattered. . . . They fled in dismay, a race for life. In the charge and in pursuit for 8 miles, 30 were killed, a number wounded, and 8 taken prisoners. 23 heads of horses captured, and some 25 stand of arms, the larger portion of which was destroyed.”

Col. John E. Phelps
Second Arkansas [Union] Cavalry
April 23, 1864

The 1860 census listed 25 enslaved African-Americans for Newton County, less than one percent of the total population. Although there were no major Civil War battles in Newton County, skirmishes, bushwhackers, guerrilla bands, and divided families took their toll. Like the rest of Northwest Arkansas, some residents allied with the Union while others joined the Confederacy. The area’s many caves and isolated valleys hid men and supplied cover for military activities.

Malinda Newberry Logan lived on Kenner Creek near the Hopewell Community. During the war bushwhackers came to her home to steal food. They also ripped open the feather mattresses and rode their horses over them. The bedding was re-stuffed with dried leaves, causing a later band of marauding bushwhackers to remark, “Look here at this damn hog bed.” Malinda heard about a neighboring family who tried to hide their cured meat within a wall. The meat was discovered when grease stains penetrated the wood during warm weather.

The area’s natural resources were vital to regional war efforts. Lead deposits were mined to make bullets. Confederate forces established a saltpeter works at Bat Cave, near the headwaters of the Buffalo River. Saltpeter (potassium nitrate) is used to make gunpowder. It’s often found in the soil of caves heavy with bat and bird droppings. The soil was dug out and removed to wood vats. Water was filtered through and then boiled in large, iron kettles for hours, causing the formation of nitrate crystals. In January 1863 the First Iowa Cavalry destroyed the works, burning and smashing the equipment. The kettles were rescued by locals and put to use for washing clothes and scalding hogs, well into the 20th century. A few still sit in yards today.

The county’s biggest skirmishes occurred in April 1864. During the battle of Whiteley’s Mill (now Boxley), Confederate guerrilla bands, including one lead by Captain John Cecil, fought a scout patrol lead by Captain William Orr of the Second Arkansas (US) Cavalry. Cecil, a Confederate, was Newton County’s former sheriff; his brothers fought for the Union. After two hours of fighting, the Union side withdrew due to lack of ammunition.

A few days later Orr joined with Major Melton and others to search for Confederates whose mission was to disrupt Union supply trains passing through the county from southern Missouri. The Union forces tried to sneak up on the Confederates, who were camped in Limestone Valley, but were spotted by a scout. Still, the Confederate camp was in disarray when it was attacked on either side by Union soldiers, who pursued the fleeing Confederates for eight miles through wooded mountains.

Workers possibly threshing oats, with a cornfield in the background, Western Grove, 1910s. Boone County Library/Edith Welburn Collection (S-87-127-88)

“The only obstacle in raising turkeys in those days was that the woods was full of wild turkey, and my turkeys would mix with them and refuse to return to their home.”

James Villines
History of Newton County, 1950

Early settlers generally raised enough food and livestock to meet their immediate needs. Most farms were small, given the steep and heavily forested hills. Farmers grew clover, sorghum, corn, peas, and beans in the river bottoms and along the mountain “benches,” narrow shelves of land. Larger farms existed in the northeast section of the county and along the river bottoms, where fields of barley, oats, rye, corn, alfalfa, and wheat grew well. Around the turn of the 20th century cotton was the principal crop, but boll weevils took their toll.

Families ground their corn into cornmeal at home or, more likely, took it to their local grist mill, such as the Whiteley Mill in Boxley Valley. Hogs were fattened up and slaughtered in the fall. The dead hog was scalded in a vat of hot water and hung up by its back legs. The hair was scraped off, the blood drained out, and the entrails removed. Then the carcass was butchered. The meat was salted down and hung in the smokehouse for curing. The fat was rendered into lard, the skin fried into cracklings, and the remaining bits turned into sausage and head cheese. “Hog-killing time” was often a time for neighbor to help neighbor. They’d share both work and meat. Children enjoyed playing with the “balloon” made from the hog’s bladder.

In the late 1800s, James “Beaver Jim” Villines grew corn in the rich bottomland of Boxley Valley. But first he had to clear the land of a thick growth of river cane. It was hard work because, after the cane had been dug out, it had to be burned. But the soil was rich and Villines could get 50 bushels of corn or more per acre. He raised turkeys, grew sweet potatoes, and sold seed and plants to his neighbors. Villines was a successful hunter, trapping otter, mink, and beaver. Beaver skins sold for $3 each while high-quality otter pelts went for $20.

Over in Low Gap, Isaac Whishon grew fruit trees and berries on a hillside bench. He was so good at it that he had excess fruit. He purchased an evaporator and began drying fresh apples and peaches. Sometimes he would spread cut fruit to dry on the roof of his home. His wife Cynthia turned the fruit into preserves and fruit butters.

Some farmers ran small-scale beef operations for the cash it would bring. In the early 1900s there were concerns about southern cattle being infected by ticks carrying Texas fever, a contagious and deadly disease. While local cattle might have some immunity, midwestern and northern cattle did not. It was feared that cattle shipped north for slaughter might bring the disease. In 1906 the federal government began a tick eradication program, asking farmers to dip their cattle biweekly in vats of pesticide. While some farmers welcomed the effort, many were against the program, angry about the government’s intervention. In Newton County, tick inspectors met resistance. One inspector noted, “Some trouble here at first, as many refused to dip cattle.” But in 1914 the county was considered free from Texas fever.

Dinner on the ground at Easter, Plumlee, 1910s. Newton County Times Collection (S-88-234-97)

“This little church [at Walnut Grove, in the Boxley Valley] has been the scene of worship and weddings, revivals, and funerals for many years. . . . Near the church is a cemetery where our babies, our spouses, our parents, and our grandparents rest in peace.”

Orphea Duty (1969)
Old Folks Talking, 2006

The first churches were small, log structures. As communities prospered, larger, wood-frame buildings were built. These buildings were often shared by churches, schools, and fraternal organizations. They were places where the community gathered for all kinds of events, from revivals to school pageants to fund-raising pie suppers.

Religious activities occurred outdoors as well. Baptisms were held in the Buffalo River and other county streams. In the summer and fall, brush arbor revivals were held under a rough wood structure roofed with brush and leaves. Participants often sat on wood benches to sing, testify, and listen to sermons. Dinners on the ground were social affairs held by the members of a congregation. Sheets and blankets laid on the ground in a long row held all kinds of wonderful food.

Circuit-riding preachers traveled by horseback from one country church to another, preaching to and praying with the locals. Families fed and housed the preachers whenever they passed through their community.

In Lurton, Uncle Dan Hefley tended to his flock at the Lurton Assembly for over 20 years, beginning in 1944. He could baptize up to 40 people a day. When she was young, Hefley’s daughter Lillie often traveled with him by foot or horseback to participate in revivals at Hasty, Low Gap, Jasper, Mt. Judea, and Gum Springs. Some revivals lasted over two weeks. Lillie remembered a few Sundays when her father couldn’t preach because the church’s altar, where he stood, would be filled with people seeking the Lord, wanting to be saved.

Jim Tate driving a log wagon, William Armer’s place, Osage Township, 1910s-1920s. Eva Taylor and Wally Waits Collection (S-85-51-6)

“The breaking of the log jam [on the Buffalo River] became a risk for the floaters.  . . . As long as the logs are in a jammed stage, a person can run across them with ease, but when they begin to separate, stepping on them causes the logs to turn. This is what happened to my brother [Craft J. Lackey]. When he finally made it to the bank, he lost no time in locating the foreman to tell him that he had no further desire to float logs.”

Daniel Boone Lackey
Arkansas Historical Quarterly, 1960

Early settlers in Newton County found virgin forests full of ancient oak, ash, walnut, pine, and hickory. Red cedars lined the banks of the Buffalo River. One amazing cedar tree near Pruitt was about 42 inches in diameter at the ground and around 85 feet tall.

Besides using timber for building homes and barns, wood had commercial value. Local farmers could cut logs or barrel stave bolts for a much-needed infusion of cash. In the Low Gap area, Amos B. Lackey cut cedar trees during the winter in the 1880s. One year he was able to buy luxuries for his family including a metal washboard and clothes wringer for his wife, a set of harnesses for himself, and a “Hot Springs” diamond ring (quartz) for his daughter.

Logging was hard work and held many risks. Portable sawmills and stave mills were set up throughout the county, moving from section to section. Without a railroad line running through the county, transporting logs to market was difficult. Mule teams were used to snake logs out of the woods and haul log wagons over rough roads to neighboring counties and their railroad depots. Beginning in the early 1900s, tens of thousands of red cedar logs were floated down the Buffalo River to be turned into pencils.

The timber woods were soon depleted. After operating out of Boxley Valley for over two decades, the Malnar brothers of Austria left around 1940 once they could no longer find white oaks big enough to turn into barrel staves. By the 1950s most of the first- and second-growth trees were gone. Without reliable timber sales, the local economy faltered. Today many county farmers still use their timber woods to supplement their income, whether by cutting firewood or selling logs to manufacturers.

In 1989 several local environmental groups opposed a large-scale logging operation east of Jasper by Mountain Pine Timber. They were concerned about its impact on water quality, wildlife, and soil conservation. But some residents were in favor of the logging, both for the work the industry would bring and to protect property rights.

The southern half of Newton County is part of the much larger Ozark-St. Francis National Forests. When it was created in 1908, what was then the Ozark National Forest was, for a time, the nation’s only major hardwood timber land protected by the government. Purchasing cut-over land where virgin timber once stood, the U.S. Forest Service aimed to provide a renewable hardwood source for the area’s wood-based industries. Under today’s multiple-use management system, the forests’ 1.2 million acres are used for timber harvesting, recreational activities, grazing, and protection of wilderness and wildlife management areas. Counties receive 25% of revenues from use of resources. Much of these funds come from timber sales.

Mrs. Garrett Jones and children at their home, Newton County, 1933-1935. Opal and Ernest Nicholson, photographers. Katie McCoy Collection (S-95-181-31)

“We heard a lot about the depression on the radio and in the newspapers, how it was so hard on everybody across the country. But we weren’t bothered by it that much.  . . . Maybe out in the eastern part of the county people might have been on welfare, but here in Boxley we had our good farms, and we raised about everything that we needed.”

Orphea Duty (April 1, 1996)
Old Folks Talking, 2006

In the 1930s timber was playing out, jobs were becoming scarce, and a regional drought affected farming severely. In some ways, the Great Depression hurt city folks more than country folks. The latter were used to being self-sufficient, producing their own food and making or repairing much of what they needed.

Cash might be earned by selling animal skins, stave bolts (used in barrel making), or goldenseal roots and ginseng, medicinal plants which grew in the wild. ‘Seal was used as an antiseptic and to stop bleeding while ‘seng was prized in Asia for its believed ability to restore and prolong youth.

But for some, their farms were too poor or their luck too rotten to make things work. They left the county, seeking employment elsewhere. Over in Boxley Valley, Tom and Gracie Fults moved to Ohio while the children of Tim Villines, a former enslaved worker, relocated to Oklahoma.

Some county residents received aid from the federal government. Ernest and Opal Nicholson ran a relief program in Newton County. They worked with several caseworkers to administer to the needs of their clients, many of whom were widows or people with disabilities who had no way to earn an income. Help came in many forms. Some clients were issued beef or canned goods, provided with reading material, supplied with clothing and household necessities, or given funds to purchase windows and screening materials.

A few clients were found jobs at sawmills or driving trucks. Clients received encouragement and advice from the case workers. One child was told “how nice she would look with her face washed nice and clean” while a woman was encouraged to plant flowers “because of the social value to [the] home.” Caseworkers were said to have “accomplished some desirable results by mentioning the nice things which the clients had done and suggesting other improvements.”

Through its many programs, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) gave employment to a variety of folks. The Federal Writer’s Project hired people to create travel guides and interview settlers and former slaves. In what was then the Ozark National Forest, the Civilian Conservation Corps created miles of trails. The courthouse at Jasper was built by WPA work crews, as was the gymnasium at the Newton County Academy and the Little Buffalo River Bridge, both in Parthenon. In Boxley the crews built concrete outhouses.

Rural Electrification Administration meeting, Newton County courthouse, Jasper, late 1930s. Newton County Times Collection (S-88-234-89)

“My dad [C. V. Burdine] went from house to house almost day and night for several weeks signing up people as members of Carroll Electric Cooperative so that electricity could be brought into our area.  . . . One of Dad’s favorite sales pitches and reasons for wanting electricity . . . [was] to have good lights in schools and churches. That reason just about won everyone—even if they weren’t too interested in getting electricity for their home.”

Kathryn Burdine Wheeler
Rural Arkansas, May 1984

In 1940 when the state population stood at 1.95 million, only 112,050 Arkansans had electricity, mostly in larger towns and cities. While there were several power-generating facilities, distribution was a problem. The federal Rural Electrification Act (REA) of 1936 was meant to improve that situation, along with improving the lives and incomes of farmers struggling with flood, drought, and the Great Depression.

Rural electrification was costly. Farms and homes were spread out, sometimes with just a few potential customers per mile. It often wasn’t profitable for privately owned power companies to take on rural customers. But with REA loans electric cooperatives could be formed, sharing the costs amongst their members. One such co-op is Carroll Electric Cooperative Corporation, incorporated November 1937.

In October 1938, 150 Carroll County customers were able to turn on electric lights in their homes for the first time. Seeing the success of the new venture, neighboring counties, including Newton County, petitioned the cooperative for similar service. County extension agents and volunteers went from home to home, explaining the work of the cooperative and signing up members for $5. Local residents were hired to clear brush and trees from right-of-ways, earning a whopping $2.40 a day during a time when the going daily rate for farm work was about 75 cents or $1.00. Soon utility poles and giant spools of wire were being brought in on big trucks.

Early co-op members were wired for one outlet per house with one drop light in each room. Over in Vendor, young Kathryn Burdine and her family waited anxiously for the electricity to be turned on, pulling on the light-bulb chain every now and then to check. When the electricity finally came one August night in 1940, she thought the folks at church seemed a little self conscious in the brightly lit building.

Electricity allowed Kathryn’s mother to use an electric iron for the first time while Kathryn and her siblings could listen to the Grand Ole Opry on the radio without fear of running down the battery. Later on, she and a sister saved money from their jobs and, with their brother’s sale of a pig, the three of them were able to buy a refrigerator for their parents. It was such a luxury for her dad to be able to have a thermos of ice water when he worked his farm fields.

In 1948 the REA began surveying the route for a proposed 33,000-volt high-power line to Jasper.

Jasper mayor A. B. Arbaugh introducing Governor Orval Faubus at the Newton County dedication of Highway 7, Jasper County courthouse, September 7, 1956. Newton County Times Collection (S-88-234-87)

“All this weekend there has been lots of activity around the Town Square when folks have been working like beavers, cleaning up, getting ready for our ‘Big Day.’ . . . Every day we’ve seen folks washing windows, cutting grass . . . and a whole crew, directed by Mayor A.B. Arbaugh were raking leaves on the Court House lawn and sweeping all gutters clean.”

Jessie Lu Abell
(Jasper, AR) Informer, September 1956

Early roads were often maintained by local governments. Able-bodied men armed with shovel, pick, and pry bar were expected to work on their community’s roads four days each year. Those who could afford it hired men to do the job for them. Many of these roads were poorly built, constructed under an elected township road overseer with little engineering or construction experience.

As the automobile gained prominence, road building took on greater importance. The Arkansas State Highway Commission was created in 1913 to address the need for a statewide system of roads. During the first half of the 20th century, Highway 7 was a rough, gravel road. But the need to improve it grew.

Road crews paved the road between Boone County and Jasper first. At the June 1951 dedication of this stretch of highway, onlookers enjoyed a parade and listened to the Harrison High School band. They also heard from speakers such as U.S. Representative J. W. Trimble, U.S. Senator J. W. Fulbright, and Governor Sid McMath and his aide, Orval Faubus. A noon dinner was served complete with “fried chicken, roast pork and roast beef, potato chips, bread, pickles, coffee and cake.” Festivities were paid for by local merchants. Both the Harrison and Russellville chambers of commerce sent car caravans. A similar celebration was held in September 1956 to celebrate the paving work from Jasper on south.

With its completion, Highway 7 became the first paved road to traverse the whole county. It linked Jasper to the larger cities of Harrison in the north and Russellville in the south, with all of their job opportunities, professional services, and shopping choices. The highway wasn’t a boon for all. Small towns like Lurton which once had a booming economy, due in part to the local wood-handle mill, suffered when it was bypassed by the highway.

The road linked Arkansas to Newton County, ushering in many tourism opportunities. Traveling south from Boone County, visitors would have had a chance to visit Dogpatch U.S.A., Paradise Hill with its craft and gift store, the county seat of Jasper, Diamond Cave, Arkansas’ “Grand Canyon,” Lost Valley with its six waterfalls, the Buffalo River and canoe outfitters at Ponca, and the Ozark National Forest. Highway 7 became the state’s first scenic byway in 1993.

Several landslides have damaged the road in recent years. In 2009 an area of highway just south of Jasper collapsed due to heavy rain. A few years later, repair work to fix the earlier damage caused a section of road to collapse again. In 2011 the state proposed changes to enlarge and realign the road and to replace the historic 1931 steel through-truss bridge over the Buffalo near Pruitt. A new bridge is expected to be built, but debate continues regarding the old bridge. While many want it preserved, neither the county nor the National Park Service can afford its maintenance.

Canoeists at the take-out spot, Buffalo Point, Buffalo River, June 25, 1972. Mary Stockslager, photographer. Springdale News Collection (SN 6-25-1972)

“Everything you see here, everything except the tops of those bluffs, would have been submerged beneath a reservoir behind one of two dams the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had planned to build. . . . Wild rivers, I’m afraid, are a vanishing species.”

Neil Compton
National Geographic, March 1977

“Movin’ out o’ here would mean givin’ up all I’ve got, all I’ve ever had. I hope to stay just as long as the Lord and those Government folks allow.”

Eva “Granny” Barnes Henderson
National Geographic, March 1977

Flowing about 150 wiggly miles east from its headwaters near Boxley towards its confluence with the White River, the Buffalo River has been many things to many people. Native Americans and later settlers used the river for food, water, and transportation. Entrepreneurs harnessed the river’s energy to run mills and float raw materials like cotton, minerals, and red cedar logs (for pencils) to market in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

As early as 1897 the U.S. Corps of Engineers looked at making the river navigable through a series of locks and dams, but the cost was too high. In 1936 a dam was proposed for power generation and flood control but never materialized because of the Great Depression and World War II. The Corps revised their plan in 1954, proposing two dams and the construction of Lone Rock Lake. While supported by many locals and members of the U.S. Congress, legislation to dam the river failed repeatedly.

In the late 1950s, Kenneth L. Smith, a University of Arkansas student, began a personal campaign extolling the beauty of the Buffalo through newspaper and magazine articles. His work helped popularize the notion that the river was worth saving in its natural state. U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright obtained an appropriation to fund a survey of the river by the National Park Service, which later declared that, as one of the last free-flowing rivers in the country, it should be preserved.

Dam proponents and opponents geared up for battle. Governmental agencies such as the Corps and Park Service opposed one another’s plans. Local organizations were formed, including the pro-dam Buffalo River Improvement Association and anti-dam Ozark Society, lead by Dr. Neil Compton of Bentonville. In Newton County some citizens wanted the dams for the progress and jobs they would bring, while many who lived along the river wanted neither dams nor a National River.

After many years of struggle, in 1972 the U.S. Congress officially designated the Buffalo a National River, the first in the nation. But opposition to a National Park continued. Many river-valley residents were upset with Park Service plans because it meant that they would be forced to sell their land to the federal government, leaving the homes and farms their ancestors had worked so hard to build.

In later years, Compton came to believe that pollution was the river’s greatest threat. In 2013 the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality awarded a permit to build a major hog farm near Mt. Judea. Concerns quickly grew about the potential for damage to the river from accidental runoff of hog waste. After years of protest and litigation, in 2019 the State of Arkansas agreed to a $6.2 million buyout of the company. The land is now protected under a conservation easement.

Joe Cowell and family at their cannery, near Deer, 1900s. Bill Bohannon Collection (S-86-250-91)

“No son of mine will ever sit down, fold his hands, and live off the Government. . . . I can’t keep the government from adding taxes and telling me how to run the plant I’ve spent half a lifetime building, but I can teach my sons to get out and hustle for themselves. By golly, the small business is the backbone of America . . .”

I. C. Sutton
Arkansas Gazette, October 16, 1949

Like churches, country stores were the heart of many a community. People collected their mail there and purchased or bartered for goods they couldn’t produce at home. Eggs could be traded for such things as baking powder, sugar, and salt. Store owners also bought animal skins and medicinal plants, selling what they gathered to traveling purchasing agents.

Boxley was named after William Boxley, the merchant who delivered goods to the valley stores and who later operated his own store there. The town of Ponca owes its name to the Ponca City, Oklahoma, Mining Company, which mined lead and zinc ore in the area in the early 1900s. As mining increased in the county, so did blacksmith shops which built and repaired equipment.

In 1929 I. C. Sutton bought a rough turn-handle mill and moved it to Lurton, renaming it the Lurton Furniture Factory. To keep the factory running during the Great Depression, it switched to making barrels and then handles for things like hammers, railroad picks, and axes. World War II bought prosperity to the newly renamed I. C. Sutton Handle Factory, the only war-related business in the county. After the war the business expanded its production to baseball bats, telegraph spade handles, and pike poles used for logging. The business relocated to Harrison in the late 1950s to keep down shipping costs. The move turned Lurton into a ghost town.

The paving of Highway 7 in the 1950s brought some prosperity to the towns along its path. New businesses sprung up. But the highway took away business, too. Some traveled to larger towns in neighboring counties, such as Harrison and Russellville, to conduct their business and do their shopping.

In the 1940s politics was the frequent topic of discussion in Jasper’s two cafés. Pearl’s Café was home to the Democrats while Upton’s Café hosted the Republicans. Today Upton’s is now the Ozark Café, and politics are still discussed.

In 2010 the Jasper Commercial Historic District, including the courthouse, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. The simple, rockwork structures were influenced by the availability of the area’s plentiful stone and the town’s relative isolation, free from outside architectural trends. Five of the buildings were built by Gould Jones, a local blacksmith and builder. He constructed a small reservoir in town in the early 1940s to provide water to a tomato-canning factory. The factory was closed by the Arkansas Department of Health when tomato juice was found in local wells.

Commercial Hotel, Jasper, 1910s-1920s. A 1922 ad noted that the hotel offered, “electric lights, clean rooms, good meals, [and] special attention to tourists and [the] traveling public.” Newton County Times Collection (S-88-234-67)

Boy Scouts at Camp Orr, near Jasper, July 1967. Springdale News Collection (SN 7-1967)

“We seek to create a camp where a boy will have opportunity for instruction and practice in woodcraft skills. We seek to develop physical fitness and resourcefulness to adapt himself to his surroundings and to live out of doors.”

L. M. R. Rogers
Scout Executive, Westark Area Council
Ozarks Mountaineer, September 1955

“Being on staff [in the mid 1960s] was kind of a dream for a teenage boy.  We’d work for four or five hours, then spend the rest of the day in this wilderness playground.”

Jack Butt
Morning News of Northwest Arkansas, May 25, 2003

Camp Orr was developed in the early 1950s by the Westark Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America, based out of Fort Smith. Located a few miles northwest of Jasper, along the banks of the Buffalo River, the camp is named after Raymond F. Orr, a Fort Smith industrialist and former Council president who was instrumental in the camp’s development.

When it came time to find a camp site, Orr and a few other men are said to have paddled the Buffalo in search of the perfect spot. Orr purchased parcels of land from local landowners and then sold hundreds of acres to the Council for $15,000.

The first organized camp activities were held in the summer of 1955. Early structures included a trading post, a dining hall housed in a large Army tent, and a 34,000-gallon concrete water reservoir. Today the camp hosts a few thousand campers each summer, making it Newton County’s second largest “town” after Jasper. Troops come from Arkansas and across the country to gain skill in such things as knot tying, fire building, and woodworking.

The camp’s natural resources are plentiful—a river for canoeing, forests for camping and backpacking, rocks for climbing and rappelling, and flora and fauna for studying. The camp even has its own haunting legend, that of Smokey Joe, a former scoutmaster who is said to have lost his sanity after being hit in the head with a rock.

When the Buffalo National River Wilderness Area was established in 1972, the camp found itself within the area’s boundaries, the only Boy Scout camp in America in a national park. At first there was concern over whether or not the camp could remain. Negotiations went on for five years. In the end it was decided that as long as the camp followed National Park Service guidelines, like keeping the road into the property unpaved, it could stay. In 2003 the camp celebrated its 50th anniversary in true camp fashion, with food, fun, and stories around the campfire.

“Piano” formation, Diamond Cave, near Jasper, 1921-1925. Hidy Bouher Eby, Butch Bouher, and Lota Dee Bouher Lagan Collection (S-2001-2-12)

“There is a thrilling slide down Lover’s Leap to a point in the cave where visitors may behold the Pipe Organ… The calcite stems, or pipes of the organ, are so tense and delicate that the scale of music can be run by deftly tapping the rigid rock, and the cave is thus made to ring with melody.”

Playgrounds in Arkansas
1920s

Newton County is known for having a significant number of caves: Beauty Cave, Bat Cave, Civil War Cave, Beckham Creek Cave, and Hurricane River Cave. Perhaps the best known is Diamond Cave, located near Jasper. Likely named for the sparkling beauty seen as light glistens off of the cave’s dripping water and many-colored formations, the cavern is thought to have at least 20 miles of passageways.

The cave is said to have been discovered in 1834 by Sam and Andy Hudson, Tennessee migrants who homesteaded nearby. As the story goes, they were out hunting when their dogs disappeared into a hole in a hillside. Venturing into the cave with burning pine knots for torches, they found dogs and bears fighting. After killing the bears the men explored the cave for about three miles and saw its many wonders.

Early visitors explored with the aid of torches. They were guided by the son of one of the discoverers, who charged $2 for a group’s daylong tour. In 1922 W. J. “Jonah” Pruitt bought the cave and made improvements to it and the land. Three years later he sold the property to the Diamond Cave Corporation, maintaining a majority share of the stock. Walkways were created and protective handrails put in place. At first the cave’s electric light came from a gasoline-powered generator. Only one tour group could visit the cave at a time, as there wasn’t enough power to light multiple rooms simultaneously.

The trail through the cave was about two miles long. Fanciful names were given to various passages and formations—Crystal Lane, the Sugar Room, the Auditorium of Rome, the Statue of Liberty, and Fat Man’s Agony (a tight passageway). Baloney Pool owes it name to a tourist who didn’t believe the guide’s word that the water in a pool was deeper than it looked. Crying “Baloney!” he stepped into the pool only to realize the guide spoke the truth.

At various times the park had campgrounds and a bath house, rental cabins, a museum, and the Panther Inn, which sold refreshments and offered a hall for dances and parties. The rollerskating rink, built in 1939, was a popular place for local youngsters, who would often catch a ride to the rink on logging trucks from nearby communities like Deer, Ponca, and Low Gap. At its peak the cave had 10,000 visitors annually. On busy weekends the guides were given hamburgers as they left the cave with one tour group and immediately entered with another, eating on the go.

The cave closed to the public in 1988. In 1995 it was sold to the Mas Suerte Corporation of Texas. At the time the company indicated that it wanted to preserve and protect the cave and the surrounding property. Plans included restoration of native plants and trees and a wildlife refuge. The cave is closed at present.

Statue of Jubilation T. Cornpone, Dogpatch U.S.A., Marble Falls, June 1968. The fictitious Cornpone was an incompetent Confederate general and founder of Dogpatch. Bob Edmiston, photographer. Springdale News Collection (SN 6-1968 #1)

“Dogpatch is really something else. People in the East think all the creativity and action is on the coasts, but the Midwest comes up with some fantastic ideas—like Dogpatch. It is a fine thing for Arkansas and it doesn’t hurt me either.”

Al Capp
Baxter (AR) Bulletin, May 16, 1968

Al Capp, creator of the “Li’l Abner” comic strip, was approached by a group of Boone County investors for permission to recreate his imaginary town of Dogpatch in the wilds of Arkansas. In 1966 they purchased a 160-acre trout farm near the town of Marble Falls, north of Jasper.

The first phase of Dogpatch cost over $1.3 million. Opened to the public in May 1968, the park featured buggy rides, a miniature railroad known as the “West Po’k Chop Speshul,” a trout farm, Ozark arts and crafts, a honey shop and apiary for bees, 1800s-era log cabins, and various hillbilly characters. Over 300,000 people visited the first year. Adults were charged $1.50, children 75 cents.

Soon there was a change in leadership; businessman Jess Odom gained controlling interest. New rides were added and a campsite developed. A few years later Odom broke ground on the Marble Falls resort, next to Dogpatch. The resort included a convention center, an indoor ice-skating rink, and—surprisingly—ski runs kept white with machine-made snow. Financial problems and mild winters led to the resort’s closure in 1977, the same year Capp retired his comic strip.

An economic feasibility study of the park in the late 1960s suggested that, by its tenth year of operation, the park would see over one million visitors a year. At best it attracted 200,000 annually. Competition with the nearby Silver Dollar City theme park in Branson, Missouri, didn’t help. Times were changing. In 1980 fiscal debt, changes in leadership, a decrease in tourism, and two money-losing summers forced the owners to file for bankruptcy.

Even as it struggled, the park stayed open. It added new attractions and featured country music stars like Reba McEntire. Owners came and went. In an effort to rebrand itself, in 1991 “Li’l Abner” and the other cartoon characters were replaced with a generic Ozarks theme. Dogpatch closed October 1993. A year later the Carr brothers of Boone County bought the property but didn’t do anything with it. Over the years vandals and souvenir hunters took their toll on the former park. The statue of Jubilation T. Cornpone was taken to Branson and may still be there on the bed of a trailer.

In 2005 a father and his teenage son were riding their four-wheelers on the property when the son ran into a steel cable strung across the road and was hit in the neck. There were questions about whether the property’s caretaker, another Carr brother, knew about trespassers and deliberately put up the cable as a deterrent. In 2011 the Arkansas Supreme Court upheld an earlier jury’s verdict to award money to the injured family. As the Carrs didn’t pay the judgment, the Dogpatch property was transferred to the family and their lawyer. Since then, the land has been in limbo. The current owner is anxious to sell

Elk, Boxley Valley, January 24, 1993. Jill Smith, photographer. Springdale News Collection (SN 1-24-1993)

“They’re mean, wild and stout. . . . A lot of people here would never get a chance to see them if we hadn’t brought them in. I’m just tickled to death with the way they’re doing and with having them here.”

Robert Harrison
Arkansas Gazette, February 11, 1985

Elk once roamed North Arkansas, as evidenced by name of the old Elkhorn Tavern in Benton County, which displayed a pair of elk antlers on its roof. But overhunting in the late 1800s and loss of habitat as prairies were transformed into farmland first reduced, then wiped out, the once-large population.

A century later, hunters petitioned the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission to reestablish the elk. When Hilary Jones joined the Commission in 1980 and saw Oklahoma’s successful elk reintroduction, he figured it could work in Arkansas. The Buffalo National River valley near his home in Pruitt seemed ideal.

In 1981 local volunteers brought the first seven elk from Colorado, where the animal was plentiful. The elk were transported in cattle trailers lined with sheets of plywood in order to reduce stress and minimize injuries. More elk were relocated over the next four years. Soon calves were being born. Today the population stands around 450.

The elk are quite a draw. Tourists often line Highway 43 in Boxley Valley to watch for elk, especially in October during the animals’ mating season. They also visit the new Elk Education Center in Ponca. Each year thousands vie for one of a few dozen permits for two five-day hunting seasons.

But not everyone is happy. Some locals have complained about the growing herd and their impact on cattle-grazing land and the region’s plants. There are also concerns about the danger to roadside tourists. A few worry that Boxley Valley is becoming a kind of zoo.

In 2012 several water, wildlife, and conservation agencies and groups sought to halt the U.S. Forest Service’s expansion of elk habitat into Bearcat Hollow, just east of the Newton County line. They claimed that the clear cutting, road building, and herbicide use needed to thin and manage the forest would be excessive and would endanger lands protected by the Arkansas Wilderness Act of 1984.

Kilgore Mine, Ponca, 1916. From left: Hope Strong, Lick Greenhaw, Lynn Jones, Hobert Criner, Frank Cheatham, unidentified, and Carol Greenhaw. Willie Bohannan Collection (S-83-82-56)

“Usually only about four men could work in a small tunnel [at the Panther Creek Mine].  One man was engaged in wheeling out the waste and collecting the ore worth saving. . . . From the ‘diggings’ a . . . track capable of supporting a small hand gondola car extended some 300 yards to the ore mill.  At the end of the track the mined ore, a combination of dirt, rock, and ore, was dumped in the grill screen grates where it was broken . . . [and] fed to the crusher.”

Walter F. Lackey (1960)
Newton County Times, August 25, 1983

In the late 1850s, lead ore was mined and processed near the mouth of Cave Creek and at the headwaters of the Buffalo River near Ponca and Boxley. Over 18,000 pounds or more of ore was extracted, mainly for making lead bullets for rifles. The process was crude. Ore was dug out by hand from open cuts or shallow shafts. A crude smelter (furnace) made of stone was used to separate the metal from the rock. With the advent of the Civil War came the need for even more lead. The Cave Creek operation was worked by Confederate forces.

Lack of easy transportation limited the growth of mining. In the early days, raw ore and processed minerals were hauled by wagon over rugged terrain and then shipped down the Buffalo River. When railroads came to neighboring counties by the turn of the 20th century, materials were transported by wagon north to Harrison or west to St. Paul for shipment by rail.

By the end of the 19th century zinc mining had surpassed lead mining in importance. Zinc was used as a paint pigment, for battery electrodes, and to galvanize (coat) iron to protect it from corrosion. A 5,200-pound sample of nearly pure zinc from the Panther Creek Mine near Diamond Cave was said to have been sent for display to the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, winning first honors in its class.

The need for zinc further increased by 1915, as World War I was underway in Europe. During this time the Panther Creek Mine produced about 3,000 tons of zinc concentrates. Prices began to decrease in 1917 due to a glut of minerals on the market, the high production costs of refining the ore, the area’s poor transportation options, and the loss of an able labor force as young men were recruited to fight. After the war, North Arkansas mines and their adjacent boomtowns were often abandoned.

Lead and zinc mining occurred off and on over the years, mostly small shovel-and-pick operations. In the 1940s miners were back at the old Confederate mine near Cave Creek, extracting large quantities of zinc and lead ore.

While lead and zinc were the primary materials mined or quarried in Newton County, there are also significant deposits of limestone, sand and gravel, and sandstone, as well as some coal and iron. Between 1895 and 1936 1,500 tons of coal were extracted from two mines in the northeastern corner of the county. Perhaps the first recorded instance of quarrying involved a 45-ton limestone block quarried in 1836 near Marble Falls for the Washington Monument in Washington D.C. A century later, a limestone quarry southeast of Jasper produced an estimated 50,000 tons of crushed rock during the construction of Highway 7.

Members of the Herculean Society, Newton County Academy, Parthenon, mid 1920s. Formed in 1920 as a literary society, the Herculeans gave programs and performances and participated in debates. Elmer Casey Collection (S-83-115-14)

“We admit we were freshmen, Much greener than the grass, But now we’re glad to say, We’re the sophomore class.”

Thomas Ryker
Newtonian, 1922

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, one-room schools dotted the countryside, serving to educate students in communities and towns. Schools operated for only a few months each year, when the children weren’t needed for farm work. But there wasn’t an avenue for higher learning until October 1920, when the Newton County Academy opened with 144 students. It was part of the Southern Baptist mountain mission school program, dedicated to bringing education and civilizing influences to rural areas. Describing Newton County as “the most destitute field in Arkansas,” the Baptists worked with community leaders to establish the school.

Donations in the form of cash, trees, and sawn lumber were used to build a two-story, native rock building. A girls’ dormitory was built to house out-of-town students as the Academy was, for a time, the only high school in the county. A rockwork gymnasium was built in 1936 as part of the Works Progress Administration program. The stage was paid for in part by area businesses in exchange for advertisements on the curtain.

The school offered coursework in music, mathematics, business, Latin, and the social sciences. Student societies focused on literature and religion. Tuition was staggered, depending on the grade the child attended. Seniors paid $4.50 per month, or $36 for the entire session.

Keeping the school going financially was a struggle. Money was still owed for the main building, so some of the school’s land was sold to help pay the debt. Many individuals and groups stepped up to help. Womens’ Missionary Unions in Arkansas and Texas helped fund tuition fees. The women of the Second Baptist Church in Little Rock assisted with dormitory furnishings and clothing. Baylor University in Texas, which directed the Baptist Mountain School program, provided equipment and maintenance.

The state took over the Academy in 1930, switching it to a public school. School consolidation in the 1940s and 1950s forced many of the local schools to close, moving students to larger, more centralized schools. At the Academy, students were transferred to the Jasper Public School district. The last high school class graduated in Parthenon in 1948; the last year of grade school was 1954.

Over the years the dormitory burned to the ground, the school building was dismantled for its rocks, and the gymnasium lost its roof. In the mid 1990s, Beulah Shelton began a campaign to save the gym. Through the donation of labor and money, including state capital improvement funds, the structure was rebuilt and rededicated October 2005. Today it’s used for community functions. The Academy was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.

James Braswell (far left) with members of the Jasper and Parthenon bands playing at a spring picnic, Diamond Cave, near Jasper, about 1910. Ardella Braswell Vaughan Collection (S-89-81-15)

“ . . . by this time Highway 7 had been upgraded considerably and people came from miles around to shake their shaves, get boozed up, and let their hair down.”

Henry Sutton
Mid-American Folklore, 2000

James T. Braswell was born in Carroll County, but lived in Jasper for about 25 years. A carpenter by trade, he also made furniture and musical instruments such as mandolins and violins. On Saturday afternoons in the summer, he led Jasper’s town band from the bandstand next to the courthouse. Braswell was also a songwriter, penning “In the Land of a Million Smiles” in 1925. The song was written on behalf of the Ozark Playgrounds Association, which used it for many years to boost its tourism efforts in the Arkansas and Missouri Ozarks.

Community picnics were a frequent summer event in the early 1900s. Some picnics were quite elaborate with concession rights sold to the highest bidder. The day before the picnic, underbrush was cleared and booths set up for lemonade, ice cream, fruit, hot dogs, souvenirs, and the like. A horse- or mule-powered wooden “swing” gave round-and-round rides for a nickel. “Happy Jack” Moore of Swain was one of the best-known swing operators. He drew customers in with his singing, dancing, and snappy patter.

In Lurton, the picnic lasted for three days, drawing up to 1,000 people. Folks had a chance to catch a greased pig, dance to live music, or look for coins in a giant pile of sawdust. They could also pay for a ride in an airplane. In the 1930s, Lurton was the scene of some rowdy Saturday-night dances, courtesy of the local loggers and the workers from the Civilian Conservation Corps. As the nickelodeon played Western Swing music, couples courted and moonshine flowed.

Shooting matches were popular. In the early 1900s men and boys in the Low Gap community would lie on the ground with their muzzleloaders propped up on a log and take aim at paper targets tacked onto clapboards. Their rifles had names such as “Old Bangum,” “Yellow Jacket,” and “Old Countabore.” Contestants were given seven shots throughout the day, with the winners being declared after much scrutiny of the shot-up targets. Prior to the event, the contestants chipped in to purchase a steer for about $12. During the match, the animal was slaughtered. The winners received certain cuts of beef, depending on their ranking, with some selling their winnings to others.

In Low Gap, Isaac and Cynthia Wishon where known for their keen enjoyment of visiting with friends and neighbors. Cynthia was a good cook. The noon meal might include dried smoked beef and venison, sauerkraut, apple and pumpkin pies, fried chicken, potatoes, and turnip greens, all washed down with coffee, milk, and spicewood or sassafras tea. While the women gathered to quilt, knit, and share neighborhood news, the men played card games (“pitch” and “seven up”) and pitched horseshoes. Often folks tuned up their instruments to play songs such as “Buffalo Gals” and “Arkansas Traveler.”

Ted Richmond (right) at the Wilderness Library, Mount Sherman, 1940s-1950s. Flossie Smith Collection (S-98-88-525)

“I literally started with a Bible and a prayer. It has not been easy, but I have had the most remarkable answers to prayers. One summer when the drought burned up the gardens, I used nearly all my slender grocery money for the library, and lived on wild roots, wild onions, berries, and the like. But the books kept coming, and that was what I wanted.”

Ted Richmond
Christian Science Monitor, April 5, 1947

Born in Nebraska, James Theodore “Ted” Richmond lived in many places and had several jobs. But he grew tired of living in a fast-paced world, isolated from his neighbors. Eventually he found his way to Mount Sherman, a few miles northwest of Jasper.

With the help of his neighbors, in 1930 or 1931 Richmond cleared some land, built a small log cabin, and started a goat herd. His aim was to establish the Wilderness Library, a place where his neighbors could have access to the knowledge of the world. At first the only book he had to lend was the Bible. But he wrote to friends and publishers and soon books and magazines began arriving.

As word of the library spread, folks made the trek to pay a visit and borrow a book. For those who couldn’t make it, Richmond hauled 60-70 pounds worth of books in a canvas sack along rugged mountain roads and trails. He visited neighbors, sharing books, preaching and praying, and gathering news to bring to the next family on his route. Seeing a need, he began the “Wilderness White Christmas,” gathering and delivering small toys, clothing, medicine, shoes, and other necessities to his neighbors.

The Wilderness Library grew. Shelves of books were placed in schools and churches. A few branch libraries were established, including the Raney Branch further up the mountain from Richmond’s place. In the early 1950s it held about 1,500 volumes, including The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and the Boy Scout Handbook. Light was provided by oil lamps. Borrowers recorded their loans in a notebook. If someone wanted to contact Richmond, he or she could holler for him using an old phonograph horn, hoping that the wind was blowing in the right direction for him to hear.

Richmond knew the value of a good story. He wrote articles about the library, which he sent to newspaper and magazine editors, and went on publicity tours. A few major publications sent reporters to interview him. A 1952 article in the Saturday Evening Post positively delighted in the tale of a backwoods hermit tending to the literary needs of his hillbilly neighbors. The locals weren’t pleased, going so far as to create the Newton County Betterment Group to fight this unfair portrayal.

Years of rough living and poor diet may have taken their toll, along with the arrival of a regional library system in 1944. In 1953, Richmond married longtime friend Edna Gardner of Texarkana, Texas, whom he had met through the Ozark Artists and Writers Guild. Not long after that, Ted Richmond left his cabin and library and moved to Texarkana. He died there in 1975.

Pearl Wilhemina McGowan Holland with a stringer of goggle-eyed perch, largemouth bass, and catfish, by the store at Shady Grove Campground, Pruitt, 1930s. Richard and Melba Holland Collection (S-98-2-340)

“I love it here. . . . You are so close to God you can just see it all around you. The birds sing all the time . . . and you should hear the whippoorwill at night. It’s the most peaceful place in the world.”

Pearl Holland
Tulsa World, June 20, 1965

Today, much of Newton County’s businesses are tourism related. Whether folks are camping in the Ozark-St. Francis National Forests or floating the Buffalo River or riding their motorcycles down scenic Highway 7, tourism dollars are important to the county’s economy.

The area’s rivers, especially the Buffalo, have always drawn anglers. For decades, visitors often stopped at the Shady Grove Campground at Pruitt to fish or swim the Buffalo. The camp was established in 1920 by F. A. Hammons. It offered a bathhouse, bathing suit and towel rentals, campsites, a dance hall, and a well-maintained river sandbar. When the new bridge was built in 1931, Hammons built a few rental cabins on the old bridge. Famous artist Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri was a campground regular. A sign at the camp read, “No hard drinks, shouting or unlawful acts allowed.”

For many years Hammons’ step-daughter Pearl McGowan Holland was the camp’s manager. Pearl’s son, Richard, grew up on the river—swimming, fishing, hunting, and exploring caves. At age 16 he quit school to become a fishing guide for tourists for a time. In 1973 the Holland family made a heartbreaking decision. They sold their land along the Buffalo to the National Park Service. They greatly missed the river and the opportunities the campground gave them to meet new people and visit with old friends.

In Boxley Valley in the late 1930s, Clyde Villines and others worked to clear many years of silt and vegetation out of the millpond which fed his grist and flouring mill. He stocked the revitalized pond with fish and built five small cabins to rent to weekend anglers from Harrison and other nearby towns.

Ponca is the headquarters for folks wanting to float a popular stretch of the Buffalo. On spring and summer weekends the river is lined with canoes and paddlers, many transported to the river by either the Lost Valley Canoe Service or the Buffalo Outdoor Center, the area’s two major outfitters. Locals sometimes see it as an “aluminum stream,” both for the canoes and beer cans that float on by.

In 2004 Randal and Debbie Phillips purchased a few of the buildings at the old Marble Falls ski resort next to Dogpatch, and began transforming them into a motorcycle resort complete with motel and restaurant, convention center, campground, and motorcycle-related shops. The Phillips hope to make Newton County the biker capital of Arkansas.

Men with sacks of corn at the Bat House Cave distillery, Wells Creek, near Hasty, 1900s-1910s. Newton County Times Collection (S-88-234-94)

“Several men were lounging around each still, but it was noticeable that none of them were drunk or even drinking. . . . [T]hey probably considered that they were at work, and a man cannot very well get drunk and work at the same time.”

Wayman Hogue
Back Yonder, 1932

For much of the 1800s, making alcohol didn’t require legal permits or taxes. Just the proper equipment, a few sacks of dried corn, and a good supply of water. Aside from the pleasures of home brew, distilling whiskey was a good way to use surplus corn and make some cash.

One of Newton County’s first stills was run by Alfred Carlton at a spring on his father’s homestead near Parthenon. At Henson Creek, John Dale put his still under a rock shelter. For 35 cents a customer could get a large gourd-full of “mountain dew.” Squirrel hunter Tom Reynolds stopped to visit with Dale one day, only to have the stopper from his powder horn pop out as he bent to light his pipe from a cooking fire. After the ignited gunpowder produced a loud bang, Reynolds said, “That White Mule sho do have some kick.”

In 1897 the U.S. government passed the Bottled-in-Bond Act, in part to guarantee that spirits were unadulterated (not diluted or impure). Only legal, government-bonded distilleries were allowed to manufacture and sell alcohol. Revenue stamps were affixed to barrels and bottles to show that the proper taxes had been paid. The taxation caused many distillers to hide their operations from the revenue agents, leading to the rise of moonshining. However, there were two legal distilleries in Newton County. One was Bill McDougal’s distillery near the Big Hurricane Creek.

Over at Bat House Cave at the head of Wells Creek, between Hasty and Yardelle, owners Charles Bethany and Newton Sanders operated their distillery within a natural rock shelter that had a good spring. One way to make whiskey was to soak corn kernels in water for a couple of days and let them sprout. The corn was crushed into bits or “chops” and placed in a wood barrel along with coarse-ground cornmeal to create a mash. After a few days of fermentation the starch in the corn was converted into sugar. The mash was placed in an enclosed metal cooker and heated. The rising steam was trapped in a coiled copper tube or “worm” which was cooled by water. What dripped out as liquid was further cooked and condensed to make whiskey.

The distiller at Bat House was Tom Raney. After fermentation the mash was dumped into a wood trough as hog feed, leading to a few tipsy pigs. Gaugers George Ray and Newt Jones weighed the whisky and placed government stamps on the barrels, proof that the distillery had paid its taxes. The distillery was allowed to make 12 gallons a day.

The distilleries closed in 1917, when Arkansas’ “bone dry” liquor law went into effect, which prohibited the “transportation, delivery, and storage of liquor.” The night Bat House closed, the liquor barrels were stolen from the warehouse. Moonshining continued as national prohibition went into effect in 1920.

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McCamant, Richard E., and Dwight Pitcaithley. “National Park Service Protects Buffalo River.” Harrison Daily Times, 7-4-1986.

McGeeney, Ryan. “JPs get earful of yeas, nays on hog farm.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 3-6-2013.

McKnight, Edwin T. Zinc and Lead Deposits of Northern Arkansas. U.S. Department of the Interior, Geological Survey, U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington D.C., 1935.

Mosby, Joe. “Before the Buffalo Became ‘Aluminum Conveyor Belt.’” Arkansas Gazette, 6-17-1984.

Neal, Joseph C. Mining the Mountains: Pettigrew and Ponca in the Era of Zinc. Shiloh Museum of Ozark History, early 1980s.

Newton County Action Team. Pathways through Newton County, late 1990s.

Newton County Historical Society. “Diamond Cave: A lost Newton County gem.” Newton County Times, 7-21-2010.

Newton County Times. “A Century After Being Pushed West Elk Are Coming Home.” Mid 1980s.

Newton County Times. “Chamber of Commerce holds history of Newton County.” 6-23-2005.

Newton County Times. “Early Stories in the Newton County Times” [REA high-power line]. 12-12-2012.

Newton County Times. “Historic courthouse at center of festival.”  6-26-2003.

Newton County Times. “Historical Notes” [Highway 7].  6-1-1989.

Newton County Times. “History of Parthenon Academy revisited.”  9-29-2005.

Newton County Times. “Parthenon Preparing to Restore Old Gym.” 2-17-2000.

Newton County Times. “Sale of Diamond Cave to Texas Corporation Announced.” 9-4-1995.

Newton County Times. “Sawmilling, Logging Help Phillips Stay on Farm.” 5-31-1984.

Newtonian. Newton County Academy: Parthenon, 1922.

Ozarks Mountaineer. “Arkansas’ New Parkway—Highway 7 a Scenic Wonder.” Vol. 5, No. 4 (February 1957).

Perkins, J. Blake. “The Arkansas Tick Eradication Murder: Rethinking Yeoman Resistance in the ‘Marginal’ South.” Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. LXX, No. 4 (Winter 2011).

Phelps, John E. “Skirmish in Limestone Valley, part 1 and part 2.” The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Vol. XXXIV, eHistory, OSU Department of History  (accessed 11/2013)

Pierce, Arthur. “Historical Notes” [Newton County Academy]. Newton County Times, 9-1-1988.

Pitcaithly, Dwight. “Zinc and Lead Mining Along the Buffalo River.” Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. XXXVII, No. 4 (Winter 1978).

Playgrounds in Arkansas. “Diamond Cave, Newton County.”  Ozark Playgrounds Association: Joplin, undated [1920s].

Pruitt, Lisa R. “Law and Order in the Ozarks (Part LXXXV): Dogpatch lawsuit finalized.” (accessed 11/2013)

Putthoff, Flip. “Buffalo would be different today without Compton.” Morning News of Northwest Arkansas, 11-8-1999.

Rodman, Mike. “Residents crusade to erase Dogpatch U.S.A.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 2-5-1994.

Rogers, L. M. R. “Orr Scout Camp—Wilderness Paradise in Arkansas.” Ozarks Mountaineer, Vol. 4, No. 2, (September 1955).

Rural Arkansas. Untitled article about Kathryn Wheeler [rural electrification]. May 1984.

“S. 2125 (98th): Arkansas Wilderness Act of 1984.”  (accessed 11/2013)

Shiloh Museum of Ozark History. “Serving Our Clients: Rural Relief in 1930s Newton County.”

Sims, Scarlett. “State seeks to improve Arkansas 7.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 5-31-2011.

Smith, David A. Lead-Zinc Mineralization in the Ponca-Boxley Area, Arkansas. University of Arkansas-Fayetteville, 1978.

Smith, George S. “Capp to Open Dogpatch.” Baxter (Mountain Home, AR) Bulletin, 5-16-1968.

Smith, Kenneth L. “Highest Cliff in All Arkansas.” Arkansas Democrat, 12-6-1959.

Smith, Kenneth L. “The Seven Kettles—Actually There Were Eight—And the Confederates Put Them to Good Use.” Arkansas Gazette, 11-20-1959.

Spence, Hartzell. “Modern Shepherd of the Hills.” Saturday Evening Post, 11-8-1952.

Stewart-Abernathy, Leslie. “Cherokee.” CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas (accessed 3/2020).

Stroud, Raymond B., et al. Mineral Resources and Industries of Arkansas. U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Mines, U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington D.C., 1969.

Suter, Mary. “Rural Electrification.” CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas. (accessed 12/2013)

Teter, Rhonda. “Newton County Academy.” Newton County Times, 9-7-2011.

Treiber, Peggy. Newton County slide show, produced on behalf of the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History, 6/2/1989.

“Tumbling Tumbleweeds” thread [re Jubilation T. Cornpone statue].  (accessed 11/2013; no longer available 3/2020)

“Twilight Trail an Eerie Place,” unidentified and undated news clipping (1950s). Shiloh Museum research files.

Walkenhorst, Emily. “C and H Hog Farms takes state buyout; $6.2M deal cut to preserve Buffalo River.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 6-14-2019.  (accessed 3/2020)

Wallworth, Adam. “Graze anatomy: Do elk crowd cattle?” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 5-9-2010.

Wallworth, Adam. “Newton County signs in sight.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette 4-5-2012.

Wallworth, Adam. “Residents hear options on cutting elk numbers.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 7-14-2010.

Whayne, Jeannie. “Early Twentieth Century, 1901 through 1940.” Encyclopedia of Arkansas. (accessed 11/2013)

Wilson, Ruth. “Elk returning to native habitat.” Arkansas Gazette, 2-11-1985.

Wood, Mary. “Ozark-St. Francis National Forests.” Encyclopedia of Arkansas.  (accessed 12/2013)

Settlers could bring only a limited amount of textiles, tools, furniture, and household goods with them. When they got to their new homestead they had to make nearly everything for themselves, including a house in which to live.

The James S. and Ann Eliza Counts McDonald family, Thorney (Madison County), about 1900. Some families, even as they prospered, continued to live in their old log cabins, adding on as needed. Gary King Collection (S-97-2-135)

Home. The settler’s first permanent shelter was often a small, square, notched-log structure. Home building was a community affair. Many workers were needed to lift the logs in place. While the heavy work was going on, the woman of the house, and maybe some of the other women, prepared a big dinner, laying out a spread of ham, cornbread, salads, pies, and other tasty foods. Good food, fiddle music, and dancing made house-raising a fun event.

Tools and Household Goods. If a family didn’t bring chairs or benches with them, primitive versions were made from split logs and tree limbs. A puncheon bed made of thick slabs of wood resting on a frame was partially embedded into a corner of the log cabin as it was being built; a post held up the unattached corner. Rope beds used a network of cording crisscrossed through a frame. The rope sagged over time and required retightening, giving meaning to the phrase, “Sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

Wood was fashioned into tableware such as spoons, bowls, and trenchers (plates). Tools and equipment such as yokes for oxen, rakes, and axe handles were made of wood, but the axe head and other metal implements had to be purchased elsewhere. Split-oak strips were woven into baskets and water dippers were made from dried gourds. Cord and shoelaces could be made from strips of rawhide or tanned leather. John Ed Watkins, born in 1854 to early settlers of the upper Crooked Creek Valley (Boone County), recounted that pawpaw bark was used for such things as woven chair seats and bed ropes, and for tying up minnow seines (fish nets).

Lighting. Most of a family’s work was done during daylight hours. Although a fireplace provided some light, it wasn’t enough for reading or task work. Grease lamps were common. A loosely twisted cotton rag or homemade cotton wick was placed in a saucer, hollowed-out stone, or even a turtle shell filled with hog or bear grease. When the exposed part of the wick was lit, it gave a weak light. Good light could be had by burning pine knots, hard, resinous pieces of wood. Tallow candles were made if the family had beef or mutton fat and a metal mold, or took the time to dip wicks repeatedly into liquid animal fat or beeswax. Candles were often saved for special occasions like holidays or visits from the preacher.

Clothing and Textiles. Some of the earliest settlers wore shirts and breeches made from tanned animal skins. Cloth was used for most clothing and was usually made at home. Ready-made cloth like cotton calico and fancy wool suiting was expensive on the frontier. Cotton and flax (for linen) were planted and sheep raised for their wool. The resulting fibers were cleaned, carded (combed), and spun into thin threads and heavier yarns. Some yarns were knitted into stockings and scarves. Others were threaded onto a loom and woven into cloth.

Homespun cloth was used for household textiles like blankets, towels, and sheets and for making clothing. Early settlers to Northwest Arkansas repeatedly mentioned “linsey” and “jean.” Linsey was a lightweight fabric made from wool and sometimes linen or cotton. It was used for making dresses and shirts. Jean was a heavy wool cloth used for men’s work clothing. Women cut clothing patterns themselves. If they weren’t a talented tailor or seamstress, the clothes would be ill-fitting—but they were still worn. Clothing took time to make and storage was limited. Folks might have two sets of everyday clothes and a better set for Sundays.

Shoes. Most shoes were made from home-tanned leather made from the hides of deer, hogs, and cattle. Squirrel leather was sometimes used for young children’s shoes. John Ed Watkins recalled that in his youth shoes were sewn together with flax thread rubbed with beeswax and the soles were nailed on with tiny pegs made of maple wood. Boots were worn in the winter. As they wore down, their tops were cut off to make summer plow shoes. Footwear was greased and polished weekly with a mix of pine tar, tallow, and soot. Children usually went barefoot spring, summer, and fall.

Money. Neighbors shared resources such as candle molds and sorghum mills or traded for the things they needed. But sometimes money was necessary to purchase land, pay taxes, or buy special goods like salt, lead for bullets, ready-made fabric, and metal tools. Folks earned money by selling surplus meat and grain, dried apples, deer hides, homespun cloth, lumber, and marketable herbs like ginseng. They also took on short-term jobs like hauling freight. As communities grew, specialty businesses sprung up. Millers ground corn and wheat, tanners cured leather and fashioned shoes, and blacksmiths shod horses and made tools. Washington County led the way in population growth and town building, with fast-growing professional, industrial, and agricultural sectors.

Some Early Settlers

From left:
Jacob A. Meek, 1811–1882. Came to Dry Creek (Carroll County) about 1836 from Tennessee. Farmer, trader, livestock dealer and mayor of Berryville; raised ten children. Carroll County Heritage Center Collection (S-84-236-24)

Sylvanus and Catherine Blackburn, 1809–1890; 1809–1890. Came to War Eagle (Benton County) in 1832 from Tennessee. Ran gristmill, sawmill, blacksmith shop, and carpentry shop; started first school in area; raised nine children and eight adopted children. Ada Lee Shook Collection (S-85-323-36)

Jeremiah Combs, 1788–1867. Came to Combs (Madison County) about 1832 from Tennessee. Farmer; raised twelve children. John D. Little Collection (S-84-18-1)

Sam Van Winkle, 1822–1913. Brought to Van Hollow (Benton County) before the Civil War as an enslaved person from Kentucky. Saw mill operator and orchard keeper; raised three children. Washington County Historical Society Collection (P-171)

Lucinda Bloyed Karnes, 1840-1915. Born in West Fork (Washington County); her parents came from Kentucky in 1836. Housewife; raised two children and orphaned nephew. Pody Gay Collection (S-2006-26-7)

James S. and Ann Eliza Counts McDonald family, Thorney (Madison County), about 1900. Some families, even as they prospered, continued to live in their old log cabins, adding on as needed. Gary King Collection (S-97-2-135)

Settlers could bring only a limited amount of textiles, tools, furniture, and household goods with them. When they got to their new homestead they had to make nearly everything for themselves, including a house in which to live.

Home. The settler’s first permanent shelter was often a small, square, notched-log structure. Home building was a community affair. Many workers were needed to lift the logs in place. While the heavy work was going on, the woman of the house, and maybe some of the other women, prepared a big dinner, laying out a spread of ham, cornbread, salads, pies, and other tasty foods. Good food, fiddle music, and dancing made house-raising a fun event.

Tools and Household Goods. If a family didn’t bring chairs or benches with them, primitive versions were made from split logs and tree limbs. A puncheon bed made of thick slabs of wood resting on a frame was partially embedded into a corner of the log cabin as it was being built; a post held up the unattached corner. Rope beds used a network of cording crisscrossed through a frame. The rope sagged over time and required retightening, giving meaning to the phrase, “Sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

Wood was fashioned into tableware such as spoons, bowls, and trenchers (plates). Tools and equipment such as yokes for oxen, rakes, and axe handles were made of wood, but the axe head and other metal implements had to be purchased elsewhere. Split-oak strips were woven into baskets and water dippers were made from dried gourds. Cord and shoelaces could be made from strips of rawhide or tanned leather. John Ed Watkins, born in 1854 to early settlers of the upper Crooked Creek Valley (Boone County), recounted that pawpaw bark was used for such things as woven chair seats and bed ropes, and for tying up minnow seines (fish nets).

Lighting. Most of a family’s work was done during daylight hours. Although a fireplace provided some light, it wasn’t enough for reading or task work. Grease lamps were common. A loosely twisted cotton rag or homemade cotton wick was placed in a saucer, hollowed-out stone, or even a turtle shell filled with hog or bear grease. When the exposed part of the wick was lit, it gave a weak light. Good light could be had by burning pine knots, hard, resinous pieces of wood. Tallow candles were made if the family had beef or mutton fat and a metal mold, or took the time to dip wicks repeatedly into liquid animal fat or beeswax. Candles were often saved for special occasions like holidays or visits from the preacher.

Clothing and Textiles. Some of the earliest settlers wore shirts and breeches made from tanned animal skins. Cloth was used for most clothing and was usually made at home. Ready-made cloth like cotton calico and fancy wool suiting was expensive on the frontier. Cotton and flax (for linen) were planted and sheep raised for their wool. The resulting fibers were cleaned, carded (combed), and spun into thin threads and heavier yarns. Some yarns were knitted into stockings and scarves. Others were threaded onto a loom and woven into cloth.

Homespun cloth was used for household textiles like blankets, towels, and sheets and for making clothing. Early settlers to Northwest Arkansas repeatedly mentioned “linsey” and “jean.” Linsey was a lightweight fabric made from wool and sometimes linen or cotton. It was used for making dresses and shirts. Jean was a heavy wool cloth used for men’s work clothing. Women cut clothing patterns themselves. If they weren’t a talented tailor or seamstress, the clothes would be ill-fitting—but they were still worn. Clothing took time to make and storage was limited. Folks might have two sets of everyday clothes and a better set for Sundays.

Shoes. Most shoes were made from home-tanned leather made from the hides of deer, hogs, and cattle. Squirrel leather was sometimes used for young children’s shoes. John Ed Watkins recalled that in his youth shoes were sewn together with flax thread rubbed with beeswax and the soles were nailed on with tiny pegs made of maple wood. Boots were worn in the winter. As they wore down, their tops were cut off to make summer plow shoes. Footwear was greased and polished weekly with a mix of pine tar, tallow, and soot. Children usually went barefoot spring, summer, and fall.

Money. Neighbors shared resources such as candle molds and sorghum mills or traded for the things they needed. But sometimes money was necessary to purchase land, pay taxes, or buy special goods like salt, lead for bullets, ready-made fabric, and metal tools. Folks earned money by selling surplus meat and grain, dried apples, deer hides, homespun cloth, lumber, and marketable herbs like ginseng. They also took on short-term jobs like hauling freight. As communities grew, specialty businesses sprung up. Millers ground corn and wheat, tanners cured leather and fashioned shoes, and blacksmiths shod horses and made tools. Washington County led the way in population growth and town building, with fast-growing professional, industrial, and agricultural sectors.

Some Early Settlers

From left:
Jacob A. Meek, 1811–1882. Came to Dry Creek (Carroll County) about 1836 from Tennessee. Farmer, trader, livestock dealer and mayor of Berryville; raised ten children. Carroll County Heritage Center Collection (S-84-236-24)

Sylvanus and Catherine Blackburn, 1809–1890; 1809–1890. Came to War Eagle (Benton County) in 1832 from Tennessee. Ran gristmill, sawmill, blacksmith shop, and carpentry shop; started first school in area; raised nine children and eight adopted children. Ada Lee Shook Collection (S-85-323-36)

Jeremiah Combs, 1788–1867. Came to Combs (Madison County) about 1832 from Tennessee. Farmer; raised twelve children. John D. Little Collection (S-84-18-1)

Sam Van Winkle, 1822–1913. Brought to Van Hollow (Benton County) before the Civil War as an enslaved person from Kentucky. Saw mill operator and orchard keeper; raised three children. Washington County Historical Society Collection (P-171)

Lucinda Bloyed Karnes, 1840-1915. Born in West Fork (Washington County); her parents came from Kentucky in 1836. Housewife; raised two children and orphaned nephew. Pody Gay Collection (S-2006-26-7)

Most of a family’s energy and resources went into food production and food preservation for themselves and for their livestock. Each homestead produced a variety of crops, hedging their bets against a catastrophic crop failure and ensuring a wide range of nutrients for their diet.

Using smoke to calm bees at a bee tree, Madison County, circa 1939. From left: Nuell Stepp, John Acord, and Joe Acord. Bob Eaton, photographer. Alice Martin Collection (S-2006-31-2)

Gathering Food. Soon after the settlers came they hunted, trapped, and fished for meat to allow their livestock and crops time to grow. Deer, turkeys, squirrels, and rabbits were often targeted, but quail, prairie chickens, opossums, raccoons, wild hogs, and even the occasional bear found their way into the stewpot. Game was usually eaten fresh as it didn’t lend itself to long-term preservation.

Blackberries, huckleberries, walnuts, persimmons, pawpaws (sometimes called Arkansas bananas), gooseberries, wild onion and garlic, sarvis (service) berries, wild crab apples, summer grapes, and chinquapin, hazel, and hickory nuts were gathered from the fields and forests. Greens such as poke sallet, narrowleaf dock, lamb’s quarters, plantain, water cress, hog weed, and wild mustard were important sources of vitamins and minerals. The resin from the sweet gum tree was used as chewing gum.

Wild bees were followed to their hive in the hollow of a tree. Settlers carved an “X” on the “bee tree” to claim it. Or they might relocate the bees to a “bee gum,” a homemade hive made from an upright hollow log threaded with crossed sticks and capped with a lid. Bees were important for their honey and wax and for their ability to pollinate plants.

Maple trees were tapped in early spring as their sap rose. A hole was bored in the trunk and a small piece of hollow river cane was used to funnel the clear liquid into a bucket. Hours of boiling rendered syrup; further boiling produced a thick paste that, when cooled, hardened into a sugar-like consistency.

Growing Food. Corn was the mainstay of the diet, both for people and livestock; acres were devoted to it. Sorghum was grown for the molasses that could be made from it. Other fruits and vegetables were raised in the home garden and orchard. Apples, sweet potatoes and Irish (white) potatoes, watermelons, beans, cabbages, turnips, peaches, peas, collard and mustard greens, pumpkins, and squash were carefully tended. A portion of the crop was allowed to go to seed, to be saved and planted the next year. In the fall, seed potatoes were placed in a straw-lined hole in the ground to keep them insulated from freezing weather.

Easy-to-keep hogs and chickens were the most common livestock on the farm. In the 1840 census of Washington County, 36,000 hogs and 10,000 chickens were counted; there were 7,148 residents. Most animals offered more than their meat. Cowhide was turned into leather while the animal’s milk was churned into butter. Hog fat was rendered into lard and sheep were sheared for their wool. Chickens, geese, and ducks produced eggs and their feathers were used to stuff pillows and mattresses.

Uncovering seed potatoes for spring planting, Pettigrew (Madison County), 1940. From left: Boyd Bennett, Otto Bennett, and Oscar Bennett. Otto Bennett Collection (S-99-66-760)

Purchasing Food. Most merchandise traveled the same paths as did the settlers—shipped by river and then hauled by wagon to major settlements. One common route was up the Arkansas River to Van Buren. Goods could also be transported on the White River from Jacksonport, Arkansas, or brought down from Springfield, Missouri.

Salt was an important preservative. It was usually purchased, although some settlers were lucky to have on their land natural salt licks, shallow depressions in the ground which filled with brackish (salty) water. A major salt works located west of Fort Smith probably supplied much of the area’s salt. When salt was scarce during the Civil War, families scooped the soil from the smokehouse floor and put it in an ash hopper. Water was poured through and the resulting brine boiled down to extract the salt.

Coffee beans, when available, were purchased green and roasted at home. For families who couldn’t afford the expense of coffee, especially during the Civil War, wheat, cornmeal, or rye was parched (toasted) over a fire and brewed, sometimes with molasses.

Some Early Settlers

From left:
James O. Nicholson, 1824–1915. Came to Gaither (Boone County) in 1852 from Alabama. Farmer and first merchant in Harrison; raised nine children. Boone County Library/J. W. Nicholson Collection (S-87-38-7)

Nancy Stewart Anderson, 1843–1921. Born near Crosses (Madison County); her parents came from Missouri in the 1840s. Housewife; raised six children. James T. Anderson Collection (S-98-1-140)

John and Dorothea Holcombe, 1797–1876; 1808–1874. Came to West Fork (Washington County) about 1839 from Indiana. Preacher, farmer, and platter of Shiloh (now Springdale); raised sixteen children. Washington County Historical Society Collection (P-1628) and Susan Chadick Collection (S-2006-175-7)

Adeline Blakely, about 1850–1945. Brought to the Prairie Grove area (Washington County) as an enslaved person about 1852 from Tennessee. Housekeeper. Washington County Historical Society Collection (P-1679)

Blackburn H. Berry,1814-1893. Came to Berryville (Carroll County) in 1848 from Alabama. Preacher, merchant, and co-founder of Berryville; raised over eighteen children. Carroll County Heritage Center Collection (S-85-18-10)

Using smoke to calm bees at a bee tree, Madison County, circa 1939. From left: Nuell Stepp, John Acord, and Joe Acord. Bob Eaton, photographer. Alice Martin Collection (S-2006-31-2)

Most of a family’s energy and resources went into food production and food preservation for themselves and for their livestock. Each homestead produced a variety of crops, hedging their bets against a catastrophic crop failure and ensuring a wide range of nutrients for their diet.

Gathering Food. Soon after the settlers came they hunted, trapped, and fished for meat to allow their livestock and crops time to grow. Deer, turkeys, squirrels, and rabbits were often targeted, but quail, prairie chickens, opossums, raccoons, wild hogs, and even the occasional bear found their way into the stewpot. Game was usually eaten fresh as it didn’t lend itself to long-term preservation.

Blackberries, huckleberries, walnuts, persimmons, pawpaws (sometimes called Arkansas bananas), gooseberries, wild onion and garlic, sarvis (service) berries, wild crab apples, summer grapes, and chinquapin, hazel, and hickory nuts were gathered from the fields and forests. Greens such as poke sallet, narrowleaf dock, lamb’s quarters, plantain, water cress, hog weed, and wild mustard were important sources of vitamins and minerals. The resin from the sweet gum tree was used as chewing gum.

Wild bees were followed to their hive in the hollow of a tree. Settlers carved an “X” on the “bee tree” to claim it. Or they might relocate the bees to a “bee gum,” a homemade hive made from an upright hollow log threaded with crossed sticks and capped with a lid. Bees were important for their honey and wax and for their ability to pollinate plants.

Maple trees were tapped in early spring as their sap rose. A hole was bored in the trunk and a small piece of hollow river cane was used to funnel the clear liquid into a bucket. Hours of boiling rendered syrup; further boiling produced a thick paste that, when cooled, hardened into a sugar-like consistency.

Growing Food. Corn was the mainstay of the diet, both for people and livestock; acres were devoted to it. Sorghum was grown for the molasses that could be made from it. Other fruits and vegetables were raised in the home garden and orchard. Apples, sweet potatoes and Irish (white) potatoes, watermelons, beans, cabbages, turnips, peaches, peas, collard and mustard greens, pumpkins, and squash were carefully tended. A portion of the crop was allowed to go to seed, to be saved and planted the next year. In the fall, seed potatoes were placed in a straw-lined hole in the ground to keep them insulated from freezing weather.

Easy-to-keep hogs and chickens were the most common livestock on the farm. In the 1840 census of Washington County, 36,000 hogs and 10,000 chickens were counted; there were 7,148 residents. Most animals offered more than their meat. Cowhide was turned into leather while the animal’s milk was churned into butter. Hog fat was rendered into lard and sheep were sheared for their wool. Chickens, geese, and ducks produced eggs and their feathers were used to stuff pillows and mattresses.

Uncovering seed potatoes for spring planting, Pettigrew (Madison County), 1940. From left: Boyd Bennett, Otto Bennett, and Oscar Bennett. Otto Bennett Collection (S-99-66-760)

Purchasing Food. Most merchandise traveled the same paths as did the settlers—shipped by river and then hauled by wagon to major settlements. One common route was up the Arkansas River to Van Buren. Goods could also be transported on the White River from Jacksonport, Arkansas, or brought down from Springfield, Missouri.

Salt was an important preservative. It was usually purchased, although some settlers were lucky to have on their land natural salt licks, shallow depressions in the ground which filled with brackish (salty) water. A major salt works located west of Fort Smith probably supplied much of the area’s salt. When salt was scarce during the Civil War, families scooped the soil from the smokehouse floor and put it in an ash hopper. Water was poured through and the resulting brine boiled down to extract the salt.

Coffee beans, when available, were purchased green and roasted at home. For families who couldn’t afford the expense of coffee, especially during the Civil War, wheat, cornmeal, or rye was parched (toasted) over a fire and brewed, sometimes with molasses.

Some Early Settlers

From left:
James O. Nicholson, 1824–1915. Came to Gaither (Boone County) in 1852 from Alabama. Farmer and first merchant in Harrison; raised nine children. Boone County Library/J. W. Nicholson Collection (S-87-38-7)

Nancy Stewart Anderson, 1843–1921. Born near Crosses (Madison County); her parents came from Missouri in the 1840s. Housewife; raised six children. James T. Anderson Collection (S-98-1-140)

John and Dorothea Holcombe, 1797–1876; 1808–1874. Came to West Fork (Washington County) about 1839 from Indiana. Preacher, farmer, and platter of Shiloh (now Springdale); raised sixteen children. Washington County Historical Society Collection (P-1628) and Susan Chadick Collection (S-2006-175-7)

Adeline Blakely, about 1850–1945. Brought to the Prairie Grove area (Washington County) as an enslaved person about 1852 from Tennessee. Housekeeper. Washington County Historical Society Collection (P-1679)

Blackburn H. Berry,1814-1893. Came to Berryville (Carroll County) in 1848 from Alabama. Preacher, merchant, and co-founder of Berryville; raised over eighteen children. Carroll County Heritage Center Collection (S-85-18-10)

The food that the settlers grew, gathered, and harvested had to be preserved for the times when fresh food was limited, such as winter. If not enough food was produced, or something went wrong in the preservation process, the family would be in dire straits.

Abandoned cellar with “stone jars,” probably Cane Hill (Washington County), mid 1900s. Mildred Carnahan Collection (S-98-2-685)

Drying. Apples were peeled, quartered, and spread on scaffolds or on a roof and allowed to dry in the hot sun for several days. Pumpkins were sliced into rings and hung by a pole near the fireplace. “Leather britches” were made by drying green beans threaded onto strings. Drying food outside had its dangers, as rain and dew had to be guarded against. If needed, an outdoor stone kiln was built to dry food more quickly.

Corn was usually dried on the ear and often stored in corn cribs, slatted structures with plenty of air circulation. Frank Nance of Madison County, who came with his parents from Kentucky in 1857, said that “grittins” were made by rubbing a semi-dried ear of corn over the rough side of a homemade grater made from a piece of metal punctured with many holes. When needed, corn or wheat was pounded into a flour-like meal at home or at a nearby grist mill.

Cold Storage. The natural insulating and cooling properties of the earth and water were used to preserve foods. “Stone jars” (ceramic crocks) of preserved meat or apple and persimmon butters were kept in root cellars or placed in a springhouse, a small structure built over a natural spring or small creek. Stone-lined cellars or straw-lined holes in the ground held hardy foods like potatoes, apples, pears, turnips, carrots, and cabbages. Sometimes milk and other perishables were lowered in a container or a coarse-fiber tow sack into a well, spring, or creek.

Salting and Smoking. Pork was the only meat that the early settlers were able to preserve long term. The meat was dry-cured, meaning that it was packed in salt for several weeks. As the salt pulls the water out of the meat, it deprives mold and bacteria of moisture. Not only does salt keep meat from spoiling, it also enhances its appearance and improves its texture and flavor. Saltpeter (potassium nitrate), sometimes found in caves, was added to the curing mixture. It helped the meat keep its pink color and improved flavor.

Smoking the meat for several weeks over a small fire of apple or hickory wood adds flavor. More importantly, the compounds in the smoke inhibit or kill microbial growth. If left un-smoked, the meat’s surface fats could go rancid, spoiling the meat and producing an off flavor.

Fermentation and Pickling. Surplus food was turned into beverages or ingredients for food preparation. Corn and fruits were fermented and distilled to make whiskey and fruit brandies, while fermented apple juice was allowed to turn into hard cider. Vinegar was made by boiling apple peels and cores (sometimes adding molasses) and letting the mixture ferment. The microorganisms that cause fermentation release vitamins, making the end product more nutritious.

Cabbage was kept by slicing it thinly and layering it with salt in a stone jar covered with a cloth and weighted down with a plate. The salt released the water in the cabbage creating a brine. The top portion of the cabbage stayed crisp while the bottom turned to sauerkraut. To make headcheese, a meat jelly, the head and feet of a hog were first brined in a salt and vinegar solution and then boiled before the meat was picked off the bones, tied up in a cloth, and allowed to set up until firm.

Mealtime. What did the settlers make with the food they grew, hunted, gathered, and preserved? Nearly every meal featured corn—cornbread, cornpones (water and cornmeal baked over an open fire), cornmeal mush, or grits made from hominy, whole kernels of dried corn soaked in lye to remove the hard outer layer. The lime in the lye was important, even though the settlers didn’t know it at the time. It makes corn’s niacin content more nutritionally available, reducing the chance of pellagra, a vitamin-deficiency disease.

Pork was the other mainstay of the settlers’ diets. Fried, boiled, salted, smoked, roasted, or stewed, pork found its way into nearly every meal. Some kind of “sallet” or salad was also served like mustard greens or pokeweed. Sometimes eaten fresh, but more often boiled for a long time with a piece of pork rind or bacon for flavor, creating a delicious “pot likker” in which to crumble cornbread. Beverages included sassafras root or spicewood tea, coffee, apple cider, and milk. Most of the family’s foods were skillfully cooked in iron skillets and kettles over an open fire.

Some Early Settlers

From left:
James and Elizabeth Fancher, 1790–1866; 1800–1891. Came to Osage Valley (Carroll County) in 1838 from Tennessee. Farmer; raised 14 children. Carroll County Heritage Center Collection (S-85-18-14  and S-84-211-159)

Fanny Hill, 1833–1918. Brought to Cane Hill (Washington County) as an enslaved person in 1855 from Alabama. Children’s nursemaid, seamstress, nurse, and land owner. Mildred Carnahan Collection (S-98-2-506)

Peter Mankins Sr.,1776–1887. Came to the Sulphur City area (Washington County) in 1832 from Kentucky. Farmer; raised 11 children and 3 stepchildren. Washington County Historical Society Collection (P-1784)

Bradley Bunch, 1818–1894. Came to Osage Township (Carroll County) about 1838 from Tennessee. Justice of the peace and state senator; raised 12 children. Carroll County Heritage Center Collection (S-85-6-36)

Andrew Buchanan,1792–1857. Came to Prairie Grove (Washington County) in 1829 from Kentucky. Preacher and farmer; helped establish Cane Hill College; raised 2 stepchildren. Washington County Historical Society Collection (P-1105)

Abandoned cellar with “stone jars,” probably Cane Hill (Washington County), mid 1900s. Mildred Carnahan Collection (S-98-2-685)

The food that the settlers grew, gathered, and harvested had to be preserved for the times when fresh food was limited, such as winter. If not enough food was produced, or something went wrong in the preservation process, the family would be in dire straits.

Drying. Apples were peeled, quartered, and spread on scaffolds or on a roof and allowed to dry in the hot sun for several days. Pumpkins were sliced into rings and hung by a pole near the fireplace. “Leather britches” were made by drying green beans threaded onto strings. Drying food outside had its dangers, as rain and dew had to be guarded against. If needed, an outdoor stone kiln was built to dry food more quickly.

Corn was usually dried on the ear and often stored in corn cribs, slatted structures with plenty of air circulation. Frank Nance of Madison County, who came with his parents from Kentucky in 1857, said that “grittins” were made by rubbing a semi-dried ear of corn over the rough side of a homemade grater made from a piece of metal punctured with many holes. When needed, corn or wheat was pounded into a flour-like meal at home or at a nearby grist mill.

Cold Storage. The natural insulating and cooling properties of the earth and water were used to preserve foods. “Stone jars” (ceramic crocks) of preserved meat or apple and persimmon butters were kept in root cellars or placed in a springhouse, a small structure built over a natural spring or small creek. Stone-lined cellars or straw-lined holes in the ground held hardy foods like potatoes, apples, pears, turnips, carrots, and cabbages. Sometimes milk and other perishables were lowered in a container or a coarse-fiber tow sack into a well, spring, or creek.

Salting and Smoking. Pork was the only meat that the early settlers were able to preserve long term. The meat was dry-cured, meaning that it was packed in salt for several weeks. As the salt pulls the water out of the meat, it deprives mold and bacteria of moisture. Not only does salt keep meat from spoiling, it also enhances its appearance and improves its texture and flavor. Saltpeter (potassium nitrate), sometimes found in caves, was added to the curing mixture. It helped the meat keep its pink color and improved flavor.

Smoking the meat for several weeks over a small fire of apple or hickory wood adds flavor. More importantly, the compounds in the smoke inhibit or kill microbial growth. If left un-smoked, the meat’s surface fats could go rancid, spoiling the meat and producing an off flavor.

Fermentation and Pickling. Surplus food was turned into beverages or ingredients for food preparation. Corn and fruits were fermented and distilled to make whiskey and fruit brandies, while fermented apple juice was allowed to turn into hard cider. Vinegar was made by boiling apple peels and cores (sometimes adding molasses) and letting the mixture ferment. The microorganisms that cause fermentation release vitamins, making the end product more nutritious.

Cabbage was kept by slicing it thinly and layering it with salt in a stone jar covered with a cloth and weighted down with a plate. The salt released the water in the cabbage creating a brine. The top portion of the cabbage stayed crisp while the bottom turned to sauerkraut. To make headcheese, a meat jelly, the head and feet of a hog were first brined in a salt and vinegar solution and then boiled before the meat was picked off the bones, tied up in a cloth, and allowed to set up until firm.

Mealtime. What did the settlers make with the food they grew, hunted, gathered, and preserved? Nearly every meal featured corn—cornbread, cornpones (water and cornmeal baked over an open fire), cornmeal mush, or grits made from hominy, whole kernels of dried corn soaked in lye to remove the hard outer layer. The lime in the lye was important, even though the settlers didn’t know it at the time. It makes corn’s niacin content more nutritionally available, reducing the chance of pellagra, a vitamin-deficiency disease.

Pork was the other mainstay of the settlers’ diets. Fried, boiled, salted, smoked, roasted, or stewed, pork found its way into nearly every meal. Some kind of “sallet” or salad was also served like mustard greens or pokeweed. Sometimes eaten fresh, but more often boiled for a long time with a piece of pork rind or bacon for flavor, creating a delicious “pot likker” in which to crumble cornbread. Beverages included sassafras root or spicewood tea, coffee, apple cider, and milk. Most of the family’s foods were skillfully cooked in iron skillets and kettles over an open fire.

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———. “Emigration.” 10-11-1830.

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Works Progress Administration. Early Settlers’ Personal History Questionnaire, Historical Records Survey. Interview with J. L. Auslam, recorded by Samuel M. Auslam, Madison County, 9-7-1939. Special Collections Department, University of Arkansas Libraries.

———. Interview with Jonas Gilbert Berry, recorded by Samuel M. Auslam, Madison County, 8-4-1939. Special Collections Department, University of Arkansas Libraries.

———. Interview with Anna Walhquist Canaday, recorded by Samuel M. Auslam, Madison County, 7-28-1939. Special Collections Department, University of Arkansas Libraries.

———. Interview with Lon Garrett, recorded by Samuel M. Auslam, Madison County, 8-9-1939. Special Collections Department, University of Arkansas Libraries.

———. Interview with Charles P. Hudson, recorded by Samuel M. Auslam, Madison County, 9-14-1939. Special Collections Department, University of Arkansas Libraries.

———. Interview with Mary Ann Jameson, recorded by Iuka J. Moore, Boone County, 1-16-1941. Special Collections Department, University of Arkansas Libraries.

———. Interview with Frank Nance, recorded by Samuel M. Auslam, Madison County, 7-13-1939. Special Collections Department, University of Arkansas Libraries.

———. Interview with John Orr, recorded by Gussie Garland Norton, Boone County, undated (circa 1940). Special Collections Department, University of Arkansas Libraries.

———. Interview with John S. McCarver Pass, recorded by Jewel S. Hensley, Boone County, 4-2-1941. Special Collections Department, University of Arkansas Libraries.

———. Interview with Loreta Hester Roberts, Washington County, undated (circa 1940). Special Collections Department, University of Arkansas Libraries.

———. Interview with Henry L. Thompson, recorded by Samuel M. Auslam, Madison County, 7-26-1939. Special Collections Department, University of Arkansas Libraries.

———. Interview with John Ed Watkins, recorded by M. O. Penix, Boone County, 1-30-1941. Special Collections Department, University of Arkansas Libraries.

———. Interview with J. R. Withrow, recorded by Samuel M. Auslam, Madison County, 7-19-1939. Special Collections Department, University of Arkansas Libraries.

———. Interview with Laura Tresner Woods, Washington County, undated (circa 1940). Special Collections Department, University of Arkansas Libraries.