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Welcome to the CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas

The CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas is a free, authoritative source of information about the rich history, geography, and culture of Arkansas. It is updated regularly to ensure the people of Arkansas have an accurate and accessible resource to explore our heritage. It will also benefit people outside the state who are seeking information about Arkansas. We invite you to browse our text entries and media galleries to learn more about the people, places, events, legends, and lore of the 25th state. The CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas is a work in progress. We are continually adding new entries, photographs, maps, videos, and audio files, so check back frequently to see what’s new.

Photo Of The Day
Archaeological Fakes

In 1923, Dentler Rowland of Jonesboro (Craighead County) sold part of a collection of approximately eighty stone objects, the largest of which was a statue dubbed King Crowley, which he claimed to have discovered on Crowley’s Ridge. Though he presented them as Native American in origin, and though many prominent Arkansans (including Bernie Babcock) accepted them as legitimate, representatives of the Smithsonian Institution doubted their authenticity. Today, the “fakes” are identified by most modern researchers as folk art. King Crowley is in a private collection, but the Arkansas State University Museum in Jonesboro owns the collection shown here.

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This Day in Arkansas History
April 16, 2001

Paul Kazuo Kuroda died at his home in Las Vegas, Nevada. Kuroda, who was born in Japan, was a professor of chemistry at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) from 1952 to 1987. Kuroda brought international attention to scientific research in Arkansas by correctly predicting the presence of naturally occurring nuclear reactors nearly twenty years before the first discovery of a reactor of this kind in the Oklo Mines in the Republic of Gabon in west-central Africa.

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