calsfoundation@cals.org
May 24, 1879
A group of nineteen men met in council chambers in Little Rock (Pulaski County) to form an organization called the Arkansas State Horticultural Society. Its purpose was to provide information through annual meetings for the enhancement of horticultural enterprises and practices. In 1900, the group merged with a similar organization formed in Fort Smith (Sebastian County) in 1893. The group’s focus then shifted primarily to northwest Arkansas’s apple industry and its problems with the Coddling Moth; it became facetiously known as the Coddling Moth Society. Although it exerted considerable influence on regional practices, the group voted in 1998—because of declining participation—to discontinue its annual meetings and to merge with Oklahoma groups under the umbrella of a “Horticultural Industries Show.”