County: Baxter

Antrim, Richard Nott

Richard Nott Antrim was a career U.S. Navy officer who received a Medal of Honor for saving the life of a fellow prisoner of war held by the Japanese during World War II. He moved to Mountain Home (Baxter County) after retiring and lived there the rest of his life. Richard Nott Antrim was born in Peru, Indiana, on December 17, 1907, the eldest of two sons and a daughter of the farming family of Nott W. Antrim and Mary Antrim. Richard Antrim entered the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, in 1927, graduating on June 4, 1931. He married Jean Packard in Chicago on June 16, 1931, and they had a son and two daughters. Antrim served on U.S. …

Arkansas State University–Mountain Home (ASUMH)

Arkansas State University–Mountain Home (ASUMH) is a two-year community college serving predominately the residents of Baxter and Marion counties, as well as neighboring counties in Missouri. ASUMH continues the long tradition of education in Mountain Home dating back to the Male and Female Academy of the 1850s. The origins of ASUMH can be traced back to several evening classes offered by North Arkansas Community College (NACC)—now North Arkansas College—at the Mountain Home (Baxter County) high school in 1974. These classes were offered in the wake of the defeat of a five-mill tax for the construction of a community college in Mountain Home in 1973. By 1976, NACC expanded the classes to include an Adult Basic Education program. As enrollment grew, …

Baxter Bulletin

The Baxter Bulletin newspaper was established in 1901 in Mountain Home (Baxter County) by J. G. “Uncle Jess” Copeland, who had previously worked for both the Memphis Commercial Appeal and the St. Louis Post Dispatch. Over the years, it became a popular weekly turned six-day-a-week publication with a circulation of around 11,000. Copeland sold the Bulletin in October 1903 to Joe Doehring and Will M. McNair. He then moved to Cotter (Baxter County) and established the Cotter Courier. Doehring was serving as both editor and publisher when the newspaper was sold to Tom Shiras in 1905. The next year, Enness Shiras joined his brother as co-owner of the paper. They owned and operated the paper for approximately forty years. In …

Baxter County

  Governor Elisha Baxter formed Baxter County as the sixty-eighth county in Arkansas just prior to the Brooks-Baxter War. It is a county important to Arkansas history because of its flood control projects and its early educational institutions. Most of the land in Baxter County is hilly and rocky, typical of the Ozark Plateau on which it lies. Pre-European Exploration and Settlement Hundreds of prehistoric sites, representing various time periods and traditions, are found in Baxter County. The Old Joe site, which includes two prehistoric rock art images, is located near Norfork and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. By the time of the Louisiana Purchase, the Osage claimed control over the area, but they relinquished their …

Baxter County Courthouse

The Baxter County Courthouse was opened the week of August 13, 1943. Designed by Fayetteville (Washington County) architect T. Ewing Shelton, who used a Plain Traditional style with minimal Art Deco influences, the building is minimalistic in nature, reflecting the “functional emphasis common to Depression-era projects.” The Baxter County Courthouse was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 26, 1995. Located at 1 East 7th Street in Mountain Home (Baxter County), the Baxter County Courthouse was constructed by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) between 1941 and 1943. The exterior is cut stone with buff brick veneer, with the only decoration being marble panels in a variety of patterns resting between the basement and first floor, between the first …

Baxter County Historical and Genealogical Society

The Baxter County Historical and Genealogical Society was founded on September 27, 1974, by a group of individuals who were interested in history and preserving the heritage of Baxter County. The organization, originally known as the Baxter County Historical Society, is officially chartered in Arkansas as a nonprofit organization. In 1999, the name was changed to the Baxter County Historical and Genealogical Society. The mission of the society is to preserve and interpret the history of Baxter County by acquiring, preserving, and showcasing artifacts; acquiring, preserving, and making available for research records documenting the social, economic, and political history of the county through an active archival program at the Baxter County Archives; promoting historical and genealogical research; and educating children …

Big Flat (Baxter and Searcy Counties)

  Big Flat is a town on State Highway 14, mostly in southern Baxter County but straddling the Searcy County line. It is just outside the Ozark National Forest. One of the earliest settlements of northern Arkansas, Big Flat long flourished because it was isolated from other settlements by the hills and forests of the region. The town did not incorporate, though, until 1939. Big Flat was named for a plateau in the Leatherwood Mountains of the Ozark Mountain range. For thousands of years, the area was visited by hunters, fishers, and gatherers of food; the Osage came down from what now is Missouri to collect food to bring back to their homes in the north. White settlers began to …

Big Flat School Gymnasium

The Big Flat School Gymnasium, located on State Highway 14 in Big Flat (Baxter and Searcy counties), was built between 1938 and 1941 with assistance from the National Youth Administration (NYA), a Depression-era federal relief agency. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 19, 1993. Though the town of Big Flat was not incorporated until 1939, the Big Flat School District existed before that, being the thirty-second district organized in Baxter County and hosting three teachers and 137 students by 1931. By 1938, local residents decided a gymnasium was needed to serve the students and community, and they sought support from the NYA, which hired people aged fourteen to thirty, both male and female, to …

Branscum, Robbie Tilley

Robbie Tilley Branscum gained fame as the award-winning author of books for older children. Her hardscrabble childhood in Arkansas provided the vivid, rustic backdrop for each of her many books. Robbie Branscum was born Robbie Nell Tilley in Big Flat (Baxter County) on June 17, 1934, the third of five children born into a poor family. When she was five, the family moved to Colorado in search of a better life. Her father, Donnie Tilley, worked briefly in timber before dying of appendicitis shortly after the move. Her mother, Blanche, took the children to live with their paternal grandparents near Big Flat and returned to Colorado alone. Tilley’s grandparents were poor sharecroppers who had previously raised ten children of their …

Briarcliff (Baxter County)

Briarcliff is a resort community located on Highway 5 between Mountain Home (Baxter County) and Norfork Lake. It is adjacent to the similar community of Salesville (Baxter County). The first non–Native American family to live on the land that is now Briarcliff was the James Tracy family. They were descendants of a French veteran of the American Revolutionary War who had lived in both North Carolina and South Carolina before moving west to seek new farmland. Tracy arrived in northern Arkansas in the 1850s and purchased land in what was then eastern Marion County. According to family accounts, Tracy was murdered and his store pillaged by freed slaves during the Civil War. His son continued to farm the land after …

Buford School Building

The Buford School Building at 4439 Buford Road near Mountain Home (Baxter County) is a single-story two-room structure designed in the Craftsman style and constructed in 1936 by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a Depression-era public relief program. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 4, 1992. The town of Buford (Baxter County) reportedly had its origins in an 1870 wagon train in which a group of Mississippians who were headed for Texas instead diverted to Baxter County after hearing of a severe drought at their original destination. A post office was established at their settlement in 1879, and postmaster George Osborn named it Buford in honor of his son. The small town prospered, and …

Bull Shoals Dam and Lake

Bull Shoals Dam site is located on the White River about ten miles west of Mountain Home (Baxter County), where the river divides Baxter and Marion counties. The site is named after its location at a shoal (a shallow and swift reach of river), borrowing from the French “Boill,” meaning a large spring. Private power companies had explored the possibility of building a dam at Wildcat Shoals above Cotter (Baxter County) as early as 1902 but never began any work toward it. Congress approved the construction of six reservoirs in the White River Basin in the Flood Control Act of 1938. A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers report in 1930 had recommended the Wildcat Shoals site along with seven others …

Case-Shiras-Dearmore House

The Case-Shiras-Dearmore House, located at 351 East 4th Street in Mountain Home (Baxter County), is a two-story wood-frame house in the Plain Traditional style, with a cut-stone outbuilding located to the rear (west side) of the house. The house is perhaps best known for its association with the noted Baxter County newspaper publisher Tom Shiras of the Baxter Bulletin. However, it was also the home of Dr. J. H. Case, the first dentist in Mountain Home. The Case-Shiras-Dearmore House was added to the National Register of Historic Places on February 3, 1992. The ell-shaped, intersecting gable roof plan of the main house features a historic gable roof addition at its northern end. The front (east) façade consists of a gable …

Casey House

The Casey House, the oldest existing house in Mountain Home (Baxter County), is a pioneer home built in the “dog-trot” style. The house is unusual, principally for the materials used in its construction. It was the home of Colonel Randolph D. Casey, who is considered one of the first citizens of Mountain Home. The Casey House was accepted into the National Register of Historic Places in 2000. Built in the pioneer dog-trot style, which is named for the breezeway that offers dogs protection from the elements, the Casey House has two large rooms on either side separated by an open breezeway through the middle. Architecturally, the Casey House is unusual in that clapboard siding sheathes the exterior and wide flush-boards …