Entries - County: Benton - Starting with C

Camp Joyzelle was a summer camp for girls that operated for nearly three decades at Monte Ne (Benton County). Summer camps emerged in the late 1800s as a way to provide urban youngsters with wholesome, outdoor activities during the long summer vacation. Summer camping for girls became popular after World War I. Some camps were run by organizations such as the Girl Scouts, while others were similar to private schools and served mostly well-to-do families. Camp Joyzelle was a typical example of the latter. The camp was founded by Iris Armstrong, who at the time had a private dramatic academy in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Armstrong’s goal was to start a camp at which girls could be instructed in drama …

Eugene Asa Carr was one of four people who received a Medal of Honor for his role in the Battle of Pea Ridge. Carr also participated in the seizure of Little Rock (Pulaski County), was dispatched to Clarendon (Monroe County) to confront Confederate major general Joseph O. Shelby, and spent time in Helena (Phillips County) on Reconstruction duty. Carr spent more than forty-three years in the U.S. Army. Eugene Carr was born on March 10, 1830, in Hamburg, New York, to Clark Merwin Carr and Delia Ann Torry Carr; he had three siblings. At sixteen, he entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and he graduated on July 1, 1850. Carr served a tour of duty in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, …

The scout from Cassville, Missouri, to Cross Hollow (Benton County) was undertaken in an attempt to capture Major William “Buck” Brown and his band of irregular cavalrymen as they destroyed telegraph lines connecting various Federal bases. By the summer of 1864, the only telegraph lines in Arkansas connected Little Rock (Pulaski County) to Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) and DeValls Bluff (Prairie County), and Fort Smith (Sebastian County) to Van Buren (Crawford County) and sometimes Fayetteville (Washington County), while other lines linked Fayetteville to Union bases in Missouri. All of the telegraph lines were in constant danger of being cut by Confederate guerrillas operating in Arkansas and Missouri. On June 7, 1864, Brigadier General John B. Sanborn ordered Lieutenant Colonel Hugh …

The city of Cave Springs, nestled in the hills of northwest Arkansas, Benton County, is known more for recreational opportunities than for its role in industry or agriculture. Incorporated in 1910, the second-class city stands on Highways 112 and 264 and is often the first community seen by visitors to Arkansas who arrive at the Northwest Arkansas National Airport. Cave Springs is named for two caves and for the water source that flows from the northernmost of those caves. The north cave, which has been closed to the public since the 1980s, is said to consist of several rooms and to contain two beautiful waterfalls. It is home to many bats and to the largest known population of the rare …

The city of Centerton, named for its location at the center of Benton County, was first established as a railroad stop and as a processing center for Benton County’s apple industry. The city declined in size by the middle of the twentieth century due to earlier troubles in the apple and railroad industries, but the rapid growth of Benton County brought about by the poultry industry and by Walmart Inc. has made Centerton a successful city in the twenty-first century. Louisiana Purchase through Early Statehood Northwest Arkansas was claimed as hunting territory by the Osage, who lived in Missouri, at the time of the Louisiana Purchase. Local historians believe that the Osage regularly visited the McKissick Spring, an early landmark …

The Chicken War of 1962–1963 was a trade dispute between poultry producers in Arkansas and other states and the European Economic Community (EEC). In the late 1950s, Arkansas poultry producers began to market U.S. chicken in western Europe. In collaboration with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, M. H. “Bill” Simmons of Plus Poultry in Siloam Springs (Benton County) and other business leaders helped post–World War II Europeans develop their own poultry industry. Noting that Arkansas’s Benton County produced more chicken than some European nations, Simmons assumed it would be decades before European producers could compete with their American mentors. “There is a considerable movement of poultry from Northwest Arkansas into the export channels almost weekly,” Simmons wrote to U.S. Senator …

Albert Oscar (A. O.) Clarke was a self-educated teacher-turned-architect who worked as a draftsman under the leading architect of St. Louis, Missouri, of the 1880s, Jerome Bibb (J. B.) Legg. He later partnered with William Matthews to draw dozens of commissions in St. Louis in the 1890s. Clarke was then recruited for the employ of William “Coin” Harvey for his resort in Monte Ne (Benton County), where Clarke designed the two largest log buildings in the world at the time. He went on to design Classical Revival–style structures throughout northwest Arkansas, as well as in Clarksville (Johnson County). A. O. Clarke was born on May 23, 1859, to Edgar W. Clarke, who was a Presbyterian minister, and Martha A. (Northrop) …

The Coal Gap School building is located in rural Benton County, approximately fifteen miles east of Rogers (Benton County). This is the third building in this location and sited near the two earlier sites. The origin of Coal Gap’s name is unknown, but it was possibly once known as Jennings Switch. The Coal Gap School was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 4, 1992, and is privately owned. Benton County records contain a list of school directors at the office of the county school supervisor’s office and state they were “elected by 1887,” indicating the first Coal Gap/Jennings Switch school’s existence at that time. Edmond L. Jennings received 160 acres on May 15, 1876, as part …

Neil Ernest Compton of Bentonville (Benton County) was a physician of obstetrics by profession and a conservationist by avocation. He is widely recognized as the founder of the Ozark Society to Save the Buffalo River, which he and his associates initiated on May 24, 1962, at a meeting in Fayetteville (Washington County). Today, it is known as the Ozark Society, Inc. Its original goal was to stop the construction of two proposed U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dams on the Buffalo River. Neil Compton was born on August 1, 1912, at Falling Springs Flats in Benton County, the son of David Compton Jr. and Ida Etta Wilmoth Compton. He attended elementary school at Bozarth, a rural school near Gentry (Benton County). …

Cross Hollow (or Cross Hollows), located along the Telegraph Road eighteen miles south of the Missouri-Arkansas border near modern-day Rogers (Benton County), was the site of Confederate winter quarters during the winter of 1861–62. A Civil War skirmish was fought near Cross Hollow in 1864. Following the August 10, 1861, Confederate victory at Wilson’s Creek in Missouri, General Benjamin McCulloch’s army fell back into Arkansas. Feeling that the troops would be close enough to Missouri to march there readily if circumstances demanded, commanders chose Cross Hollow, a long, narrow valley at the intersection of an east-west road and the Telegraph Road, which was the major north-south road into Missouri. Abundant springs and forage and the presence of two mills nearby, …

  Federal forces in northwestern Arkansas and southwestern Missouri used cavalry patrols to prevent Confederate regulars and guerrillas from organizing in the area. This skirmish was part of an effort by Union forces in Missouri to disrupt small bands of the enemy gathering near Cross Hollow. On June 20, 1864, Captain James Powell of the Second Arkansas Cavalry (US) received orders to embark on a scouting mission with an unspecified number of men. Moving southward from Cassville, Missouri, Powell and his men first encountered enemy forces near Sugar Creek but did not attack. The Federals continued to Cross Hollow where they turned southward to Fayetteville (Washington County) before moving to Bentonville (Benton County). On the third day of the scouting mission, …

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, located in Bentonville (Benton County), officially opened to the public on November 11, 2011. The 201,000-square-foot museum with its 120 acres of forest and garden was designed to portray the spirit of America. The museum was founded by Alice Walton, daughter of Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart Inc. The museum took its name from Crystal Spring, which is located nearby on the grounds, and the bridge-shaped design of the building, designed by Moshe Safdie. The museum collection includes art from colonial times to the present day. It also offers temporary exhibits from other museums and collections. Alice Walton was ranked as one of the richest people in the United States in 2010 and …