Entries - County: Clark - Starting with D

The Daily Siftings Herald was a newspaper based in Arkadelphia (Clark County) that served Clark County and nearby portions of Hot Spring County. The Daily Siftings Herald began operations in 1920 after two newspapers consolidated. The Arkadelphia Signal began publication in 1881 under the ownership of J. W. Miller, J. N. Miller, and Isom Langley. The name of the Signal changed to the Arkadelphia Clipper in 1882 and then to the Arkadelphia Herald in 1888. The Siftings began publication in 1891 under the ownership of brothers Edward and Claude McCorkle. Claude moved to Hope (Hempstead County), where he bought the Hope Star newspaper, while Edward remained in Arkadelphia to operate the Siftings. Edward died in 1918, and his son Philip …

Located on the east bank of the Ouachita River directly across from Arkadelphia (Clark County), Daleville was a community in Clark County. Formerly a populated location, it recorded no residents by the twenty-first century. The area around Daleville was used by Native Americans to make salt. The Hunter-Dunbar Expedition visited the salt-making site during their expedition up the Ouachita River in 1804. Early white settlers also made salt in the area, including John Hemphill and his family. The Hemphills arrived in the area in 1811. Settling across the river from the small community of Blakelytown (now Arkadelphia), the family operated the saltworks and farmed. Hemphill purchased salt kettles in New Orleans around 1815 and operated the business until his death …

De Gray is a community located about five miles northwest of Arkadelphia (Clark County). It is also spelled Degray and DeGray. The community shares its name with both DeGray Creek and DeGray Lake. Early settlers in the area include Isaac Cox and James Golden. Cox appears in the 1829 Clark County Sheriff’s Census, but little additional information is available. In 1854, Golden and Charles Hamner obtained forty acres of land in the area. Golden also obtained an additional eighty acres with Vinson Timms. Golden appears in the 1860 federal census with his wife and six children, farming the land. Other partnerships in the area include Abram Harrington and Francis Foygart, who jointly obtained forty acres in 1854. Harrington lived with …

DeGray Creek Bridge is a pin-connected Pratt pony-truss bridge located near Arkadelphia (Clark County). Constructed in 1915, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 21, 2010. It is the only known surviving bridge of its type in the state. The bridge consists of two steel trusses, seven feet tall and twelve feet apart. A steel deck substructure is attached to the trusses, and pins hold the sections together. The deck is covered by wooden planks. This bridge is connected to the banks of the creek by concrete and is a single lane wide. The bridge and similar bridges were prefabricated to be constructed in a manner that would allow them to be quickly and easily …

DeGray Dam, located about eight miles northwest of Arkadelphia (Clark County), impounds the 13,400-acre DeGray Lake on the Caddo River. It was built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) for purposes of electricity generation and flood control, as well as establishing a drinking water supply for Arkadelphia, and is the first “pump back capable impoundment” in the Corps’s history. A reregulation dam forms a 400-acre impoundment below the main lake, providing a supply of water that can be pumped back into DeGray Lake during times of drought and used again for hydropower generation and to provide a steady flow of water on the Caddo River. The site where DeGray Dam stands had been considered for a dam since …

DeGray Lake Resort State Park, located in southwest Arkansas, features a ninety-four-room lodge, an eighteen-hole championship golf course, a full service marina, a convention center, tennis courts, and a pool. It is the state’s only resort state park. While the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was constructing DeGray Lake (1963–1972) by damming the Caddo River, support grew within the State Parks Division and surrounding communities for developing along the 13,400-acre lake a state park to rival resort state parks in neighboring Oklahoma and Texas. The Corps and the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism reached an agreement in November 1971 for the construction and management of a resort and recreation area on the lake’s north shore. Effective May 1, 1972, …

The Dexter B. Florence Memorial Field is an airport located in Arkadelphia (Clark County). Owned by the City of Arkadelphia, the facility serves both local general aviation and as the location for Henderson State University (HSU) flight operations. The first airplane to visit the city landed on May 25, 1918. Other planes infrequently appeared in the city over the next two decades until the first airport was constructed in 1933–34, located across the Ouachita River from Arkadelphia. The first plane landed at that facility on April 24, 1934. The land was leased for only three years, and after the expiration of the lease, the airport closed. It was reopened in 1939 when students from Henderson State Teachers College (which later …

Martha Smith Dixon is an internationally recognized clothing designer and entrepreneur. Her designs of couture gowns worn by Hillary Clinton during Clinton’s husband’s 1987 gubernatorial inauguration and 1993 presidential inauguration helped launch her career in fashion design and sales. Dixon is a member of the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame. Martha Smith was born in Clark County on February 2, 1946, the seventeenth of twenty children of James G. Smith and Beatrice Cook Smith, impoverished cotton pickers and sharecroppers in the South Central community in Clark County. She attended public school in Gurdon (Clark County) when work allowed and graduated from Peake High School in Arkadelphia (Clark County) in 1965. The first in her family to attend college, she spent …

Dobyville is a small community in Clark County located about eight miles northwest of Gurdon (Clark County) and four miles northeast of Okolona (Clark County). The earliest settlers in the area include Henry and Joel Robinson and Thomas Franklin. They obtained 560 acres in 1837, but little additional information is known about the men. James and Ann Sloan moved to the area in the late 1830s. James obtained almost 400 acres of land, and the couple had at least four sons and two daughters. By the 1850 federal census, James Sloan held real estate worth more than $1,200 and owned twelve enslaved people. By 1860, he owned fourteen slaves and had more than $3,500 of real estate and more than …

Dodson v. Arkansas Activities Association (1979) was a federal court decision concerning the rules for girls’ junior high and high school basketball in Arkansas. Diana Lee Dodson, then a fourteen-year-old student in the Arkadelphia (Clark County) public school system, filed a lawsuit against the Arkansas Activities Association (AAA), the governing body of public and private school athletic programs, asking that girls in Arkansas be permitted to play under the same full-court basketball rules as Arkansas boys played. Arkansas schools at that time required that basketball for girls be played under “half-court” rules. In this version of the game, which had been played in Arkansas and other states since at least the World War II era, girls’ teams had six players. …

The Domestic Science Building is located on the campus of Central Primary School and the central office of the Arkadelphia Public School District in Arkadelphia (Clark County). Known for combining both Prairie and Classical architecture styles, the building was constructed in 1917 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 22, 1982. A public school board was formed in Arkadelphia in 1870 and operated schools intermittently for more than a decade. Faced with uncertain finances and several private schools operating as competitors, the public schools had difficulty remaining in operation. A permanent school building was constructed in 1888, and regular sessions began to be offered. The enrollment at Arkadelphia High School grew during the late nineteenth …

The Dr. Boaz House is a dogtrot house located in western Clark County near the Clear Springs community. Constructed around 1891, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 28, 1992. Clear Springs is located about two miles east of Antoine (Pike County) on the road linking Arkadelphia (Clark County) and Murfreesboro (Pike County), now Arkansas Highway 26. Never a large community, in 1890 Clear Springs included a church, store, school, post office, cotton gin, and grist mill. About fifty people lived in the community. There is a lack of information about Dr. Boaz, although oral tradition suggests that he was a medical doctor. The single reference to Boaz in public records is a marriage record …

Charles DeWitt Dunn served as the president of Henderson State University from 1986 until 2008, making him the longest-serving president in the institution’s history. Charles Dunn was born on December 2, 1945, to Charles E. Dunn and Lucille Dunn in Magnolia (Columbia County). The Dunn family operated a restaurant in McNeil (Columbia County), where Charles graduated from high school in 1963. Attending Southern State College (now Southern Arkansas University), Dunn earned an undergraduate degree in political science in 1967. He earned a graduate degree in government at the University of North Texas in 1970 and a doctoral degree in political science at Southern Illinois University in 1973. Dunn married Donna Jane Parsons in 1966, and the couple had two daughters …