Entries - County: Columbia - Starting with O

The oil industry in Arkansas, which includes exploration and the production, refinement, and distribution of petroleum-based products, exploded onto the state’s economic scene in the early 1920s, and once-local production expanded into an international business. From 1920 to 2003, more than 1.8 billion barrels of oil were produced in Arkansas. Ten counties in Arkansas produce oil, all in the southern region of the state: Ashley, Bradley, Calhoun, Columbia, Hempstead, Lafayette, Miller, Nevada, Ouachita, and Union. Historically, most of this production has been in Union, Lafayette, Columbia, and Ouachita counties. These four counties have been responsible for more than eighty-five percent of the oil produced in the state. Evidence of oil in the state existed well before the oil boom of …

Overstreet Hall, located at the intersection of East University Street and North Jackson Street on the Southern Arkansas University campus in Magnolia (Columbia County), is a three-story, Colonial Revival–style building constructed between 1941 and 1943 with assistance from the Work Projects Administration (WPA), a Depression-era federal relief program. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on January 26, 2016. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal agencies provided financing for several construction projects at Magnolia A&M College (which later became Southern Arkansas University) during the Depression. The Greek Theater was constructed through the National Youth Administration (NYA), Cross Hall and Nelson Hall were built by the Public Works Administration (PWA), and the building that would later be called …