Entries - County: Polk - Starting with M

Mary Victor (M. V.) Mayfield came to Mena (Polk County) in 1918 and practiced medicine with the identity of a man for seven or eight years. A small, kind, and peaceful citizen, Mayfield soon became “the cancer doctor.” Mayfield put Mena in the national news for the events of January 23, 1926, when it was revealed by the news media that Mayfield had the biological characteristics of a female. Little is known about M. V. Mayfield’s early life. Mayfield later claimed that the male identity had begun in England—Mayfield’s parents needed a son, not a daughter, to “protect property rights,” so they dressed Mayfield as a boy. Mayfield carried this on into adulthood, also doing things society expected of men, …

Mena was founded in the late nineteenth century as a railroad town in western Arkansas. Situated amid the Ouachita National Forest and surrounded by noteworthy state parks and trails, the city is now something of a tourist destination, though it also has a diversified economy based upon agriculture and manufacturing. Post Reconstruction through the Gilded Age Mena was one of many towns founded along the route of Arthur E. Stilwell’s Kansas City, Pittsburg & Gulf Railroad (later the Kansas City Southern), stretching from Kansas City, Missouri, to Port Arthur, Texas. The town of Mena takes its name from the nickname of Folmina Margaretha Janssen deGeoijen, the wife of one of Stilwell’s financiers (Janssen Park is also named after her). The …

The Mena Intermountain Municipal Airport near the city of Mena (Polk County) in the Ouachita Mountains of western Arkansas is located approximately 160 miles west of Little Rock (Pulaski County). It is an airport that focuses on private aircraft and does not have scheduled commercial air service. Beginnings The first rough airstrip was located south of the town on the McBride family’s property, and a hangar and flying school opened in 1942, run by Hartzell Geyer. The initial runway was a grass one that a local farmer would mow and bale for hay. Due to increased commercial traffic, the Civil Aeronautics Commission (CAC) after World War II determined that Mena would be needed as an emergency landing site for airplanes. …

The Mena National Guard Armory at 619 DeQueen Street in Mena (Polk County) is a single-story, Art Deco–style, fieldstone-clad structure built in 1930. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 5, 1991. Citizen-soldier militias have had a constant presence in the United States since the colonial era, but it was not until Congress passed the Dick Act—sponsored by Senator Charles W. F. Dick, chairman of the Committee on the Militia—in 1903 that the National Guard became an official partner in the nation’s armed services, receiving federal support for training, equipment, and pay. Arkansas’s state militia was organized into the Arkansas National Guard as a result of the Dick Act. Seventeen armories—including the Marianna National Guard …

Columbus William Moffatt (sometimes spelled as Moffat or Moffett) was hanged on April 24, 1885, in Dallas (Polk County) for the murder of a local farmer, a crime he denied to the last moments of his life. Sources differ as whether Moffatt was white or African American. Bell Weehunt, a prominent local farmer, was working on his Polk County farm on June 17, 1882, when, as the Arkansas Democrat reported, J. B. Fowler and Columbus Moffatt “secreted themselves behind the fence and shot him through the heart while at work in the field” before going to his home and robbing his wife. The two were quickly apprehended, and Moffatt confessed that Fowler “worked on me for two weeks before I …

The Mona Lisa Mine, located in Polk County on the ridge of Little Porter Mountain north of Gillham (Sevier County), was first opened in 1958 for the purpose of mining phosphate for agricultural fertilizers. Phosphate mining in other counties decreased the demand for mining from the Mona Lisa Mine, however, resulting in its closure sometime prior to 1963. In 1974, the property was discovered to contain turquoise. This discovery was made by property owner Jack McBride of Denver, Colorado (for this reason, it is sometimes referred to as the McBride Mine). Initial reports estimate that turquoise production of the McBride Mine totaled around 600 pounds. Much of the output of the McBride mine was dyed, stabilized, and compressed into cylinders …

The Mountain Fork River is a 158 km (98 mi.) tributary of the Little River in far west-central western Arkansas and southeastern Oklahoma. There are two major portions of the river: the upper Mountain Fork and the lower Mountain Fork. On the Arkansas side, the Mountain Fork belongs within the Ouachita Mountains natural division, Fourche Mountains subdivision, and just within the Red River system of the state. The headwaters of the upper course begin in the Ouachita Mountains (Weehunt Mountain) of Polk County, Arkansas, at the town of Mountain Fork on Arkansas Highway 8 where it then flows southward under Highway 246 (at a low water bridge) for about 16 km (9.8 mi.). Farther south, it then takes a right …

In 1875, William A. J. Beauchamp moved to Rich Mountain (Polk County) from Bonham, Texas, and had a printing press brought to the mountain, where he later published, with the help of his daughters, the Mountain Signal, Polk County’s first newspaper. The first issue was published in 1877, and the paper ran for seven years, printing new editions only when sufficient news justified an issue. Interestingly, the Mountain Signal, which had been out of print under that name for over 100 years, was revived as a magazine published intermittently from 1989 to 2001, named in honor of Polk County’s first newspaper. William Beauchamp left Rich Mountain in 1884 after printing the story of a local murder, as the people named …