Entries - County: Pope

Arkansas Nuclear One

The Arkansas Nuclear One (ANO) power plant, located a few miles west of Russellville (Pope County), is the state’s only operational nuclear power plant. Entergy Arkansas, Inc., owns and operates it. ANO is one of nine nuclear reactor sites owned and operated by Entergy Corporation. In the 1950s and 1960s, nuclear power was found to be a clean and efficient source of electricity, and nuclear power plants began to be constructed nationwide. Arkansas’s first nuclear reactor, ANO-Unit One (ANO-1), went online commercially on December 19, 1974, bringing Arkansas into the nuclear age of power. On March 26, 1980, ANO-1 was joined by ANO-Unit Two (ANO-2). Bechtel Power engineered both units. Both are pressurized light water reactors. The Babcock & Wilcox …

Arkansas River Visitor Center

The Arkansas River Visitor Center, dedicated on August 20, 1985, was designed to acquaint visitors with the Arkansas River, its history and culture, and its transformation into the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System. The visitor center is located in Russellville (Pope County) on Lock and Dam Road, three miles west of Highway 7. The visitor center was designed and constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Little Rock District, at the site of the Russellville Project Office. It overlooks the Dardanelle Lock and Dam and is operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Russellville Project Office. The Dardanelle Lock and Dam was a logical choice for the center as it is located near the mid-point of the navigation …

Arkansas Tech University

Arkansas Tech University is a public, coeducational, regional university located in Russellville (Pope County). The university offers programs at both baccalaureate and graduate levels. The institution that became Arkansas Tech University had its origins in an early twentieth-century program known as the Country Life Movement. Designed to reverse the decline in rural life in America, the movement was part of the larger Progressive movement. The driving force for the establishment of agricultural schools in the state was the Farmers Educational and Cooperative Union, a more moderate heir to the Populists and associated agrarian organizations of the late nineteenth century. Spurred on by the Farmers’ Union, the Arkansas legislature in 1909 passed Act 100 to establish a “State Agricultural School” in …

Arkansas Tech University Museum

aka: Tech Museum

The Arkansas Tech University Museum, chartered as the Museum of Prehistory and History at Arkansas Tech University in December 1989 by the Arkansas Tech Board of Trustees, is part of the College of Arts and Humanities. The mission of the museum is to collect and interpret the history of Arkansas Tech in Russellville (Pope County). It formerly served as a regional history and archaeology museum that interpreted human experience in the Arkansas River Valley of western Arkansas. The museum was established as a cooperative effort by Arkansas Tech, the Ozark-St. Francis National Forest Service’s Russellville office, and the Arkansas Archeological Survey Coordinating Office in Fayetteville (Washington County). Forest Service grants, along with monies from Arkansas Tech, funded the renovation of one-fourth of Tucker Hall …

Atkins (Pope County)

Atkins has long been identified as the pickle capital of Arkansas, although the pickle industry is only a part of its heritage now. The city grew up along the railroad, served as a center for river traffic, and is now situated along a major interstate. Nearby Lake Atkins is a popular fishing destination. Reconstruction through the Gilded Age Following the Civil War, Arkansas underwent a brief period of industrialization as capitalists, mostly from the North, took advantage of the opportunities to foster commercial growth in the devastated Southern states. One of these ventures was the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad. As the surveyed route followed the northern side of the Arkansas River from Little Rock (Pulaski County) toward points …

Atkins Pickle Company

Atkins Pickle Company was the major industry in the town of Atkins (Pope County) for more than fifty years, and its legacy survives in the annual Picklefest celebration that began in 1992. The building that housed the pickle plant now houses Atkins Prepared Foods. The new company employs more people than the pickle plant did at its end, but it does not provide the same level of recognition for the town once dubbed the “Pickle Capital of the World” and known as the home of the fried dill pickle. In 1946, a group of citizens led by Lee Cheek raised $17,000 for a loan to the Goldsmith Pickle Company of Chicago, which had agreed to invest $75,000 of its money …

Atkins Race War of 1897

What most newspapers described as the “Atkins Race War” occurred in Lee Township of Pope County in late May and early June 1897. In what appears to have been an unprovoked incident, a group of African Americans attacked two white men, Jesse Nickels and J. R. Hodges, just south of Atkins (Pope County) on May 30. In subsequent encounters, several residents of Lee Township, both white and black, were killed and wounded. Despite the fact that the events in Pope County attracted national attention, the extant newspaper records provide little information regarding the motivations of those who perpetrated the violence. This area of the county, located in rich farmland along the Arkansas River, was populated mostly by farmers. Atkins, which …

Bailey, Bob

aka: Robert Ballard Bailey

Robert Ballard (Bob) Bailey was a prominent early to mid-twentieth-century lawyer and political figure who served two terms in the state Senate and three terms as lieutenant governor. He frequently served as acting governor when the governor was out of state. Bob Bailey was born on August 7, 1889, in Knott County, Kentucky, to John Marshall and Mollie (or Mallie) French Bailey. His father served as a district judge in the Hindman, Kentucky, area. Bailey attended high school in Hindman and acquired his early knowledge of law by accompanying his father to court. He later studied law under his father and attended Kentucky Wesleyan College in Winchester and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. On May 2, 1909, Bailey …

Barnes, Lee (Execution of)

Lee Barnes was hanged at Dover (Pope County) on May 21, 1886, for the murder and robbery of a Conway County gambler. Lee Barnes, twenty-three, who stood five feet nine inches tall and weighed around 130 pounds, moved from Blount County, Tennessee, to Plumerville (Conway County), where he worked for Charles Hollman, a gambler who ran a Wheel of Fortune gambling device at various events and gatherings. Barnes conspired with two men, John Cullens and Russell Watson, to kill and rob Hollman, who was also known as the Jewelry and Spindle Man, when he took the Wheel of Fortune to a “negro festival” about three miles from Plumerville. On the night of November 20, 1885, Barnes and Hollman bedded down …

Brown, William (Execution of)

William Brown was executed on October 19, 1838, in Pope County for murdering his pregnant wife. Brown and his wife had immigrated to Arkansas from around Concord, North Carolina. By 1838, they had five children, the eldest fourteen years old and the youngest two years old. Mrs. Brown was pregnant when her husband killed her on June 15, 1838. According to the Weekly Arkansas Gazette, the Browns’ children said that Brown had threatened his wife on that day, pointing his rifle at her as she hid behind a tree until “he finally told her to not make a fool of herself, that he did not intend to injure her.” Mrs. Brown then left her shelter and sat down under a …

Bruce, William Harvey (Harve)

Harve Bruce was a moonshiner who resided on Oak Mountain in Van Buren County. Pursued by local and federal authorities, Bruce shot and killed two U.S. marshals, although his sentences for moonshining were longer than his sentence for killing the marshals.  William Harvey (Harve) Bruce was born on June 23, 1847, to William and Sarah Bruce of Georgia. The family moved to Winston County, Alabama, to earn money through tenant farming. However, the Civil War began soon after, and his father joined the Confederate army. Without any financial support, his mother moved the family closer to relatives in Cherokee County, North Carolina. Two years into the fighting, Harve Bruce joined the Confederate army after turning sixteen. Serving for the remainder of the war, he fought in the infantry division Company D, Thomas’s Legion, led by Colonel William Holland Thomas. This was one of the few regiments in which Cherokee and …

Bullfrog Valley Gang

The Bullfrog Valley Gang was a notorious counterfeiting ring that operated in the wilderness of Pope County during the depression of the 1890s. The gang’s origin and methods were mysterious, but the New York Times reported its demise on June 28, 1897. The article said deputy U.S. marshals attached to the federal district court at Fort Smith (Sebastian County) had captured three men, effectively breaking up “the once-famous band of counterfeiters known to secret service operators all over the United States as the Bullfrog Valley Gang.” Previous arrests were reported in Arkansas earlier in the year. In all, some fifteen men were arrested and convicted in federal courts at Fort Smith and Little Rock (Pulaski County). Others, in Arkansas and …

Canerday, Natalie Suzanne

Natalie Canerday is an Arkansas actress known for such films like October Sky and Sling Blade. The bulk of Canerday’s filmography comprises films set in and/or filmed on location in Arkansas. Natalie Suzanne Canerday was born in Russellville (Pope County) on March 9, 1962, to Don and Nancy Canerday. She has one older brother, Jon Canerday. Canerday had big dreams of performing, though not necessarily acting, and wished to pursue tap dancing, especially on variety shows such as The Bozo Show and The Tommy Trent Show, hosted by Arkansas singer Tommy Trent and based in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Canerday’s first significant acting work concerned character performances at the Ozark Mountains–themed Dogpatch USA amusement park during the 1980s. The park …

Caraway Hall (Arkansas Tech University)

Caraway Hall, located at 1403 North Arkansas Avenue on the Arkansas Tech University campus in Russellville (Pope County), is a three-story brick building designed in the Colonial Revival style of architecture and constructed in 1934–1935 with assistance from the Public Works Administration (PWA), a Depression-era federal relief program. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 10, 1992. Arkansas Polytechnic College (which later became Arkansas Tech University) had seventeen major buildings, including several dormitories that the U.S. Office of Education deemed “unfit for human habitation” at the time Joseph W. Hull became the college’s eighth president in January 1932 and embarked on a major building campaign. In early 1934, the college received funding from the PWA—a …

Confederate Mothers Memorial Park

Confederate Mothers Memorial Park is a commemorative park located in Russellville (Pope County). The park contains three monuments dedicated to the mothers of Confederate soldiers and is the only known memorial park to these women in Arkansas. The land for the park was donated to the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) by Judge R. B. and Mary Howell Wilson on June 30, 1921. Located at the intersection of Skyline Drive and West 19th Street/South Glenwood Avenue, the park was established on October 10, 1921. At the opening ceremony for the park, organized by the John Homer Scott Chapter of the UDC, a tablet was dedicated to Confederate mothers and “the happiness of the children of our united country.” A granite …

Cotton, Thomas Bryant (Tom)

Tom Cotton became the junior senator from Arkansas in 2015. A Republican elected with only Libertarian Party opposition to a second term in 2020, Cotton has gained a high public profile and has been spoken of as a possible future presidential candidate. Thomas Bryant Cotton was born on May 13, 1977, in Dardanelle (Yell County) to Thomas Leonard Cotton and Avis Cotton. He grew up on the family’s cattle farm. At Dardanelle High School, from which he graduated in 1995, the six-foot, five-inch Cotton played basketball. Cotton earned his bachelor’s degree in government from Harvard University, graduating in 1998 after only three years. While at Harvard, he was a columnist for the Harvard Crimson and was also active in the …

Dover (Pope County)

Dover was once the county seat of Pope County and the major site of a series of violent post-Reconstruction events known collectively as the Pope County Militia War. Though its influence diminished after it was bypassed by the railroad in the early 1870s, it remains an important community within the county. Louisiana Purchase through Early Statehood Stories vary regarding the origin of Dover and its name. According to one, Joseph Brearley, who migrated to Pope County in the 1830s, settled near present-day Dover and named the site either after his hometown in Delaware or after the city in England. Another story holds that a man named Stephen Rye settled in the area in 1832 and named the city he laid …

Dwight Mission

Dwight Mission near Russellville (Pope County) was the first formal Protestant effort directed at the education and conversion of Native Americans in Arkansas and was one of the first Protestant missions established west of the Mississippi. The mission was established in 1820 and operated in Arkansas until 1829. The mission had been requested by Western Cherokee Principal Chief Tahlonteskee in 1818, when he visited Brainerd Mission in Georgia, sponsored by the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions (ABCFM), a Presbyterian organization. The Western Cherokee was a diverse group whose previous generation had migrated into Arkansas while fleeing troubles in the Cherokee homeland at the southern end of the Appalachians, and some of the members thought it useful for their …

Emory, Cal (Lynching of)

Cal Emory was lynched in Dover (Pope County) on June 13, 1881, after his sentence of death was commuted to twenty-one years in the state penitentiary. Cal Emory’s name is rendered a number of different ways in newspaper reports. Some give his last name as Embry or Emery, while others have the first name “Cal” being an abbreviation of either Calhoun or Charles. The 1880 federal census records Cal Emory, age twenty-eight, residing at the time in nearby Ozark (Franklin County) as a prisoner, and the June 9, 1881, Russellville Democrat reported that he was a resident of Franklin County. According to the Arkansas Gazette account of his lynching, Emory “and a partner first raped and then murdered the woman …

Fair View School

The Fair View School at 2367 Mill Creek Road in Russellville (Pope County) is a single-story, T-shaped building veneered in fieldstone and designed in the Craftsman style of architecture. It was constructed in 1938 by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a Depression-era federal public relief program, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on February 4, 2000. In the late 1920s, the Ball Hill and Rachel school districts in Pope County were consolidated as Ball Hill School District No. 10, and in September 1929, the new district purchased property in the Orchard community to hold a centrally located school. It would be another eight years, though, before funding for a new building would be available, thanks to …

Famous (Pope County)

aka: Mooretown (Pope County)

The Arkansas landscape is dotted with small towns that were at one time area commercial centers. Many, such as the Pope County town of Famous, have long since disappeared. Little remains of this once thriving unincorporated settlement, which was located approximately six miles west of Dover (Pope County) near present-day State Highway 333. By the 1920s, the name had been changed to Mooretown. John Thomas Moore moved his family to the area in the late 1800s, building the first house in what would eventually become Famous. He was also the first merchant, establishing the first general store. In time, the Moore family would dominate the commercial activity in the area. In 1897, a U.S. post office was established in the …

Feltner’s Whatta-Burger

Feltner’s Whatta-Burger at 1410 North Arkansas Avenue in Russellville (Pope County) is a venerable restaurant located across the street from Arkansas Tech University. Bob Feltner was born on February 3, 1926, in Russellville, the son of Robert Feltner and Theda Herrin Feltner. He married Juanita Scroggin on November 6, 1948, and they had a son and two daughters. They first owned a restaurant called Wonder-Burger near the Arkansas Tech campus. After Feltner did an experiment by sitting in a lawn chair on the side of Arkansas Highway 7 and counting passing cars, he and his wife decided to open a new place in the more heavily traveled area directly across from Arkansas Tech. Feltner’s Whatta-Burger opened for business on Thanksgiving …

Forbes, Ralph Perry

Ralph Forbes was an Arkansas political operator, minister, and former leader in the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party. He entered the Arkansas political scene in the Ronald Reagan era, when Arkansas Republicans had seen the election of a Republican governor and two GOP congressmen but were still so weak at the down-ballot level that low filing fees attracted fringe candidates that caused the party no end of embarrassment less than two decades after the heyday of Republican governor Winthrop Rockefeller. One of these fringe candidates was a one-time high official in the American Nazi Party who ultimately made his way to Pope County in the Arkansas River Valley. Ralph Perry Forbes was born on March 12, 1940, …

Franklin, Monroe (Lynching of)

On August 19, 1912, an African-American man named Monroe Franklin was hanged in Russellville (Pope County) for an alleged attack on an unidentified white woman. Officials believed that a second black man, Pet (sometimes referred to as Pete or Pit) Grey, was also involved. Although the Arkansas Democrat described the lynching as the first in Pope County, research indicates that it was at least the third. John Hogan was lynched there in 1875, followed by Presley Oats in 1897. There is some possible information available on Franklin and Grey. Newspapers reported that Franklin had recently come into the area from Oklahoma. In 1910, there was a twenty-nine-year-old African American named M. F. Franklin living in Bearden Township, Okfuskee County, Oklahoma, …

Fried Dill Pickles

In 1960, Bernell “Fatman” Austin (born on February 26, 1921) leased a parcel of land east of Atkins (Pope County) from Griffin Oil Co. for ten dollars a month and began building a drive-in restaurant. The Duchess Drive In, a small pink building, opened for business in April 1960, just across the highway from Atkins Pickle Company, the pickle capital of Arkansas. As business increased, with U.S. Highway 64 being the main road to Little Rock (Pulaski County), Austin started toying with the idea of a gimmick to attract additional business. The first fried dill pickles ever sold anywhere were sold in the summer of 1963 at fifteen cents for an order of fifteen hamburger slices. They still did not …

Galla Creek Wildlife Management Area

Galla Creek Wildlife Management Area is situated near the Arkansas River and is currently managed by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, which purchased the first tract in 1959, with the last tract purchased in 1978. The wildlife management area (WMA) is split into two separate parcels, with the city of Pottsville (Pope County) in between. The total landmass of Galla Creek WMA is 3,356 acres, with 3,086 acres in Pope County and 270 acres in Yell County; about 2,500 of these acres are classified as forested habitat. Historically, the land now encompassed by Galla Creek WMA was used for farming and gathering timber. There are old homesites located in the area, though only rock foundations, wells, and an abandoned …

Galley Rock

aka: Galla Rock (Pope County)

Galley Rock in Pope County is a two-mile shale bluff that rises almost forty feet high on the north bank of the Arkansas River, just northwest of Petit Jean Mountain. It was a natural landmark for early explorers and settlers. The area was a site for Cherokee settlers of the early 1800s and became a thriving river town in the 1830s. However, by the 1870s, the town experienced a decline, and all that remains today is the town cemetery. During the late 1700s, river travel was the safest and most reliable mode of transportation. French explorers and trappers navigated the Arkansas River with only striking, geologic features marking the locations of their trading posts and hunting camps. Galley (or Galla) …

Girls Domestic Science and Arts Building (Arkansas Tech University)

aka: Old Art Building (Arkansas Tech University)
aka: Browning Hall (Arkansas Tech University)

The Girls’ Domestic Science and Arts Building, located at 1505 North Boulder Avenue on the Arkansas Tech University campus in Russellville (Pope County), is a two-and-a-half-story brick building built in 1913 and rehabilitated in 1934–1935 with assistance from the Public Works Administration (PWA), a Depression-era federal relief program. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 18, 1992. Arkansas Polytechnic College (which later became Arkansas Tech University) had seventeen major buildings, including several dormitories that the U.S. Office of Education deemed “unfit for human habitation” at the time Joseph W. Hull became the college’s eighth president in January 1932 and embarked on a major building campaign. In early 1934, the college received funding from the PWA—a …

Grant, James Richard (J. R.)

James Richard (J. R.) Grant led what is now Ouachita Baptist University (OBU) through difficult years, including during the Great Depression. Serving as president from 1934 through 1949, he equipped Ouachita to provide a quality education to its students and an economically stable institution for donors. Grant dedicated his life to education—in the classroom, at the pulpit, and as a scholar. J. R. Grant was born on a farm near Dover (Pope County) on March 16, 1880, the seventh of ten children of Daniel Richard Grant and Mary Elizabeth Akins Grant. He had little opportunity for formal classroom instruction in his early years as a farm worker. In 1904, twenty-four-year-old Grant entered the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington …

Great American Conference

The Great American Conference (GAC), created in 2010, is an athletic conference comprising institutions located in Arkansas and Oklahoma. The conference is associated with the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division II, and the conference headquarters are in Russellville (Pope County). The Arkansas institutions that created the conference previously participated in the Gulf South Conference (GSC). These universities include Arkansas Tech University, Harding University, Henderson State University, Ouachita Baptist University, Southern Arkansas University, and the University of Arkansas at Monticello. These institutions also previously participated in the Arkansas Intercollegiate Conference. The GSC includes member institutions from Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, and Mississippi, but due to the large travel costs associated with conference play, the member universities in Arkansas began exploring the …

Hall, B. C.

Baxter Clarence (B. C.) Hall Jr. was an author and teacher whose novels and books on Southern myth and culture attracted wide readership in the last half of the twentieth century. Hall usually wrote under the name B. C. Hall. His best-known books were the novels The Burning Season, Nashville Lady, and Keepers of the Feast, and three nonfiction works on which he collaborated with writer friends C. T. Wood and Bob Lancaster. He also wrote numerous pulp-fiction novels, sometimes cynically referred to as “bodice rippers,” under pseudonyms like Julia French. B. C. Hall was born at St. James (Stone County) on June 9, 1936, the youngest of nine children of Baxter Clarence “Bunk” Hall and Hattie Camellia Younger “Dutch” …

Hart, Josephine Linker (Jo)

Josephine Linker (Jo) Hart, whose Cherokee parents were driven from their farm in Pope County when she was a child to make way for Lake Dardanelle, was inspired by that experience to study law, serving as a civil and criminal defense lawyer. She later became one of the first women to be elected to both Arkansas appellate courts and the first Native American to serve on the Arkansas Supreme Court. Jo Linker was born on November 20, 1943, at her grandmother’s home in Perryville (Perry County) but soon went to live with her parents on the farm near Russellville (Pope County). Gylem P. Linker and Leola Caldwell Linker raised cattle and grew vegetables that they sold to Atkins Pickle Company …

Hays, Lawrence Brooks

Lawrence Brooks Hays was a twentieth-century political, civic, and religious leader in Arkansas. He was one of the most influential members of the state’s congressional delegation after World War II and one of the few laymen to serve as the president of the Southern Baptist Convention. While he often referred to himself as a politician, his wife thought the label that best described him was “Arkansas social worker.” Brooks Hays was born on August 9, 1898, in London (Pope County) at the base of the Ozark Plateau. His father, Steele Hays, was a schoolteacher who later became a prominent lawyer, and his mother, Sallie Butler Hays, was also a schoolteacher. Brooks grew up in Russellville, the seat of Pope County, …

Hector (Pope County)

The town of Hector is on Arkansas State Highway 27, about seventeen miles north of Atkins (Pope County) and just south of the Ozark-St. Francis National Forest. It has an elementary school and a high school that serve the children of northern Pope County. One of the first settlements in Pope County was Boiling Springs, about a mile west of what became Hector. A large Methodist camp meeting was held at Boiling Springs early in the 1830s, while Arkansas was still a territory. After the meeting, a Methodist congregation was established at the site, led by five preachers: Mahlon Bewley and his sons John, Robert, George, and Nelson. A log building was constructed for the congregation in 1832. School classes …

Hilderbrand, Joe

As a fugitive from Arkansas justice in the 1960s, Joe Hilderbrand gained notoriety and even a measure of national acclaim by evading a horde of lawmen with airplanes and bloodhounds who chased him and a girlfriend through the wilds of the Ozark Mountains after he failed to return to Cummins Prison Farm from a furlough to visit his ailing father. It was one of the largest manhunts in Arkansas history. Legends accrued around the mountaineer—that he was innocent of any serious crime and a scapegoat for incompetent and embarrassed law enforcement agencies. Life magazine did a piece on Hilderbrand and the young woman, Frances Standridge, who helped him evade the posses. At least four ballads were written about Hilderbrand and …

Hogan, John (Lynching of)

On June 28, 1875, an African American named John Hogan was lynched near Russellville (Pope County) for allegedly attempting to assault one of Russ Tucker’s daughters. Public records provide some information about the lynching victim. The 1870 census (five years before the incident) lists a twelve-year-old African American named John Hogan, who was living on the farm of a twenty-two-year-old white man named Reece B. Hogans. Hogans had a wife, Josephine, and a two-year-old daughter. Also living on the farm was another black laborer, fifteen-year-old Rose Hogan, who may have been John Hogan’s sister. If this is the correct John Hogan, he would have been only seventeen when he was lynched. Russ Tucker was probably David Russell Tucker, who in …

Hughes Hall (Arkansas Tech University)

aka: Rock Armory

Hughes Hall, located at 514 West M Street on the Arkansas Tech University campus in Russellville (Pope County), is a two-story, U-shaped stone masonry building constructed with assistance from the WPA (the Works Progress Administration, renamed the Works Projects Administration in 1939), a Depression-era federal relief program. Constructed in 1940, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 18, 1992. The campus of Arkansas Polytechnic College (now Arkansas Tech University) comprised seventeen major buildings, including several dormitories that the U.S. Office of Education deemed “unfit for human habitation,” when Joseph W. Hull became the college’s eighth president in January 1932 and embarked on a major building campaign. After receiving assistance from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and …

Kinder, Ellis Raymond

Ellis Kinder was a major league baseball pitcher. A right-hander who spent most of his career with the Boston Red Sox, he followed an unusual path before finally reaching the major leagues at the age of thirty-one. Ellis Raymond Kinder was born on July 26, 1914, in Atkins (Pope County). He was the second son in the farming family of Ulysses and Iva Kinder. Beginning when he was about ten, Kinder picked cotton in the fields, and his formal education in the local public school went only through eighth grade. His early baseball playing was sporadic, primarily on the local sandlots, although he was good enough to play on the high school team when still in grade school. On March …

Lake, Paul

Paul Lake is a poet, novelist, and professor residing in Russellville (Pope County). He received the Porter Prize, one of the most prestigious literary awards offered in Arkansas, in recognition of his poetry. Paul Lake was born on August 1, 1951, in Baltimore, Maryland. His mother, Barbara Hull Lake, was a fifth-grade teacher, and his father, Paul Saunders Lake, was a manager and salesman for Metropolitan Life. He had three siblings: James, Stephen, and Melody. Lake lived in a row house on Giddings Avenue as a child in Baltimore. When he was in the second grade, Lake and his family moved to rural Harford County, where he attended elementary school and junior high school. After graduating from Edgewood High School, …

Latimore Tourist Home

Located in Russellville (Pope County), the Latimore Tourist Home served African Americans from the 1940s until the 1970s as the only overnight accommodations available to them between Little Rock (Pulaski County) and Fort Smith (Sebastian County). Likely constructed around 1900, the house was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 27, 2012. First appearing on fire insurance maps in 1913, the home began accommodating African-American travelers sometime before 1944. Operated by Eugene Latimore and Cora Wilson Latimore and their daughter Anna, the home offered short-term accommodations for African Americans, many of whom worked on the railroad. Eugene Latimore also worked as a veterinarian. The home appeared in the 1949 Negro Motorist Green Book (usually called simply the …

Lile, James Buel

James Buel “The Arkansas Knifesmith” Lile is one of the most accomplished and famous custom knife makers in American history. He carved his first fixed-blade knife from wood at the age of eight, and by age eleven, he was grinding old files into fixed-blade knives. James Lile was born on August 22, 1933, in Russellville (Pope County) to Leona and Buel Lile. His father was a coal miner who later worked for Arkla after the mines closed, and his mother was a housewife who also worked twenty years at the Local International Shoe factory. In 1952, at the age of nineteen, Lile met and worked for Winthrop Rockefeller welding bull pens being built at the Mountain Top Ranch on Petit …

London (Pope County)

London has been a part of much history, ranging from the Dwight Mission and the Trail of Tears to the operation of nuclear power plants. The city’s population and business peaked at the height of the railroad industry in Arkansas. In the twenty-first century, London has become a bedroom community for the workers of Russellville (Pope County). The Arkansas River Valley was a corridor of transportation, both by land and by water, even before Arkansas statehood. The U.S. Congress authorized and funded several military roads in Arkansas Territory, including one that traveled along the river valley from Little Rock (Pulaski County) to Fort Smith (Sebastian County). The Dwight Mission was established along this route, not far from present-day London, in 1820 by …

Lost Corner (Pope County)

Lost Corner is a small community consisting of a few farms in Pope County northeast of Hector (Pope County) and near the Van Buren County line. It is located on a ridge between the south fork of the Little Red River to the east and the Illinois Bayou to the west. Little information about the early history of the community exists. At one point, the community was apparently called Old Diamond and then Okay. A school named Snowlick, after a nearby mountain, opened around 1897, and a new school building was constructed in the 1930s. However, the school consolidated with Alread (Van Buren County) in the 1940s. During the drought that hit Arkansas in the 1930s, the Red Cross began …

Mailer, Norris Church

aka: Barbara Jean Davis

Norris Church Mailer, born Barbara Jean Davis, became an artist, actress, and author after moving to New York City to be with renowned writer Norman Mailer following their brief chance meeting in Arkansas at an event in Russellville (Pope County). She published two semi-autobiographical novels, Windchill Summer and Cheap Diamonds, as well as a memoir, A Ticket to the Circus, which centers on her three-decade marriage to Mailer. Born on January 31, 1949, in Moses Lake, Washington, Norris Church Mailer began life as Barbara Jean Davis, being named for a little girl who lived next door. Her parents were homemaker Gaynell Phillips Davis and construction worker James Davis. They had briefly relocated from Arkansas to Washington state for her father’s …

Meador, Eddie Doyle

Eddie Doyle Meador was a star defensive back for the Los Angeles Rams of the National Football League (NFL) throughout the 1960s. A graduate of Arkansas Tech University in Russellville (Pope County), Meador was the recipient of numerous honors and recognitions over the course of a twelve-year career in the NFL. Eddie Doyle Meador was born on August 10, 1937, in Dallas, Texas, to Euell Meador, who was a mechanic, and Easter Meador. The family moved to Arkansas before his junior year, but a pre-season injury prevented him from playing for the school team that year. However, in 1954, as a senior, in his sole high school season, he led Russellville High School to the Region 3AA championship. A superb …

Norristown (Pope County)

Norristown briefly served as the county seat of Pope County and was an important stop along the Arkansas River between Little Rock (Pulaski County) and Fort Smith (Sebastian County). It was located across the river from Dardanelle (Yell County) but no longer exists. Norristown was first settled in the late 1820s by Samuel Norris and quickly became a main shipping point, with area cotton loaded up on boats for shipment downriver and eventually to New Orleans, Louisiana. Norristown was designated the county seat in the early 1830s, though no courthouse was ever built there, and served as such until the 1840 creation of Yell County from part of Pope County necessitated the movement of the seat to Dover (Pope County), …

Norristown Cemetery

The Norristown Cemetery is the last remnant of Norristown, an early settlement in Pope County. The earliest dated marker in the cemetery is from 1853 and the most recent from 1934. The cemetery was added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 14, 1995. Norristown was designated the county seat in the early 1830s and served as such until the 1840 creation of Yell County from part of Pope County necessitated the movement of the seat to Dover (Pope County), a more central location. The town experienced two military engagements during the Civil War, the first on May 19, 1864, and the second on September 6, 1864. The town suffered a decline in population after construction of the …

Norristown, Skirmish at (May 19, 1864)

A brief engagement, this skirmish was part of Brigadier General Joseph Shelby’s expedition across much of Arkansas in the summer of 1864. While trying to cross the Arkansas River near present-day Russellville (Pope County), Shelby’s men were attacked by a Federal patrol tasked with shadowing the Confederates. Ultimately inconclusive, this skirmish was one of many between Shelby’s Confederate forces and Union troops during the expedition. In early May 1864, Shelby and his brigade were ordered to move from southwestern Arkansas to northern and eastern Arkansas in an effort to prevent Federal forces from utilizing the White River and the Little Rock and DeValls Bluff Railroad to supply the Union-occupied capital city. Crossing the Ouachita River at Rockport (Hot Spring County), …

Norristown, Skirmish at (September 6, 1864)

One of the earliest engagements between Confederate and Union forces during Major General Sterling Price’s 1864 raid into Missouri, this skirmish would ultimately prove to be bloodless. In the late summer of 1864, Price was ordered by Lieutenant General Edmund Kirby Smith, commander of the Confederate Department of the Trans-Mississippi, to prepare for an invasion of Missouri. The expedition would be used to gain new recruits and supplies, as well as to lower the morale of the civilian population across the north. Based in southern and southwestern Arkansas, the Confederate troops taking part in the raid began to move northward in August 1864. The Confederate offensive operations were delayed for several days as munitions and other supplies were gathered, and …

Oats, Presley (Lynching of)

Although many lynchings in Arkansas occurred in connection with serious crimes, real or alleged, there were some people lynched for trivial reasons. On May 13, 1897, an African-American man named Presley Oats was, according to national reports, dragged from his home in Pope County and lynched for supposedly stealing a ham. This incident preceded the Atkins Race War, which began approximately two weeks later. It was, however, indicative of the racial animus caused by the recent influx of African Americans into the county. Many of these new arrivals accepted lower wages for farm work and work in the lumber mills, causing resentment among area whites. Although one newspaper account of the incident referred to Presley Oats as an “old negro,” …