Entries - County: Pope - Starting with F

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 …

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 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 …

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, …

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, …

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 …