Entries - County: Sharp

Ash Flat (Sharp County)

The northeastern Arkansas town of Ash Flat is a significant agricultural, medical, and retail district serving the needs of Sharp County since 1856. Louisiana Purchase through Early Statehood The area that would become Ash Flat was first settled by farmers in the 1820s, when Arkansas was still a territory. After the state was admitted to the Union in 1836, the Ash Flat area was located within Lawrence County. The community emerged as an important agricultural trading center, and in 1856, the town of Ash Flat was founded when a U.S. post office was built. A group of local residents, led by postmaster James McCord, chose the name Ash Flat because of a nearby grove of ash trees. Civil War through …

Bolt, Tommy

Tommy Bolt was one of the top golfers on the Professional Golf Association (PGA) tour in the 1950s. The winner of the 1958 U.S. Open, he was also a pioneer in the development of the PGA’s senior tour that emerged in the 1960s. He later retired and settled in Arkansas. Thomas Henry (Tommy) Bolt was born on March 31, 1916, in Haworth, Oklahoma, to Walker Jeter Bolt and Adreon Geneva Jones Bolt. Little is known about Bolt’s youth beyond the fact that his mother died when he was two. With his father working in construction, the family moved to Shreveport, Louisiana, when Bolt was six. Bolt dropped out of Byrd High School as a sophomore, and like many professional golfers, …

Byrd, Conley F

Conley F Byrd Sr. was a sharecroppers’ son from northeastern Arkansas who, after World War II, became a lawyer and a justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court. He proved to be a maverick on the court by dissenting often, and he frustrated some members of the elite court with his obstinacy. Injuries from vehicle accidents left him in so much pain that he retired in 1980 and spent the last thirty-four years of his life farming in the woods east of Redfield (Jefferson County). Conley F Byrd (he had no middle name, just the initial) was born on January 14, 1925, in Poughkeepsie (Sharp County). His parents, Robert Lee Byrd and Artie Elizabeth Barnes Byrd, were sharecroppers. They lived in …

Calamine (Sharp County)

Calamine, home to some of the earliest settlers in what is now Sharp County, was the site of the state’s first commercial zinc mining operation. The boomtown experienced periods of rapid growth in the 1850s and 1870s but today consists only of a few homes. The town is most likely named after the pink mineral calamine; however, a local tradition claims that the name originated from a female mine owner named Callie, thus “Callie mine.” Long before white settlers moved to the area, the Osage used the region for hunting. The first white settlers entered by the early 1830s, many by way of the recently completed military road connecting the area to the Black River. A small settlement began to …

Cave City (Sharp and Independence Counties)

Cave City is a small community that straddles the northern Independence and southern Sharp County border in north-central Arkansas, having ended up there when a three-mile strip of Independence County was transferred to Sharp County in 1879. For administrative purposes, the town belongs to Sharp County, but it hosts voting stations for townships in both Independence and Sharp counties. The town takes its name from the large multi-room Crystal River Cave, which is located directly beneath the city. The cave has played a pivotal role in the history of the entire community. For thousands of years, it has served as a temporary shelter, source of water, and a fascinating place to visit. Settlers in the nineteenth century also used the …

Cherokee Village (Sharp and Fulton Counties)

A retirement community in northeastern Arkansas, Cherokee Village was founded in 1954. Started as a 2,400-acre summer resort in the vein of the Wahpeton Inn at Hardy (Sharp County), Cherokee Village became the state’s leading retirement community by the early 1960s. In 1948, West Memphis (Crittenden County) developer John A. Cooper Sr. purchased 400 acres along the south bank of the Spring River near the mouth of Otter Creek. Christening the property Otter Creek Ranch, Cooper used the land as a family summer retreat for several years. After purchasing additional land, Cooper formed the Cherokee Village Development Company in 1953, divided the property into lots, and constructed individual homes. When the property was formally opened in June 1955, Governor Orval …

Clash of the Ozarks

In the winter and early spring of 2014, the Discovery Channel broadcast a short-lived reality show whose storyline involved a reported century-old family feud in the town of Hardy (Sharp County). Clash of the Ozarks, as it was called, ran for one six-episode season and was not renewed. David George, the vice president of Leftside Pictures and producer of two episodes of the series, was visiting the Ozarks seeking a cast for an entirely different storyline than Clash of the Ozarks. While visiting Hardy, he met Gary “Crowbar” Russell, the host of a local access television show, Ozark Outdoors. As George listened to Russell’s family stories, he became convinced they could provide material for a successful reality show. Russell had …

Crystal River Tourist Camp Historic District

aka: Crystal River Tourist Court
aka: Crystal River Cave and Court

The Crystal River Tourist Camp Historic District is perhaps the most unusual tourist court in the state, and one of the most unusual in the country. The striking exteriors have remained largely unchanged since the structures were built by a local businessman and a stone mason in 1934. The court surrounds the entrance to the Crystal River Cave, a popular gathering place for which the town of Cave City (Sharp and Independence counties) was named. The Crystal River Cave and Courts, as it is now called, no longer functions as lodging, although the property’s owners offer tours of the cave by appointment. The Crystal River Tourist Camp Historic District was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on June …

Evening Shade

Evening Shade was a television situation comedy series about a contemporary Arkansas town. It was shown on CBS from 1990 to 1994 and was produced by Arkansan Harry Thomason and his wife, Linda Bloodworth-Thomason. Taking place in the rural town of Evening Shade (Sharp County), it was the first network television series set in Arkansas. The show, which starred Burt Reynolds, was filmed partially in Arkansas and represented the state in a positive manner. When seeking suggestions about a location and title for the show, it is said that the winning idea came from the Thomasons’ friend Hillary Clinton. Created by Bloodworth-Thomason, who is from Missouri, the program was produced by Mozark Productions, of which she and her husband were …

Evening Shade (Sharp County)

Evening Shade, located on U.S. Highway 167 in northern Arkansas, served as the seat of Sharp County for approximately ninety-five years. The once thriving community saw a slow decline in importance after the seat of government was removed in 1963. Today, it is best known as the setting for the 1990s sitcom Evening Shade. Louisiana Purchase through Early Statehood Until about 1850, the small settlement was known as Shanty. It is believed that the present name was derived from the afternoon shade provided by a small stand of tall pine trees overlooking the post office. At least for a short period of time, it was known as Hook Rum. Several versions of a local story say that, in about 1851, …

Hardy (Sharp County)

Located in northern Arkansas on the Spring River, Hardy (Sharp County) was established in 1883 as a result of the construction of the Kansas City, Springfield, and Memphis Railroad. The town emerged in the twentieth century as a popular tourist destination for Mid-southerners seeking the natural beauty of the Ozark foothills. The Arkansas General Assembly’s 1867 decision to pay companies $10,000 for every mile of track laid led to a statewide boom in railway construction. The Kansas City, Springfield, and Memphis Railroad through Arkansas was built, at least in part, because of this incentive. Named for railroad contractor James A. Hardy of Batesville (Independence County), the town was developed on 600 acres of land by early settler Walker Clayton in …

Hardy Cemetery Historic Section

The Hardy Cemetery Historic Section, which is located near the northern edge of Hardy (Sharp County), was added to the National Register of Historic Places on March 2, 2006. It was included in part due to its connection to the founders of the town and its funerary architecture. Though the area that became Hardy was settled by the 1880s, the town was not incorporated until July 12, 1894. Walter Clayton, a town founder, had donated the land for the town in 1883. He also donated the land for the cemetery, though it is not clear if this donation was made at the same time. There are a total of 322 burials in the cemetery. The oldest with a dated headstone …

Highland (Sharp County)

When the school districts of Ash Flat (Sharp County) and Hardy (Sharp County) consolidated in 1962, they chose to build a new high school halfway between the cities. That location is now the second-class city of Highland. When Sharp County was created in 1868, much of it consisted of heavily forested hillsides. The first official landowners in what would become Highland were Thomas Irvie, who bought his land in 1889, and Thomas J. Harris, who bought his land in 1895. By this time, the St. Louis–San Francisco Railway had been built through Hardy, facilitating shipping of the timber that was being cut in Sharp County and the crops grown on the cleared land. Already the area was being called Highland, …

Kemp, Joseph (Execution of)

Joseph (Joe) Kemp was hanged at Evening Shade (Sharp County) on October 3, 1879, for fatally wounding a man ten years earlier at Oil Trough (Independence County). Joe Kemp was born in Wayne County, Tennessee, in October 1854, and he later moved to Arkansas, settling in Oil Trough bottoms in Independence County in 1868. There, he became the close companion of his cousin Jesse Dowdy. Dowdy had ongoing problems with neighbor Marion D. Hulsey because he was “in the habit of dogging Hulsey’s stock, catching his hogs and cutting their hamstring.” Hulsey, in turn, was seeking Dowdy’s arrest for harming his livestock. Dowdy determined to see Hulsey dead and enlisted Kemp’s assistance in killing him. On the evening of July …

Morgan, Winfield Scott

Winfield Scott Morgan (better known as W. Scott Morgan) lived in Arkansas for most of his life. As a writer, editor, lecturer, and political activist, he played an important role in farmers’ organizations and third-party politics at the state and national levels. Even after those organizations and parties disintegrated, Morgan maintained true to his reformist ideals, as evidenced by his published writings well into the twentieth century. Born on August 25, 1851, in Columbus, Ohio, W. Scott Morgan moved with his family to Chillicothe, Missouri, when he was fourteen. Four years later, he married Retta Gilliland, with whom he would have five children. Morgan initially supported his family by teaching school for an annual salary of $200. He also began …

Morgan’s Mill, Skirmish at

aka: Battle of Martin's Creek
aka: Skirmish at Spring River (February 8, 1864)

After capturing Little Rock (Pulaski County) in September 1863 and forcing Arkansas Confederates to relocate their capital to Washington (Hempstead County), Union forces in northeast Arkansas sought to solidify their control in the region and safeguard important supply lines. On Christmas Day 1863, Colonel Robert R. Livingston and his Union forces reoccupied Batesville (Independence County), where they established the headquarters of the District of Northeastern Arkansas. Union forces in Batesville subsequently set out to suppress small bands of Confederates in the region. On February 8, 1864, a Union detachment composed of elements of the Eleventh Missouri Cavalry, the Fourth Arkansas Mounted Infantry, and the First Nebraska Cavalry encountered a larger Confederate force made up of parts of Freeman’s Brigade, Missouri …

Old Kia Kima

Old Kia Kima is a restored former Boy Scout camp owned and operated by the Old Kia Kima Preservation Association, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Old Kia Kima is located on a bluff overlooking a pristine riverfront on the South Fork of the Spring River in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains near Hardy (Sharp County). In 2000, it began offering camping facilities to qualified youth groups at no charge. The camp traces its origins to 1916 when the Memphis, Tennessee, area Boy Scout Council opened Kia Kima as its summer camp. The name chosen for the camp was “Kia Kima,” which was said to mean “nest of eagles” in the Chickasaw language. The original camp operated as a Boy Scout …

Poke Bayou (Sharp County)

Poke Bayou creek begins near Sidney (Sharp County) at Big Spring in Izard County, flows through Sandtown (Independence County), and empties into the White River just above the bridge at Batesville (Independence County). Izard County historian Denny Elrod stated the following about the area’s history: “It was to this creek many of the early settlers came. Across the White River from Poke Bayou is Wolf Bayou which hosted an Indian camp and trading-post. The creek is picturesque near Sandtown as it flows along the foot of overhanging bluffs.” The original settlement at Batesville dates back to at least an 1814 trading post. When the first post office was established on the confluence of the bayou and the White River on …

Roe, “Preacher”

aka: Elwin Charles Roe

Elwin Charles “Preacher” Roe played professional baseball with the St. Louis Cardinals, Pittsburgh Pirates, and Brooklyn Dodgers. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Roe was one of the top pitchers in the game. Preacher Roe was born on February 26, 1916, to Charles Edward Roe and Elizabeth (Ducker) Roe in Ash Flat (Sharp County). The Roe family, which included six boys and one girl, moved from Wild Cherry (Fulton County), where they had moved in 1918, to Viola (Fulton County) when Roe was six. Roe’s father played for a semi-professional team in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) but gave up baseball as a career and became a country doctor. Roe got his nickname at about three years of age when …

Rowland, Hardy Alton “Spider”

Hardy Alton “Spider” Rowland was a flamboyant newspaperman whose political columns in the Arkansas Gazette in the 1940s attracted a huge following and were widely quoted around the country. Rowland was a hard-drinking, wisecracking, brawling man-about-town whose cigar and black fedora cocked on the back of his head made him familiar on the sidewalks and in bars. Southern Politics, the 1949 classic political science anthology about politics in Southern states, invoked Rowland’s metaphors to illustrate the peculiar nature of Arkansas elections. Spider Rowland was born on July 14, 1907, in a log cabin near Hardy (Sharp County), the son of Fountain Edgar Rowland and Mary Rowland. He was the second-oldest of five children. When he was a boy, the family …

Sharp County

Sharp County, in northern Arkansas, was established in 1868. Though long known as a location for good hunting and timber, it has remained rather sparsely populated, though the resort town of Cherokee Village is one of the state’s leading retirement communities, and Hardy is a well-known tourist destination. Pre-European Exploration Local tradition holds that Wahpeton Hill in what is now Hardy was home at one time to Osage and Sioux. However, the Osage, though they likely hunted in the area, maintained no settlements, and the real Wahpeton Sioux lived farther north in South Dakota and Canada. Archaeological finds in the area do include a large variety of arrowheads, spear points, pottery, and handicrafts linked which give convincing proof of the …

Sharp, Ephraim

Ephraim Sharp, for whom Sharp County was named, was an early pioneer in Arkansas. He also served in the state legislature during the fifteenth and seventeenth sessions of the Arkansas General Assembly. Ephraim Sharp was born on July 30, 1815, in Hamilton County, Ohio, the ninth of ten children born to farmers John Sharp and Elizabeth Elston Sharp. His mother died when he was three. When he was twelve years old, his father moved the family from Ohio to Decatur County, Indiana. On October 29, 1833, Sharp married his first wife, Margaret Stevens; they had five children. In 1837, Sharp and his younger brother, William, moved their families to Arkansas. They settled as farmers in Sugar Loaf Township, near the …

Sidney (Sharp County)

Sidney is a small farming community located in southwest Sharp County. While the area was settled in the 1840s, the town was not incorporated until May 11, 1935, and was believed to have been named in honor of Confederate general Albert Sidney Johnston. The town has never been home to more than 300 citizens. Prior to 1844, John Martin settled at the confluence of the branches of what is now Sidney Creek near the present town. Within a few years, the families of George Hodges and Addison Harvey Nunn settled in the area, the former on land that would eventually become the town. Nunn, who owned the largest number of slaves in the area, was elected county and probate judge. …

Smithee, James Newton

James Newton Smithee, the founder of the Arkansas Democrat, was a prominent figure in the history of Arkansas journalism. Smithee was also an important Democrat during the years after Reconstruction and an advocate of the silver movement in Arkansas. J. N. Smithee was born in 1842 in what would become Sharp County into a poor Scottish-Irish farming family; his parents were Samuel Harris Smithee and Edna Elizabeth (Woodrome) Smithee. His formal education consisted of three months in a country school. When he was twelve years old, he became an apprentice to the Des Arc Citizen, where he learned the printing trade. When Smithee was eighteen, he bought into the Prairie County Democrat and used it to support the Southern Democratic …

Weston v. Arkansas

aka: Arkansas v. Weston

Joseph Harry Weston v. State of Arkansas dealt with two criminal cases that reached the Arkansas Supreme Court in the 1970s, the second of which led the court to declare the state’s old criminal-libel law unconstitutional. Joseph Harry Weston was the owner and editor of a tiny tabloid newspaper in Cave City (Sharp County) called the Sharp Citizen, which he printed off and on from 1972 until 1978. The paper, which was composed on typewritten stationery with hand-drawn headlines, reveled in strongly opinionated articles that alleged corruption and other scandalous behavior by public officials, businessmen, and common citizens, including Weston’s rural neighbors. The editor’s crusades got national attention but put him into almost perpetual conflict with law-enforcement officials, prosecutors, and …

Weston, Joseph Harry

Joseph Harry Weston was a journalist who retired to the mountains of Sharp County in 1962 and became famous for a crude but crusading newspaper called the Sharp Citizen. The paper’s lurid headlines and stories packed with scandal and scurrilous descriptions of business and political leaders kept him in trouble with the law. His arrests ultimately led the Arkansas Supreme Court to invalidate the state’s 105-year-old criminal-libel law. In the six years that he printed the paper, he twice ran for governor, unsuccessfully. Joseph Weston was born in Little Rock (Pulaski County) on August 6, 1911. Little is known of his life from then until his retirement to a farm near Cave City (Sharp and Independence counties) except what he …

Wilburn Brothers

The Wilburn Brothers were among the most successful and influential sibling duos in the country music industry during the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s. Brothers Virgil Doyle (“Doyle”) Wilburn (1930–1982) and Thurman Theodore (“Teddy”) Wilburn (1931–2003), who hailed from Hardy (Sharp County), were stars of the Grand Ole Opry, recording artists with over thirty albums, recipients of the only “Lifetime Recording Contract” ever given by Decca Records, and hosts of their own nationally syndicated country music show for eleven years. In addition, they were talent agents who helped launch the careers of many other legendary country music stars, including Loretta Lynn, Patty Loveless, and the Osborne Brothers. Their Surefire Music, formed in 1957, is the only remaining family-owned music-publishing house …

Williford (Sharp County)

Williford is a small community located in the eastern part of Sharp County near the Spring River, one of Arkansas’s most popular streams for recreational floating. During the early twentieth century, it was one of the county’s largest and fastest-growing towns, but since then it has experienced a steady decline resulting in an almost nonexistent business district and a population of fewer than eighty citizens. While the earliest inhabitants of the area were Native Americans, the first white settler, Jeremiah Pitt Baird, established his homestead on the banks of the Spring River in 1841. Shortly after he settled his family on the opposite side of the river of the present-day town, others began to move into the area. Among those …

Williford Methodist Church

The Williford Methodist Church, located near the northwestern intersection of Ferguson and Hail streets in Williford (Sharp County), was added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 22, 1992. Located behind the wood-frame structure is a large cemetery, which is not included in the historic property. When Jeremiah Baird settled near the Spring River in 1841, others soon followed. Within a short time, Williford was established. The community experienced slow growth until the construction of the railroad in the post–Civil War years. The town was incorporated in 1914. The town’s congregations of various religious denominations shared the local schoolhouse for regular services. In 1910, the Methodist congregation initiated the raising of the town’s first church building. The church was constructed by …

Wirth (Sharp County)

Wirth is a small, isolated community located on an approximately fifteen-mile-long north-south plateau rising from the Spring River in northern Sharp County. At its peak, the community was a commercial and social center that attracted a number of German settlers. The first non–Native American settlers to the area may have come as early as the 1700s, with one source reporting a Spanish family by the name of Munz settling there. More likely, the first to settle were Buck Baldridge and Dee Arnold, who established themselves by 1848. No significant settlement occurred until the 1880s, when a substantial number of German immigrants were enticed to move to the area. Apparently, many people read glowing accounts published by railroad companies in German-language …