County: Van Buren

Back Yonder, An Ozark Chronicle

Back Yonder, An Ozark Chronicle, published in 1932, is the autobiography of Charles Wayman Hogue (1870–1965), who grew up in Arkansas’s Ozark Mountains. Arkansas folklorist Vance Randolph wrote that Back Yonder was, “One of the finest nonfiction books ever written about the Ozark country. Hogue is a native of Van Buren County, Arkansas. He knows the truth about this region, and sets it down without any sentimental twaddle.” Hogue was the father of well-known Arkansas author Charlie May Simon. Her second husband, Howard Simon, illustrated Hogue’s book with exquisite woodcuts. As a young man in his early twenties, Hogue left the Ozarks to attend Little Rock University (now the University of Arkansas at Little Rock). It was there that he …

Cates, Opal Taft (Opie)

Opie Cates was a popular bandleader, musician, and radio personality, known as one of the great clarinetists of the swing era (mid-1930s–mid-1940s). He was a familiar presence on radio in the 1940s, at one time appearing weekly on four different shows. By Cates’s own reckoning, his audience numbered over thirty-five million listeners. Some believe that the character of Opie Taylor on The Andy Griffith Show was named after Opie Cates. Opal Taft Cates was born on October 10, 1909, in Clinton (Van Buren County). His parents, Abb Cates and Sarah Jacobs Cates, were farmers. Abb Cates died in 1914, Sarah Cates married Lee Andrew Reaves (or Reeves) in 1916. The blended family, which included several Reaves step-siblings and a younger …

Clinton (Van Buren County)

Clinton has been the county seat of Van Buren County since 1844. Sheltered in the Little Red River valley, the city has been bypassed by many of the major events of Arkansas’s history, including Civil War battles, the building of the railroads, and the desegregation turmoil of the mid-twentieth century. Louisiana Purchase through Early Statehood When the land that would become Arkansas became part of the United States through the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the Little Red River valley was included in land recognized as Osage hunting territory. The Osage had permanent settlements farther north but frequently visited north-central Arkansas. An 1825 treaty removed the Osage tribe to Kansas, opening the land for settlement by Americans of European descent. Van …

Damascus (Van Buren and Faulkner Counties)

Damascus is a town located on U.S. Highway 65 on the county line between Faulkner and Van Buren counties. It is most known for its proximity to the Titan II missile base that operated from 1963 until 1980, when a missile explosion killed one person and injured twenty-one. Damascus is located on a plateau between Pine Mountain Creek and Batesville Creek. Heavily timbered until the later part of the nineteenth century, the area was lightly populated for many centuries. Prehistoric stone tools are still found by farmers plowing the soil near the town. Land records show that Elijah Cagle, Hosea King, Thomas King, and Jacob Hartwick all purchased land in northern Faulkner County in the years immediately prior to the Civil War. Local histories …

Damascus CCC Camp No. 3781 Historic District

The Damascus CCC Camp Co. No. 3781 Historic District, located on Camp Hill Road in Damascus (Van Buren and Faulkner counties), is a collection of stone structures associated with a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) facility that operated there in cooperation with the U.S. Soil Conservation Service (USCS) during the Great Depression. The Damascus area had long seen agricultural use, which led the CCC to establish Camp Damascus there on June 1, 1935, under USCS control to help rehabilitate farmland in a region damaged by a long history of poor farming techniques. Junior Company 3781, SCS-5 was located on a forty-acre site leased for one dollar per year from William A. Brown. Construction of the camp began on June 12, and …

Damascus Gymnasium

The Damascus Gymnasium, located on State Highway 285 just north of the Faulkner/Van Buren County line in Damascus, is a single-story, wood-frame building constructed in 1933 and designed in the Craftsman style of architecture. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 4, 1992. The first school in Damascus was established in 1881 by neighbors in the community who held classes in a brush arbor. That rustic setting served until 1889 when summer and winter terms were held in the new Baptist church. In 1900, a two-story, four-room schoolhouse was constructed. When a high school was built in 1910, a School Improvement Association was formed to finance an eight-month term of classes. The Damascus school joined …

Fairfield Bay (Van Buren and Cleburne Counties)

Fairfield Bay, located in north-central Arkansas on the north shore of Greers Ferry Lake, was created with the goal of becoming a recreational and retirement resort. Though small in terms of residential population, the number of people who visit each year through the town’s timeshare program is well over 20,000. As of the 2010 census, the combined population of its Van Buren County and Cleburne County portions is 2,338. Before the formation of Greers Ferry Lake in the mid-1960s, the hills of what is now Fairfield Bay were covered with large hardwood trees. Logging of these immense oak trees for lumber, railroad ties, and white oak barrel staves supported the thriving communities of Shirley (Van Buren County), Edgemont (Cleburne County), …

Forgotten Girls, The [Book]

The Forgotten Girls: A Memoir of Friendship and Lost Promise in Rural America, written by Clinton (Van Buren County) native Monica Potts, was released on May 30, 2023, to critical acclaim. The memoir recounts Potts’s personal experience reconnecting with childhood friend Darci Brawner over a period of years after returning to her hometown of Clinton. Within its first week, it appeared on the New York Times bestsellers’ list. In the book, Potts connects moments of her life, Brawner’s life, and the lives of other members of their community with larger studies and data pertaining to the experience of living in rural America. Monica Potts was born and raised in Clinton. After graduating from high school, she attended Bryn Mawr College …

Fowler Cemetery

The Fowler Cemetery is located approximately two miles east of Damascus, along the southeastern border of Van Buren County. The property is just over an acre and is representative of small, rural family cemeteries found throughout Arkansas. There are eighty-nine marked burials on the grounds. While the cemetery mostly contains members of the Fowler family, there are also individuals from other local families who were related to the Fowlers by marriage. It was listed on the Arkansas Register of Historic Places on August 5, 2020. The Fowlers were one of the many families attracted to the Damascus area in the late nineteenth century, during the cotton farming boom. The family initially settled in the Muddy Bayou area, along the White …

Halbrook, William Erwin

William Erwin Halbrook was a prominent educator and education reformer in Arkansas during the first half of the twentieth century. Halbrook promoted high school education and led reform efforts to modernize schools in his native Ozarks region and was later important in combating adult illiteracy in the state. The Arkansas Education Association (AEA) considered Halbrook among the “Giants in Arkansas Education.” His career is representative of the early-twentieth-century education reformers who crusaded to bring progress and efficiency to the state’s public school system. William E. Halbrook was born on March 14, 1878, to Urijah Halbrook and Sarah Elizabeth (Woolverton) Halbrook in rural Van Buren County; he had five younger brothers. His father was a poor hill farmer, and Halbrook grew …

Holmes, Sturgis Williford, Jr.

Sturgis Williford Holmes Jr. was a famous Arkansas folk artist who specialized in the medium of paint-by-numbers. According to art historian Taylor Panini, Holmes’s output was larger than any other paint-by-numbers artist’s in the continental United States, though this claim remains controversial. Sturgis Holmes was born on April 1, 1936, in rural Van Buren County to Sturgis Holmes Sr., an itinerant chicken farmer, and Bethejewel Haggis Holmes; he had eleven siblings. He possibly studied in Dennard (Van Buren County) schools, though there is no record of him ever graduating. The Holmes family was poor, and Holmes Sr. had to take up the illicit manufacture of spirits—i.e., moonshining—in order to make ends meet. As Holmes recounted to later interviewers, when his …

Kidd, Sue

Sue Kidd was a female baseball star who gained local fame for the athletic prowess she displayed while playing on and against all-male baseball teams in Van Buren County and surrounding areas. Glenna Sue Kidd was born in Choctaw (Van Buren County) on September 2, 1933, to William Marvin Kidd and Julia Duncan Kidd, local farmers and merchants, though her father also served as postmaster at Choctaw. She had five siblings. The original community of Choctaw was covered by water when Greers Ferry Lake was filled in the 1960s. That community is now referred to as “old Choctaw,” as opposed to the present community of “new Choctaw” located on state Highway 65. As a student at Clinton High School, Kidd …

National Championship Chuckwagon Races

The National Championship Chuckwagon Race is held every Labor Day weekend at Dan and Peggy Eoff’s ranch in Clinton (Van Buren County). Spectators from across the United States travel to the small town nestled in the Ozark Mountains to see the largest outdoor chuckwagon race in the country. The chuckwagon is associated with Charles Goodnight, who designed the first wagon to follow the cattle trails in the 1800s. Stories hold that, at the end of the cattle drive, the cowhands would collect their pay, pack up their supplies, and race into town. Legend has it that the last one there had to buy the first round of drinks for all. The races were started in 1986 when Dan and Peggy …

Shirley (Van Buren County)

The town of Shirley rests on the Middle Fork of the Little Red River in northeastern Van Buren County. Established by the railroad, the town has become an agricultural center for the region with a focus also on recreation and tourism. The rocky and wooded hills of the Ozarks have been sparsely populated for most of recorded history. When the land that would become Arkansas was acquired by the United States in the Louisiana Purchase, Osage hunters and fishers were the primary visitors to the land that would become Shirley. Changing treaties first recognized the Osage as owners of the land, later gave it to the Cherokee, and ultimately removed both the Osage and the Cherokee west to what is now …