Entries - County: Van Buren - Starting with S

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 …

South Fork Nature Center (SFNC), which opened in 2010, is the Gates Rogers Foundation’s premier conservancy project. Located in central Arkansas just east of Clinton (Van Buren County), it lies in the Boston Mountains range of the Ozark Mountains on the banks of the South Fork of the Little Red River section of Greers Ferry Lake. Featuring two miles of interpretive nature trails on the peninsula and a spectacular view of the lake, the center serves as a model to educate and inspire the public to be aware of the environment, to protect vulnerable plant and animal species, and to adopt practices that are ecologically sound. It seeks to preserve Arkansas’s native flora and fauna in a manner that ensures …

The South Side High School Sign, located on the grounds of the South Side Bee Branch School District complex in Van Buren County, consists of large stones that were placed by workers of the National Youth Administration (NYA) in 1937 to mark the location of the local high school. The South Side Bee Branch School District was established in the fall of 1929 to serve the students living south of the small, thriving town of Bee Branch (Van Buren County). The Great Depression began around the same time, and Van Buren County took advantage of the federal relief programs established to bring jobs to afflicted areas. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) established a camp at Damascus (Faulkner and Van Buren …