South Side High School Sign

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 counties), the Public Works Administration (PWA) financed a new courthouse at Clinton (Van Buren County), and the Works Progress Administration (WPA) worked on several projects in the area, including at least one bridge and, in 1936, a new gymnasium on the South Side campus.

The next year, young people working for the National Youth Administration worked on NYA project 2713-Y-10 on the campus, creating a large sign to mark the high school. Workers supervised by WPA employee Morgan Montgomery made wooden forms to spell the school’s name, then filled them with fieldstones (possibly left over from the gymnasium project) held together with mortar.

Spelling “SOUTH SIDE HIGH SCHOOL,” each letter is about five feet tall and four feet wide, spreading across approximately one hundred feet on a slight rise that makes the white-painted rocks visible from U.S. Highway 65. A small concrete marker saying “NYA / 2713-Y-10/1937” sits just south of the sign.

Located just north of the site of the 1980 Titan II missile explosion, the sign also survived an EF3 tornado that devastated the South Side Bee Branch campus on November 15, 1988. It remains a local landmark in the area in the twenty-first century and was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on January 18, 2023.

For additional information:
Bradford, Skylar. “South Side High School Sign.” National Register of Historic Places registration form. On file at Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, Little Rock, Arkansas. Online at https://www.arkansasheritage.com/docs/default-source/default-document-library/vb0258-nr.pdf?sfvrsn=7a5148d5_0 (accessed March 5, 2024).

“South Side Bee Branch School Historic District.” South Side Bee Branch. https://www.southsidebb.org/362646_2 (accessed March 5, 2024).

Mark K. Christ
Central Arkansas Library System