Entry Category: Historic Preservation - Starting with F

Fort Smith to Jackson Road

The Fort Smith to Jackson Road was one of several “military roads” the U.S. Congress funded during the 1830s to improve transportation in territorial Arkansas. A Baxter County segment of the road over which the John Benge detachment of Cherokee traveled in 1838 during the Trail of Tears was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 22, 2004. On November 1, 1833, the Arkansas Territorial Assembly petitioned Congress to finance a road across northern Arkansas on the grounds that in “an immense extent of country, situated in the upper waters of White River comprising the counties of Lawrence, Izard and Washington, there is no great public road leading through any portion thereof [and the petitioners] would therefore suggest …

Forts Lookout and Southerland

aka: Forts Southerland and Lookout
aka: Fort Diamond
Forts Lookout and Southerland are large earthen redoubts constructed in early 1864 to defend Camden (Ouachita County) from Federal attack during the Civil War. The forts were listed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 19, 1994, and designated as National Historic Landmarks on the same date as components of the Camden Expedition National Historic Landmark. In late 1863, following the September 10 capture of Little Rock (Pulaski County), Lieutenant General Edmund Kirby Smith, Confederate commander of the Trans-Mississippi Department, ordered Lieutenant General Theophilus Holmes to concentrate his forces along the Ouachita River to defend the approaches to Shreveport, Louisiana, against any Union advances to the south. Holmes, in turn, ordered Brigadier General Alexander T. Hawthorn, a prewar …

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 …

Fowler House

aka: Absalom Fowler House
The Absalom Fowler House, located at 502 East Seventh Street, is one of the few remaining antebellum houses in Little Rock (Pulaski County) in the twenty-first century. Constructed in 1840, it served as a private residence until 1923, when it was sold to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Little Rock. Due to its distinctive Greek Revival–style architecture and unique design, the house was added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 4, 1973. Is also part of the MacArthur Park Historic District. In 1976, the Absalom Fowler House became the centerpiece of the Flower Square apartment complex. The exteriors of both the house and the detached kitchen remain relatively unaltered from their original state. Due to its state …

Franklin County Courthouse, Northern District

The Franklin County Courthouse for the Northern District, located at 211 West Commercial in Ozark (Franklin County), was constructed as a two-story structure fashioned in Classical Moderne style with Italian Renaissance design influences. This building is the fourth courthouse in this county seat. Franklin County emerged from part of Crawford County late in 1837. Ozark was designated as the county seat in 1838, and the first court proceedings were held in a school house without windows. The first building designated as a courthouse was built in 1840 on the northwestern corner of the square. This one-story, frame building, which measured twenty square feet, included fifteen windows, one door, and a stove. D. L. Bourland, the county treasurer, submitted the $400 bid for …

Franklin County Courthouse, Southern District

The Franklin County Courthouse for the Southern District, located at 607 East Main Street in Charleston (Franklin County), was constructed as a two-story structure fashioned in Classical Revival Style. Franklin County emerged from part of Crawford County late in 1837. Between 1838 and 1885, Ozark (Franklin County) was the only county seat. Due to difficulty people faced in crossing the Arkansas River, Governor Simon P. Hughes approved an act on March 14, 1885, that created two court districts within Franklin County. The court in Ozark became the Northern District, and Charleston was designated as the county seat for the Southern District in 1901. The Arkansas River drew the boundary line between districts. In June 1885, the sheriff of Franklin County obtained a two-story …

Frederick Hanger House

aka: Hanger House
One of the most picturesque, best preserved, and most carefully restored houses in Little Rock (Pulaski County) is the late-nineteenth-century Frederick Hanger House. It retains a high percentage of its original fixtures, fittings, and architectural features and is an outstanding example of the Queen Anne style of architecture. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on March 15, 1974. Peter Hanger, originally from Kentucky, moved to Arkansas in the 1830s, settling first in Chicot County and, by 1848, in Little Rock. In 1850, he married Matilda Cunningham, daughter of Dr. Matthew Cunningham and his wife, who were among Little Rock’s earliest settlers. He invested in real estate and was active in a variety of businesses, including U.S. Mail …

Frenchman’s Mountain Methodist Episcopal Church and Cemetery

aka: Cato United Methodist Church and Cemetery
Frenchman’s Mountain Methodist Episcopal Church, South, located at 13915 Frenchman Mountain Road in the Cato community on the Pulaski–Faulkner County line, is an 1880 wood-frame building altered to its current appearance in 1945. The church and its associated cemetery were listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 22, 1976. The Frenchman Mountain Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was organized in 1872, with the Reverend R. L. Kirkman ministering to the congregation’s needs, in addition to those of another dozen churches. A log structure was erected in the winter of 1872–1873 to serve as a church, with Kirkman preaching in it for the first time that spring. The Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad company donated the land on …

Fuller-Shannon House

The Fuller-Shannon House is located in the Parker’s Woodland Hills subdivision of Jonesboro (Craighead County). The house, completed in mid-1969, was designed by notable local firm of Stuck, Frier, Lane & Scott, Inc. The design of the house was based on the work of internationally renowned architect, and Arkansas native, Edward Durell Stone, specifically his “modern dogtrot” designs of the mid-1950s. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 14, 2020. The Parker’s Woodland Hills subdivision was created by brothers Hubert J. and Olan E. Parker Jr. and was laid out to take advantage of the hilly nature of the area. Streets were placed in the valleys to give the neighborhood natural drainage and inhibit standing …