Entries - Entry Category: Historic Preservation - Starting with F

Fair Park Golf Course

aka: War Memorial Golf Course

The Fair Park Golf Course (also known as War Memorial Golf Course) in Little Rock (Pulaski County) is an eighteen-hole executive course that sits on ninety acres of the 200-acre War Memorial Park, covering almost the entirety of the park west of Fair Park Boulevard. The course was always part of the plan for what was originally called Fair Park, conceived at a time when the game of golf was experiencing its “golden age” during the 1920s. Although it was closed in 2019, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 16, 2020. Built by the city as its first municipal golf course, the course was the only public venue for golf in the city when …

Fair View School

The Fair View School at 2367 Mill Creek Road in Russellville (Pope County) is a single-story, T-shaped building veneered in fieldstone and designed in the Craftsman style of architecture. It was constructed in 1938 by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a Depression-era federal public relief program, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on February 4, 2000. In the late 1920s, the Ball Hill and Rachel school districts in Pope County were consolidated as Ball Hill School District No. 10, and in September 1929, the new district purchased property in the Orchard community to hold a centrally located school. It would be another eight years, though, before funding for a new building would be available, thanks to …

Fairview Cemetery—Confederate Section

The Confederate Section of Fairview Cemetery, near the junction of 10th and McKibben streets in Van Buren (Crawford County), is the burial site of Confederate soldiers who died in the area during the Civil War. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on December 6, 1996. After the Civil War began in 1861, the City of Van Buren donated a plot of land in the ten-acre city cemetery that John Drennen had donated as a burial ground in 1846. At least 100 Confederate soldiers, most of whom died of disease, were buried at the site during the war, and the remains of others were moved there from battlefield graves after the war ended. Ultimately, around 460 soldiers …

Fargo Agricultural School

Before the state of Arkansas made public funds available for segregated schools for black children, Floyd Brown, a graduate of Tuskegee Institute, founded and operated the Fargo Agricultural School (FAS) outside Brinkley (Monroe County). From 1920 to 1949, the private residential school offered “training for the head, hands and heart” and high school educations for hundreds of black youth at a time when the United States’ black population averaged five years or less of formal schooling. In early twentieth-century Arkansas, African-American children were seldom educated beyond the primary grades. In the 1920s and 1930s, most black Southerners were sharecroppers indebted to white landowners to whom they gave a share of their crops for rent. To supplement the family income, women …

Farrar, Clayton Ponder (Clay), Jr.

Clayton Ponder (Clay) Farrar Jr. was a longtime civic leader in Hot Springs (Garland County) as well as a respected historian and writer. He served as president of the Greater Hot Springs Chamber of Commerce, along with the nonprofit Hot Springs Fifty for the Future program, a public service organization he co-founded. Farrar championed efforts to revitalize Hot Springs National Park and led the drive to save it from being reclassified to a lower rank in the National Park Service, a designation that would have had a negative impact on the Hot Springs community. Farrar also helped secure federal funds to develop the National Park Visitor Center on historic Bathhouse Row in Hot Springs. Farrar’s most recent campaign was to …

Faulkner County Courthouse

The Faulkner County Courthouse, located at 801 Locust Street in Conway (Faulkner County), consists of brick and concrete masonry construction standing four stories tall. This building blends Colonial Revival and Art Deco styles, with the Colonial Revival details including the arched fanlight windows, accentuated front door, and classic pilasters. The Art Deco style has been artfully merged into it, evidenced by the smoothly rising vertical projection above the straight roofline, as well as the decorative accents on the building, such as the corner quoins and the symmetrical façade. The Faulkner County Courthouse was not the first courthouse built in Conway. In September 1873, the Board of Commissioners of Faulkner County selected Conway as the county seat. Asa Robinson, the chief …

Faulkner County Historical Society (FCHS)

The Faulkner County Historical Society (FCHS), sponsored by the Conway Chamber of Commerce, was organized on April 16, 1959, with forty-two charter members. The society’s purposes are “to discover, collect and preserve any material to establish or illustrate the history of our area and to make it available.” The original officers for this group were George Hartje Jr. (president), Victor Hill (vice president), and Guy Murphy (secretary-treasurer). The first directors were Myrtle Charles, Joyce Herndon, and James Clayton. After the society’s founding, a contest was conducted to name the society’s journal. Combined suggestions by James Clayton and Guy W. Murphy, both long-time local historians, resulted in the title Faulkner Facts and Fiddlings. As of 2010, the FCHS has published two …

Faulkner County Museum

The Faulkner County Museum is located near the Faulkner County Courthouse at 801 Locust Street in downtown Conway (Faulkner County). The museum features various exhibits of local history, including a circa 1850 dogtrot cabin, a Works Progress Administration (WPA) exhibit, and sports memorabilia from local athletes Ivan Grove, Bob Courtway, Stacy Pinkett, Elijah Pitts, Bryce Molder, and Scottie Pippen, among others. The upstairs portion of the museum showcases a model railroad built by museum volunteers. This exhibit replicates the Missouri Pacific Railroad’s path through Faulkner County. The building housing the Faulkner County Museum was used as a jail from 1896 until 1936, when a new courthouse/jail was built by the WPA. The old jail was renovated by the WPA and …

Fayetteville Confederate Cemetery

The Fayetteville Confederate Cemetery in Fayetteville (Washington County) is the final resting place of Confederate soldiers who died throughout northwestern Arkansas. Closely associated with the activities of the Southern Memorial Association (SMA) and its efforts to commemorate Southern war casualties, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 3, 1993. The SMA of Washington County was established on June 10, 1872, when several women met in answer to a notice in the June 6 Fayetteville Democrat calling for establishment of a “Confederate burying ground.” SMA president Lizzie Pollard noted twenty-five years later, “Out of the many who answered this call, there were but thirty-eight enthusiastic enough to undertake the task to which we that day pledged …

Fayetteville National Cemetery

In 1867, the Fayetteville National Cemetery in Fayetteville (Washington County) was established by the federal government to be used for proper burial of Union soldiers of the Civil War who died in the Arkansas campaigns. The first five acres, about one mile southwest of the old courthouse, were purchased from local residents David Walker and Steven K. Stone. The original burial layout resembled a compass rose. Graves were placed in a circular pattern around the flagpole with the headstones facing the flag and pathways between sections forming a six-pointed star. Smaller sections shaped as diamonds were located between the points of the star, for a total of eighteen sections. The first burials were disinterred from local battlefields and reinterred in …

Ferguson House (Pine Bluff)

The Ferguson House, sometimes referred to as the Ferguson-Abbott House, is located on West 4thAvenue in the historic district of Pine Bluff (Jefferson County). It was the first home in Pine Bluff to be placed on the National Register of Historic Places, which noted its historical and architectural significance within the community of Pine Bluff, as it has a unique architectural design and was the birthplace and childhood home of Martha Mitchell. The house was built by Calvin M. Ferguson, who was born in Chester, South Carolina, in 1852 and moved to Pine Bluff in 1893. Upon moving to Pine Bluff, he opened a grocery store with M. P. Russell, and he later started a wholesale grocery company with his son, …

Ferguson, Jim, Sr.

aka: James Garland Ferguson Sr.

The Marshall (Searcy County) library owes its existence to James Garland Ferguson Sr., a man with roots in the Ozark Plateau. This son of homesteaders who valued education above all else, having worked hard to secure an excellent education and great wealth for himself, made generous contributions to several local schools and churches, Arkansas Baptist Hospital and St. Vincent Infirmary in Little Rock (Pulaski County), and several colleges, including scholarships to the University of Arkansas School of Law in Fayetteville (Washington County) and Hendrix College in Conway (Faulkner County). But to the people of his home county, he gave a library and, with it, an educational opportunity in a rural environment. Jim Ferguson was born on February 26, 1885, in …

Ferguson, John Lewis

John Lewis Ferguson—historian, minister, author, archival administer, and historic preservationist—served as Arkansas state historian and the director of the Arkansas State Archives (previous called the Arkansas History Commission) from 1960 to 2005, only the third person to hold that position since 1905. His forty-five-year tenure was the longest in the agency’s history. John Ferguson was born on March 1, 1926, on a farm near Nashville (Howard County) to farmer and World War I veteran Clarence Walter Ferguson and his wife, Nannye N. McCrary Ferguson. As a child attending the rural York’s Chapel School, he read every history book he could find. Early on, he decided to pursue a career in history. He graduated from Nashville High School in 1944. In 1951, he was …

Fernandez, Josie

Josie Fernandez was superintendent of Hot Springs National Park from 2004 to 2018—the first woman to lead the park. Fernandez served a total of twenty-five years in the National Park Service, with fourteen being spent in Hot Springs (Garland County). Under Fernandez’s leadership, Hot Springs National Park rehabilitated its historic bathhouses and founded community engagement programs such as the Artist in Residence Program. Josie Fernandez was born in Cuba in September 1956; she has one younger brother. Her family eventually fled Cuba for political reasons and immigrated to the United States when she was twelve, settling in Hialeah, Florida, in 1969. She became an American citizen on July 4, 1976. She spent one year at Miami Dade Junior College and …

Ficklin-Imboden Log House

The Ficklin-Imboden Log House, located in Powhatan (Lawrence Country), is considered the earliest house representing residential construction and architecture still standing in the twenty-first century in Powhatan. John A. Lindsay divided land in Powhatan into lots when the town was platted in 1849. The year before, Andrew Imboden married Lusinda E. Ficklin, niece of John Ficklin, who is credited with founding Powhatan. The newlyweds bought the lot where the log home would soon stand. The house is believed to have been constructed sometime between 1850 and 1853. The Ficklin-Imboden Log House location influenced the development of Powhatan. As imports and shipping on the Black River increased, jobs associated with lumber, trade, gristmills, farming, pearling, and fishing also emerged and attracted …

Fielder House

The Fielder House is a historic home located in Fordyce (Dallas County). The original structure was constructed around 1875, making the home the oldest building in the city. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 28, 1983. Created in 1845, Dallas County is located in south-central Arkansas. Most early settlement in the county took place in the western and central areas. In the southeastern corner of the county, early settlers included Henry Atkinson, an African-American man who purchased the land in the 1870s that would become the core of Fordyce. Incorporated in 1884, Fordyce was laid out by the Cotton Belt Railroad and served as a stop on the line. Growing quickly, the town became …

Files Cemetery

The Files Cemetery in Hot Springs (Garland County) is located on a quarter-acre lot off Arkansas Highway 7 South, on Files Road. It has been the resting place of Ruth Coker Burks’s family since the late 1880s. The oldest headstone dates back to the mid-1880s and the most recent was from 2019. Aside from the Burks family, the cemetery is also reportedly the burial place for more than three dozen men who died from AIDS in the 1980s. While most of the headstones in the cemetery are simple rectangles with name, birthdate, and death date, and occasionally a cross or flower engraved, some are marked with symbols and iconography. One such headstone is that of Emma L. Files Burrough, which …

First Baptist Church (Little Rock)

aka: EMOBA
aka: Museum of Black Arkansans and Performing Arts Center

The historic building of First Baptist Church of Little Rock (Pulaski County) is located at the corner of 12th and Louisiana streets just south of downtown. Various congregations of First Baptist worshiped in locations around the city throughout the 1800s. In 1889, First Baptist purchased a new lot and began construction on a large brick church at the historic site of 12th and Louisiana streets. The current building was built on the same site in 1941–42 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 21, 1994. In 1974, the First Baptist congregation moved to west Little Rock. The buildings on Louisiana remained unused until 1993, when Ernestine (Ernie) Dodson purchased the buildings on Louisiana to create …

First Christian Church (Lonoke)

The First Christian Church in Lonoke (Lonoke County) is a historic structure noted for Craftsman-style details with some Tudor Revival style features. The two-story building, while no longer housing an active church, is located in the heart of downtown Lonoke. Incorporated in 1872, Lonoke grew quickly as a stop on the Memphis and Little Rock Railroad. Several efforts by local citizens to organize a Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) failed, including in 1898, 1901, and 1903. The 1903 effort led to the purchase of a lot and building supplies, but the family leading the effort left Arkansas, putting the effort on hold. Those interested in the church continued to worship in their homes until several revivals in 1913 finally proved …

First Hotze House

The First Hotze House at 1620 South Main Street in Little Rock (Pulaski County) is a one-story, wood-frame, Italianate-style residence built in 1869 for businessman Peter Hotze. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 20, 2006. Peter Hotze was born on October 21, 1836, in Innsbruck, Austria. He immigrated to the United States around 1856 and settled in Little Rock three years later. When the Civil War began, he enlisted in Company A of the Sixth Arkansas Infantry Regiment (the Capital Guards), serving until he was wounded in the 1864 Battle of Franklin in Tennessee and taken prisoner. His older brother Conrad had moved to Little Rock in 1862 and purchased Block 166 on the …

First Presbyterian Church (Fordyce)

Located on East Fourth Street in Fordyce (Dallas County), the First Presbyterian Church is a Gothic Revival–style place of worship constructed in 1912. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 28, 1983, although it later closed it doors. Created with six members in 1883, a year before the city was incorporated, the Presbyterian church was the first organized in the new settlement. In honor of that achievement, Samuel Wesley Fordyce, after whom the city was named, donated a bell to the congregation. The church met in a white frame building at the corner of Third and Oak streets until selling the property to the Christian Church and moving to a new location in a …

First United Methodist Church (Fordyce)

Located on East Fourth Street in Fordyce (Dallas County), the First United Methodist Church is a historic place of worship. Constructed in 1925 and designed by John Parks Almand, the church was added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 28, 1983. Incorporated in 1884, Fordyce grew as a stop on the Cotton Belt Railroad. The founding date of the Methodist congregation in the city is unknown, but the first pastor arrived in 1883. Before that date, the Methodists worked with the local Presbyterian congregation to offer Sunday School lessons at the Presbyterian church. The congregation purchased land for the construction of a church in 1886, but a land swap later that same year gave the congregation the …

Fishback School

Fishback School was established in 1885 as Washington County School District 68. At that time, the school was about two miles southeast of Springdale (Washington and Benton counties), in an area known for its fruit orchards. Two families, the Grahams and the Boyds, donated one-half acre each from their adjoining orchards as a location for the schoolhouse, a one-room wood-frame building. According to former Fishback student Truman Stamps, the school was named for William Meade Fishback, a prominent Fort Smith (Sebastian County) attorney and legislator who served as governor of Arkansas from 1893 to 1895. As was the case with most rural schools, grades one through eight were offered at Fishback. By 1915, enrollment at Fishback had grown to the …

Fitzgerald Station and Farmstead

Fitzgerald Station and Farmstead in Springdale (Washington and Benton counties) was added to the National Register of Historic Places on May 27, 2003. Focusing on the time period 1857–1953, the National Register listing includes a barn used by Butterfield’s Overland Mail Company (1858–1861), an 1870s house, a stable, a pump house, a chicken house, a cistern, native stone entry markers, and an outdoor fire pit. Fitzgerald (or Fitzgerald’s) Station and Farmstead has also been designated by the National Park Service as a certified site on the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail. John Fitzgerald Sr. (1783–1875) and his wife, Mary Fitzgerald (1794–circa 1865), moved their family from Alabama to Washington County, Arkansas, in the late 1820s or early 1830s, settling …

Fitzhugh Snapp Company

Located six miles north of Augusta (Woodruff County) at the junction of County Roads 140 and 165, the Fitzhugh Snapp Company at Fitzhugh (Woodruff County) was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005 for its significance in two areas of merit: the general store’s important association with agriculture in Woodruff County and the building’s distinctive representation of twentieth-century commercial architecture. The Fitzhugh store was an integral part of an agricultural community that revolved around cotton production in the northeastern Arkansas Delta from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. Rufus K. Fitzhugh and J. Harrison Snapp built the original wooden mercantile store in Fitzhugh, probably in the mid-to-late 1890s. Although its exact date of construction is not …

Flanagin Law Office

The Flanagin Law Office is located at 320 Clay Street in Arkadelphia (Clark County), across the street from the Clark County Courthouse. The building was finished by 1858 and added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 22, 1977. The office is named for Harris Flanagin, governor of Arkansas from 1862 to 1864. A New Jersey native, Flanagin moved to Arkansas from Illinois. Settling in the Clark County seat of Greenville, Flanagin moved to Arkadelphia when it became the county seat in 1842. The same year, he was elected to the Arkansas House of Representatives, and in 1848 he was elected to the Arkansas Senate. In 1851, he married Martha Nash of Washington (Hempstead County). Sometime in that …

Florence Crittenton Home

Established in 1903, the Little Rock Florence Crittenton Home (LRFCH) operated as a rehabilitative and reform institution for unwed mothers. The LRFCH’s building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on December 22, 1982. In 1883, wealthy evangelist Charles N. Crittenton founded the first Florence Crittenton Home (FCH), which was named after his daughter. Located in New York City, it was a rescue mission for prostitutes. In the early 1900s, the FCH sought to increase its clientele by refocusing its reform efforts on unmarried pregnant women. In October 1903, at the invitation of local ministers, Charles Crittenton visited Little Rock (Pulaski County) and held a series of revival meetings in the city’s churches. Shortly after his visit, civic …

Florida Brothers Building

Constructed in 1936, the Florida Brothers Building is a commercial property located at 319 West Hale Avenue in Osceola (Mississippi County), directly across the street from the Works Progress Administration–built post office building. The structure is a one-story, flat-roofed building that features Indiana limestone and reflects the Art Deco style of architecture. The structure was built by Thomas P. Florida at the same time that he and his brothers, Andrew J. Florida and George H. Florida, constructed the First National Bank Building on the same block. It was designed to house the brothers’ real estate business, which had enjoyed considerable success during the Great Depression, allowing the Florida Brothers to lend millions of dollars to Mississippi County farmers and homeowners. …

Fordyce Commercial Historic District

The Fordyce Commercial Historic District includes the core of downtown of Fordyce (Dallas County). Centered on Main Street, the district included sixty-one resources at the time of its addition to the National Register of Historic Places on May 20, 2008. Thirty of the resources contributed to the district, with six additional sites being empty lots. The boundaries of the district are roughly Fifth Street to the north, Oak Street to the west, Spring Street to the east, and the railroad tracks south of First Street. Incorporated in 1884, Fordyce served as a stop on the Texas and St. Louis Railway, later named the St. Louis, Arkansas and Texas, but commonly known as the Cotton Belt. Named for Samuel Wesley Fordyce, …

Fordyce House

The Fordyce House at 2115 South Broadway in Little Rock (Pulaski County) is a two-and-a-half-story wood-frame residence built in 1904 for John R. Fordyce and designed by noted architect Charles L. Thompson. It exhibits the rarely used Egyptian Revival style. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on August 6, 1975. John Fordyce, the son of Cotton Belt Railroad president Samuel Fordyce, was a prominent businessman, engineer, and inventor, as well as the president of Little Rock’s Thomas-Fordyce Manufacturing Company. He married Lillian August Powell in 1898 and, six years later, hired Thompson to design a house for their growing family. Thompson designed the Fordyce House in the Egyptian Revival style of architecture, which was most popular …

Fordyce, John Rison

The son of Hot Springs (Garland County) entrepreneur and Cotton Belt Railroad president Samuel Wesley Fordyce, John Rison Fordyce forged his own way into Arkansas history. He was educated as a mining engineer but was also an inventor, manufacturer, leader in commerce, public servant, and amateur archaeologist. John R. Fordyce was born in Huntsville, Alabama, on November 7, 1869. He moved to the health resort of Hot Springs at age five with his father and mother, Susan Chadick, after his father, suffering from malaria contracted during the Civil War, found renewed health in the local thermal springs. The third of five children, Fordyce—along with his three surviving siblings—was educated in Hot Springs schools. His father was instrumental in Hot Springs’ …

Fort Logan H. Roots Military Post Historic District

aka: Fort Roots

In 1893, the U.S. Army chose Big Rock Mountain in North Little Rock (Pulaski County) as the location for one of its new military posts. Fort Logan H. Roots, as it was later named, served as an important military training facility in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. When the United States entered World War I in 1917, Camp Pike (now Camp Joseph T. Robinson) was constructed to provide the military with a larger training facility. In 1921, Fort Roots was transferred to the Public Health Service and became a veterans’ hospital. Today, Fort Roots remains an important part of the Veterans Health Administration. The history of Fort Logan H. Roots begins with the history of Big Rock Mountain, …

Fort Smith Confederate Monument

The Fort Smith Confederate Monument is a sculpture erected in 1903 at the Sebastian County Courthouse in Fort Smith (Sebastian County) by the Varina Jefferson Davis Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) to commemorate local men who served in the Confederate army during the Civil War and to honor the Confederates buried in Fort Smith National Cemetery. Sebastian County supplied troops for both sides during the Civil War. In the initial months of the war, four infantry companies, a cavalry company, and an artillery battery joined the Arkansas State Troops, and at least five infantry companies and two companies of independent scouts were later raised for Confederate service. Sebastian County residents also enlisted in other Confederate units. U.S. troops …

Fort Smith Historical Society

The express purpose of the Fort Smith Historical Society (FSHS) is to locate, identify, collect, and preserve historical data; to record oral history; and to publish source materials and historical articles relating to Fort Smith (Sebastian County) and the surrounding area. The society is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, staffed by volunteers and funded entirely by memberships and contributions. A small group of people concerned with preserving the written and oral history of Fort Smith held the organizational meeting of the Fort Smith Historical Society on April 15, 1977. The first issue of The Journal of the Fort Smith Historical Society, Inc., was published in September 1977, with Amelia Martin and state Representative Carolyn Pollan serving as co-editors. The FSHS publishes …

Fort Smith Museum of History

Since 1910, the Fort Smith Museum of History has acquired, preserved, exhibited, and interpreted objects of historical significance relevant to the founding and growth of Fort Smith (Sebastian County) and the region. Previously known as the Old Commissary Museum and the Old Fort Museum, the current name has identified the museum since 1999. The museum has its beginnings in 1910, when a group of local women learned that the city was planning to tear down its earliest remaining military structure. This building, known as the Old Commissary Building, was a significant historical site. Construction began in 1838, and it was used in various ways by the U.S. Army before being abandoned. It was purchased by the City of Fort Smith …

Fort Smith National Cemetery

The Fort Smith National Cemetery is the oldest original cemetery of the state’s three national cemeteries. The other two are in Fayetteville (Washington County) and Little Rock (Pulaski County). At the end of fiscal year 2005, there were 13,127 interments. The first recorded burial was that of surgeon Thomas Russell. He was a War of 1812 veteran who was with the original company of riflemen who landed on December 25, 1817, at Fort Smith (Sebastian County). He died there on August 24, 1819. The cemetery originally served as the post cemetery for the first Fort Smith. While the first recorded burial took place in 1819, by 1823, roughly twenty-five percent of the men at Fort Smith had died. This was …

Fort Smith National Historic Site

Fort Smith National Historic Site is a unit of the National Park Service located in downtown Fort Smith (Sebastian County) on the Arkansas River. By preserving the remains of two military posts, the federal courthouse, and two jails, the park interprets how Fort Smith helped keep the peace in Indian Territory during the nineteenth century. In the early days, Belle Point, which later became Fort Smith, was used by French fur trappers for a rendezvous point. Chosen because the converging Poteau and Arkansas rivers made it accessible, this location became an important and strategic location for keeping peace in the West. As early as 1808, approximately 2,000 Cherokee left their ancestral homeland and began to move from the Southeast and …

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 …