Entries - Entry Category: Land and Resources - Starting with G

Galla Creek Wildlife Management Area is situated near the Arkansas River and is currently managed by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, which purchased the first tract in 1959, with the last tract purchased in 1978. The wildlife management area (WMA) is split into two separate parcels, with the city of Pottsville (Pope County) in between. The total landmass of Galla Creek WMA is 3,356 acres, with 3,086 acres in Pope County and 270 acres in Yell County; about 2,500 of these acres are classified as forested habitat. Historically, the land now encompassed by Galla Creek WMA was used for farming and gathering timber. There are old homesites located in the area, though only rock foundations, wells, and an abandoned …

Galley Rock in Pope County is a two-mile shale bluff that rises almost forty feet high on the north bank of the Arkansas River, just northwest of Petit Jean Mountain. It was a natural landmark for early explorers and settlers. The area was a site for Cherokee settlers of the early 1800s and became a thriving river town in the 1830s. However, by the 1870s, the town experienced a decline, and all that remains today is the town cemetery. During the late 1700s, river travel was the safest and most reliable mode of transportation. French explorers and trappers navigated the Arkansas River with only striking, geologic features marking the locations of their trading posts and hunting camps. Galley (or Galla) …

John Gammon Jr. was a founder and first president of the Arkansas Negro Farmers Association, in addition to being a rural civil rights activist who challenged segregated schools in his native Crittenden County. His reputation was such that he was remembered after his death as “Eastern Arkansas’s Martin Luther King.” Born in Marion (Crittenden County) on June 8, 1904 (as listed on his World War II draft card, although sources vary on his birth date and year), to farmers John Gammon and Mary Jane Ray Gammon, he was a 1927 graduate of Memphis, Tennessee’s LeMoyne Normal Institute (the predecessor to LeMoyne-Owen College). In 1931, he earned a bachelor’s degree from Arkansas AM&N College (now the University of Arkansas at Pine …

The Geographic Center of Arkansas Marker was dedicated on April 12, 1936, as part of the state’s first centennial celebration. The marker was placed at a spot designated by the Arkansas Department of Transportation as the physical center of the state on Highway 5, then called the “Hot Springs Highway.” The presiding officers who participated in the dedication ceremony were Mrs. Charles H. Miller and Jeanne Weinmann, both representing the Colonel Samuel Cherry chapter of the Arkansas Society of the Daughters of American Colonists in Little Rock (Pulaski County). The Little Rock branch had been formed just four years before on January 29, 1932. That chapter was also responsible for a number of other historical markers across the state between 1928 …

Geography has played an important and continuing role in the history and culture of Arkansas. From settlement patterns to Civil War battlefields to centers of economic development and political party affiliation, geographic patterns are obvious. These are often related to the distinct physical/biological landscapes of the state, each one of which has a unique combination of limitations and potentials for human use. These landscapes often occur in regions where the character is set by the underlying geology, which in turn influences soil and vegetation. Also, climate varies across the state as a result of changes in latitude, elevation, and local topography. All of these factors combine in varied ways to make Arkansas surprisingly diverse. One approach to understanding the patterns …

Abandoned mines play an important ecological role as temporary or permanent habitats for various biota. Many of these mines were merely short shafts dug out of the earth during a search for precious minerals or metals, whereas others became lengthy. Moreover, abandoned mines represent unique ecological resources for both invertebrates and vertebrates that utilize the mines on a permanent or temporary basis as sites for breeding, hibernating, feeding, or avoiding predators. In Arkansas, most of these abandoned mines are located within the uplands, especially the Ouachita Mountains, but some are within the Ozark Mountains. For instance, there were numerous abandoned lead and zinc mines scattered about much of the Arkansas Ozarks. Some communities were even named after the mines, such …

The Governor Mike Huckabee Delta Rivers Nature Center in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) is Arkansas’s first nature center. Located in Regional Park, it opened on July 28, 2001. It is run by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s Education Division. The construction of the center, originally known as the Delta Rivers Nature Center, was funded by a conservation sales tax passed in 1996. The center consists of a 13,000-square-foot main building with exhibits highlighting Delta wildlife and history; it also includes a large meeting facility, a working laboratory, and a nature store. Located outside the main building are two aquariums totaling 22,000 gallons in volume. They display fish and other aquatic species native to the region in a natural setting. …

The Grand Prairie is a subregion of the Mississippi Alluvial Plain (commonly called the Delta) in eastern Arkansas that is known today as a major site of rice cultivation. Prairie County takes its name from this subregion. Located between the bottomlands of the White River and the Arkansas River, it was once a large, flat area of native grassland stretching across what are now Arkansas, Prairie, Lonoke, and Monroe counties, distinguished from the surrounding Delta land, which was largely swampy land dominated by bottomland hardwood. However, since the clear cutting of the Delta, the Grand Prairie is no longer as distinct a feature, though it remains agriculturally significant. Native Americans inhabited and hunted upon the Grand Prairie; the Museum of …

On April 19, 1968, an F4 tornado touched down and caused immense damage to the city of Greenwood (Sebastian County) and the nearby area. Lasting only four minutes, the twister resulted in more than a dozen deaths, more than 250 people injured, and over a million dollars in storm damage. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) used data from the 1968 Greenwood tornado to better understand the weather phenomenon. Greenwood, one of the two seats of Sebastian County, had a population between 1,500 and 2,000 in 1968. It boasted general merchandise stores, grocers, multiple hotels, and medical professionals. On April 19, around 3:15 p.m., heavy rain began to fall in the area. Shortly thereafter, a tornado was sighted as …

Gypsum is a mineral (CaSO4·2H2O) that occurs in nature as both a mineral and, when in massive form, a rock. Massive deposits are present as sedimentary beds of varying thickness in the subsurface within the Trinity Group in southwest Arkansas. Gypsum beds dip gently to the south, being part of the Early Cretaceous Gulf Coast series of sedimentary deposits. The gypsum-bearing De Queen limestone member of the Trinity Group is exposed in a narrow belt extending from the Little Missouri River in Pike County westward through Howard and Sevier counties, and dips gently to the south. The thickest single gypsum bed (at twelve feet) is at Plaster Bluff (Pike County). A significant operation near Briar (Howard County) mines five beds …