Museums and Historic Sites

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Entry Category: Museums and Historic Sites

True Grit Trail

Arkansas is home to a number of trails commemorating different aspects of the state’s history and culture. In 2019, the Arkansas General Assembly established the True Grit Trail, highlighting events and places in western Arkansas that were part of the storyline in the 1968 Charles Portis novel True Grit. In 1968, a serial written by El Dorado (Union County) native Charles Portis was published in the Saturday Evening Post. The series told the story of a young girl named Mattie Ross who, in the late 1800s, attempted to bring her father’s murderer to justice. From her home in Dardanelle (Yell County), she traveled to Fort Smith (Sebastian County), where she received the assistance of U.S. marshal Rooster Cogburn. The serial …

Tuckerman Water Tower

The Tuckerman Water Tower, located on the south end of Front Street in Tuckerman (Jackson County), was constructed in 1935 and installed with assistance from the Public Works Administration (PWA), a New Deal public relief agency. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 22, 2007. As the United States struggled with the Great Depression of the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration enacted the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) to ease the effects of businesses closing. The act included an organization called the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works (or Public Works Administration), which was created on June 16, 1933, to help finance federal construction projects and create jobs. The City of Tuckerman decided to …

Twelve Oaks

The Twelve Oaks estate, located in a rural setting just south of Harrison (Boone County), is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, which notes its local significance for its Craftsman- and Colonial Revival–style architecture. The house is one of the best examples of a Craftsman/Colonial Revival estate—and an unusually large example of the style—in the Harrison area. With the rise of the railroad industry in Harrison in the early twentieth century, a building boom hit the city. Among those who had worked on many high-profile buildings in Harrison was J. W. Bass, a steel contractor based in Detroit, Michigan. His J. W. Bass Erecting Company and Atlas Iron & Steel Company had offices in Detroit; Chicago, Illinois; and …

Two Rivers Museum

The Two Rivers Museum, located on the corner of Constitution Avenue (Highway 71) and Main Street in Ashdown (Little River County), opened in 2005. The museum, which was created by the nonprofit Little River County Historical Society has a mission of preserving the history of the local community. The museum gets its name from the two major rivers that flow through Little River County: the Red River and Little River. The Two Rivers Museum is located in the Bishop building in the Ashdown Commercial Historic District. The building is a renovated hundred-year-old storefront that was once a pharmacy and, more recently, an antique store. The Bishop building, built in 1908, is a two-story brick structure with a flat roof and …

Tyronza Water Tower

The Tyronza Water Tower, located northeast of the junction of Main and Oliver streets in Tyronza (Poinsett County), was constructed in 1935 and installed with assistance from the Public Works Administration (PWA), a New Deal public relief agency. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 20, 2007. As the United States struggled with the Depression of the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration enacted the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) to ease the effects of businesses closing. The act created an organization called the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works (or Public Works Administration), which was established on June 16, 1933, to help finance federal construction projects and create jobs. The farming community of Tyronza …

Tyson Family Commercial Building

Located in downtown Camden (Ouachita County), the Tyson Family Commercial Building is an example of early-twentieth-century commercial architecture that continues to be utilized for that purpose in the twenty-first century. Constructed around 1923, the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 21, 1994. Founded on the Ouachita River in the early 1800s, Camden became an important regional commercial hub. Crops grown in the surrounding area were taken to the city for shipment downriver. In 1873, the Iron Mountain Railroad constructed a line to Camden, increasing economic activities. By the early twentieth century, the town served as a major industrial and agricultural center in southern Arkansas, with numerous businesses operating in the area. One of the …

U.S. Marshals Museum

The U.S. Marshals Service, the nation’s oldest law enforcement agency, was established in 1789 by President George Washington when he signed the Judiciary Act into law. A Smithsonian exhibit about the U.S. Marshals Service, “America’s Traveling Star,” was displayed at locations throughout the United States and then housed in Laramie, Wyoming, from 1991 until 2002. After the museum in Laramie closed, the Marshals Service began an active search for a new museum site. Several cities indicated interest in the new museum, including Fort Smith (Sebastian County). Community leaders in Fort Smith felt that the city was a logical choice for the museum because of Fort Smith’s western heritage, the presence of Judge Isaac Parker’s court, the work of early intrepid …

Underground Hospital

aka: Fifty-fifth General Hospital
The Fifty-fifth General Hospital, “the Underground Hospital,” at Robinson Maneuver Training Center in Pulaski County was activated on May 25, 1943, during the United States’ involvement in World War II. Documents relating to the hospital were declassified on September 27, 1958; these stated that the Underground Hospital was the brainchild of then commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel Charles Chute Gill of the United States Army Medical Corps. Prior to other modern medical ventures, such as the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) units implemented during the Korean War, the Underground Hospital experiment sought to simulate battle conditions and assess the potential for providing protected medical care at or near the frontlines. Gill, a graduate of the Medical School at the University of …

Union County Courthouse

The Union County Courthouse is located in downtown El Dorado (Union County), a 1920s oil boomtown about twenty miles from the Louisiana state border. The four-story Union County Courthouse, like others across the state, is situated in a public square where businesses, banks, and law offices occupy rows of buildings around the seat of justice. The Arkansas Historic Preservation Program recognizes the courthouse as historically and architecturally significant for its symbolism of El Dorado’s growth and its example of the Classical Revival style. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 30, 1983. The first building used as a courthouse in Union County was a storeroom owned by Albert Rust at Champagnolle (Union County) in the …

Union Station

aka: MoPac Station
The original version of what became Union Station in Little Rock (Pulaski County) was built in 1872–73. This building was demolished in 1906 to make way for a concrete and brick structure built in 1907. This station burned in 1920 but was rebuilt, opening again in summer 1921. Also known as the Missouri Pacific or “MoPac” Station, Union Station is located on Markham and Victory streets and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 17, 1977. In the twenty-first century, it is used as a stop for the Amtrak Texas Eagle and as part of the Missouri Pacific Railroad. It also serves as an event venue and houses office space. The fire in 1920 that destroyed …

University of Arkansas Museum

The University of Arkansas Museum at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville (Washington County) developed from a geology teaching collection begun in 1873 for university students. Housed in Old Main, the collection grew to include not only rocks, minerals, and fossils, but also zoological specimens, cultural and historical objects, and archaeological artifacts, with a particular emphasis on objects and specimens from Arkansas. The collections were then made available to students, researchers, and exhibit designers for use in university classes, for study by researchers, and for exhibit loans. The collections were once on public display at UA but are now only open to researchers and available to loan for other institutions for exhibition and research. Professor Francis L. Harvey was the …

University of Arkansas Senior Walk

The Senior Walk at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) is one of the oldest and most distinctive traditions maintained by the university. The walk, which contains the inscribed names of over 200,000 seniors and graduates, snakes through the campus for several miles and includes the names of famous athletes, architects, poets, heads of state, a Miss America, and some honorary names including Bill and Hillary Clinton. The university claims it to be the only one of its kind in the United States. It is believed that the origin of the walk lies in a request by the Class of 1905 to inscribe the names of class members on a campus sidewalk. Once permission was given, the …

USS Hoga (YT-146)

aka: City of Oakland [Boat]
The USS Hoga (YT-146) is a Woban-class District Harbor Tug built in 1940. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1989 in recognition of actions during the December 7, 1941, Japanese attack on the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. It later served as a fireboat, called the City of Oakland, in California before becoming part of the Arkansas Inland Maritime Museum in North Little Rock (Pulaski County) in 2015. The keel of the Hoga—named for the Sioux word for fish—was laid down on July 25, 1940, by the Consolidated Shipbuilding Corporation of Morris Heights, New York, and it was launched on December 31, 1940. Designated YT-146 (for Yard Tug), the Hoga was put in service on May …

Van Buren County Courthouse

The Van Buren County Courthouse in Clinton (Van Buren County) is situated in the hilly terrain of northern Arkansas. It was built with local materials from a quarry outside of Dennard (Van Buren County), with walls made of reddish sandstone. The smallest courthouse in the state, it measures just 100 feet by 43 feet, with a basement. The Arkansas Historic Preservation Program (AHPP) recognizes the building as historically significant as a New Deal–era public works project, and it was added to the National Register of Historic Places on May 13, 1991. After Van Buren County was established on November 11, 1833, the county elite housed the first two courthouses in one-room log structures near the now-defunct community of Mudtown, whose …

Van Buren County Road 2E Bridge

The Van Buren County 2E Bridge is an open masonry substructure bridge crossing a tributary of Driver’s Creek near Scotland (Van Buren County) built under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a Depression-era federal relief agency. In 1940, Van Buren County received a $117,789 grant from the Works Progress Administration to “improve and construct roads. Work includes clearing, grubbing, excavating and surfacing; moving fences, constructing and reconstructing bridges and drainage structures, and performing incidental and appurtenant work.” The construction of a bridge across a Driver’s Creek tributary on a rural Van Buren County road was almost certainly part of this project since no individual WPA project card exists for the bridge. Its designer is not known but could …

Van Buren Post Office

The Van Buren Post Office at 22 South 7th Street in Van Buren (Crawford County) is a one-story, brick-masonry structure built in 1936–37 and designed in a restrained, minimalist interpretation of the Art Deco style of architecture. It contains a mural financed through the U.S. Treasury Department’s Section of Painting and Sculpture (later renamed the Section of Fine Arts), a Depression-era stimulus project that promoted public art. The post office was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on August 14, 1998. On November 1, 1935, the Van Buren Press Argus announced that a plot of land on the corner of South 7th and Webster streets would be the site of a new city post office. Postal engineer R. …

Van Winkle’s Mill

Van Winkle’s Mill was a series of gristmills and sawmills operated by Peter Van Winkle near Rogers (Benton County) before and after the Civil War. The Van Winkle Mill Site, which became part of Hobbs State Park-Conservation Area, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 15, 2007. Peter Van Winkle was born on February 25, 1814, in New York City. He purchased land in Washington County in 1835 and, by 1850, was in business as a farmer, blacksmith, and wagon maker. Within a year, he had established a mill in Benton County. His first mill was powered by oxen and then by horses, and in 1856 he moved his operation to Van Hollow and used a …

Vernon and Moore-McIlroy Produce Warehouse

The Vernon & Moore-McIlroy Produce Warehouse is located in Fayetteville (Washington County) at 200 N. West Avenue, on the northeast corner of N. West Avenue and W. Spring Street. Built circa 1906, the warehouse is a one-story, red masonry commercial building with Italianate influences. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 10, 2020. During the first few decades of the twentieth century, the produce industry (in particular the cultivation of apples) was the primary economic enterprise for northwestern Arkansas. With the increasing production of apples, an industrial infrastructure developed to support it. This was seen in the many types of businesses established throughout the region, which included nurseries, barrel factories, ice plants, cold storage warehouses, …

Villa Marre

In 1881, Angelo and Jennie Marre built an elegant family home at 1321 Scott Street in Little Rock (Pulaski County), and 125 years later, its façade became familiar to millions of people around the world through its appearance in the opening credits of a popular television show. Television producers and former Arkansas residents Harry Z. Thomason and his wife, Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, used the home’s exterior to depict the design firm run by the main characters of the couple’s CBS television series, Designing Women. The house—which has weathered storms, architectural changes, urban renewal, and neglect—is still one of Little Rock’s most prominent landmarks. After amassing a fortune in the liquor import and saloon business, Marre began to build his home, which …

W. H. Allen House

Located in Spotville (Columbia County), less than twenty miles from Magnolia (Columbia County) on the old Magnolia–El Dorado road, the W. H. Allen House is representative of the early settlement of the area. It is also an example of the transitional architecture many dogtrot structures have undergone. It was built by William Henry “Dick” Allen in 1873 as a four-room dogtrot, a common style for pioneer families in the southeastern United States in the nineteenth century. In 1907, his son, Walter Howard Allen, enlarged the house, added a front porch, and enclosed the breezeway, using handmade shingles for the roof and timber cut from trees grown on the Allen property. In January 1853, Dick Allen married Eliza Jane Gillespie. They …

W. H. Young House

The Craftsman Bungalow–style W. H. Young House was constructed in 1921 in Arkadelphia (Clark County). Located at 316 Meador Lane, the house was added to the National Register of Historic Places on September 20, 2006. The land on which the house is located was originally purchased by John S. T. Callaway in 1836 and subsequently lost at a sheriff’s auction in 1842. It had been auctioned to pay a legal judgment to Benjamin Duncan, a party to the lawsuit that forced the sale of the land. The land was later platted and added to the city in 1858, named for Duncan. Duncan’s Addition is located north of downtown Arkadelphia and to the southeast of the Ouachita Baptist University campus. Born …