Museums and Historic Sites

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Entry Category: Museums and Historic Sites

Williford Methodist Church

The Williford Methodist Church, located near the northwestern intersection of Ferguson and Hail streets in Williford (Sharp County), was added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 22, 1992. Located behind the wood-frame structure is a large cemetery, which is not included in the historic property. When Jeremiah Baird settled near the Spring River in 1841, others soon followed. Within a short time, Williford was established. The community experienced slow growth until the construction of the railroad in the post–Civil War years. The town was incorporated in 1914. The town’s congregations of various religious denominations shared the local schoolhouse for regular services. In 1910, the Methodist congregation initiated the raising of the town’s first church building. The church was constructed by …

Wilson Hall (Arkansas Tech University)

Wilson Hall, located 502 West M Street on the Arkansas Tech University campus in Russellville (Pope County), is an elaborate two-story building designed in the Colonial Revival style of architecture. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 18, 1992. The campus of Arkansas Polytechnic College (which later became Arkansas Tech University) comprised seventeen major buildings, including several dormitories that the U.S. Office of Education deemed “unfit for human habitation,” when Joseph W. Hull became the college’s eighth president in January 1932 and embarked on a major building campaign. Hull and the board of trustees applied for and received an $82,000 loan from the federal Reconstruction Finance Corporation in 1933 to build a new men’s dormitory. …

Wilson History and Research Center

The Wilson History and Research Center (WHRC), operating in Little Rock (Pulaski County) from 2008 to 2012, was an organization committed to the preservation of helmets and other historic headwear. Founder Robert M. (Robby) Wilson Jr. was a lawyer and founding member of the Wilson Law Group in Little Rock. Wilson fostered a love for military headwear used across the world and aimed to collect individual samples of every iteration of military headgear produced during the twentieth century. He hoped that by understanding the nature of conflict, armor, and fashion, society would have a better understanding of what spurred young men to go to war. The WHRC was founded in 2008 as a nonprofit organization. Items were collected not for …

Wing School

The Wing School at 15312 Arkansas Highway 59 at Natural Dam (Crawford County) is a Craftsman-style, fieldstone-clad building constructed around 1940 by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a Depression-era public works agency. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on February 23, 2023. While the Natural Dam area held a school building depicted on a 1936 Arkansas State Highway Commission map, local residents sought and received funding for a new school building through the Works Progress Administration, one of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal agencies. The new building, which became known as the Wing School, was built around 1940 and reflected the Craftsman style of architecture that was often used in WPA projects. The origin of the …

Wingmead

Wingmead, a farming operation south of DeValls Bluff (Prairie County) on State Highway 33, has long been recognized as one of the nation’s foremost duck-hunting clubs. Wingmead was established in 1937 by Edgar Monsanto Queeny, son of John Francis Queeny, who founded Monsanto Chemical Co. Wingmead is a word of Scottish origin that means “meadow of wings.” Edgar Queeny served in the U.S. Navy during World War I and then earned a chemistry degree from Cornell University in 1919. He married Ethel Schneider after graduation and began working for Monsanto in St. Louis, Missouri. He became a vice president of the company in 1924 and Monsanto’s president in 1928. By the time Queeny retired from Monsanto in 1960, it had …

Winthrop School Museum

The Winthrop School Museum, the location of the former Winthrop School, is located in a two-story brick schoolhouse building at 530 Spring Street in Winthrop (Little River County). The Winthrop School Museum is a monument to the educational and community history of Winthrop, and the building is a historical representation of a rural school building in the early twentieth century. As Winthrop’s population grew in the early twentieth century, the Winthrop School was built to replace a three-room rough-plank building, located on the same site, that had previously served as the school. Construction started on the Winthrop School in 1912, and it was completed the following year. According to the Little River County deed record books, on September 19, 1908, …

Wittsburg Fortification

The Wittsburg Fortification is an earthen redoubt built in July 1863 at the junction of the Wittsburg to Batesville, Mount Vernon, and Madison roads to protect Union cavalrymen as they received supplies on the St. Francis River at Wittsburg (Cross County) during the Little Rock Campaign of 1863. Union horsemen led by Brigadier General John Wynn Davidson crossed the St. Francis River at Chalk Bluff on July 19, 1863, to confront a reported Confederate force under Major General Sterling Price that was said to be heading north up Crowley’s Ridge to invade Missouri. Davidson’s column of 6,000 men, failing to find Price’s phantom army, continued down the ridge, reaching Jonesboro (Craighead County) on the evening of July 24. The cavalrymen spread …

Woman’s Progressive Club (Wynne)

The Woman’s Progressive Club, located at 333 Merriman Avenue in Wynne (Cross County), is a one-story public building designed in a subtle treatment of the Colonial Revival style of architecture and constructed between 1935 and 1937 with assistance from the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a Depression-era federal relief program. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on March 27, 1990. The Woman’s Progressive Club was established by five charter members in 1913, the first civic organization formed in the Cross County seat of Wynne. The group organized and promoted educational, social, and cultural events, meeting in the homes of members. The formation of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal agencies during the Great Depression led them to …

Womble District Administration House Number 1

The Womble District Administration House Number 1 is located east of Mount Ida (Montgomery County) and was constructed to house the administrative headquarters of the Womble Ranger District of the Ouachita National Forest. Constructed in 1940 by members of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), it was added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 20, 1993. The CCC established companies throughout the country to offer unemployed men a way to provide for their families while also constructing needed facilities and structures. CCC Company 741 was established at Camp Pike (which later became Camp Joseph T. Robinson) on May 1, 1933. Moving to Crystal Springs (Garland County), near Black Springs (Montgomery County) in the Ouachita National Forest on May …

Women’s Community Club Band Shell

Built in 1933, the Women’s Community Club Band Shell is located at the northeast corner of Spring Park in Heber Springs (Cleburne County). It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on August 16, 1994. The band shell is important as a study of the cultural and social development of a central Arkansas resort community and provides a good example of a New Deal public works project. The Women’s Community Club was organized in 1921, and, by the early 1930s, it had decided that a band shell was needed to replace the entertainment pavilion located in Spring Park. Members of the club visited other cities to see their band shells and then contracted with Leo King for construction …

Woodruff County Courthouse

The Woodruff County Courthouse is located in Augusta (Woodruff County), on the northern end of 3rd Street not far from the White River. The Woodruff County Services Center stands behind the courthouse, and the historic Augusta Memorial Park is less than a mile away, but it is the residential homes from different eras that define the local identity. The Arkansas Historic Preservation Program recognizes the Woodruff County Courthouse as historically and architecturally significant, and it was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 22, 1982. In November 1862, the Arkansas General Assembly officially established Woodruff County with Augusta as its county seat, although the ongoing Civil War complicated plans. Many residents joined the Confederate army, the state …

Woodruff Print Shop

The Woodruff Print Shop is a meticulous 2010 reconstruction of the original Little Rock (Pulaski County) print shop built in 1823 for William E. Woodruff, founder of the Arkansas Gazette, the first newspaper in Arkansas. It is located on the grounds of Historic Arkansas Museum in Little Rock. After having established the Arkansas Gazette in 1819 at Arkansas Post (then the capital of the Territory of Arkansas), Woodruff moved his printing press and newspaper operation to Little Rock in 1821. Many of the city’s skilled craftsmen advertised their services at this time, including brickmakers Benjamin Clements and Christian Brumback. Woodruff likely contracted with local brickmakers, carpenters, cabinetmakers, and blacksmiths to construct the two-story building for his business. Woodruff announced the …

World War II Japanese American Internment Museum

During World War II, Arkansas was the site of two Japanese American internment camps. Jerome Relocation Center, located in Drew and Chicot counties, and Rohwer Relocation Center in Desha County incarcerated a combined total of some 17,000 people. Today, little physical evidence remains of either camp. In 2013, the World War II Japanese Internment Museum opened in McGehee (Desha County) to document the history of these nearby Arkansas centers. When the United States entered World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the empire of Japan on December 7, 1941, paranoia developed in the United States that the American mainland would be next. Many feared that Japanese American residents of the West Coast might in some way assist …

Wynn-Price House

The Wynn-Price House is a historic Greek Revival–style home in Garland (Miller County). It is considered one of the best surviving examples of antebellum plantation homes in the state. William Wynn moved to the Red River area of the Arkansas Territory around 1835. Wynn eventually owned thousands of acres of land on both sides of the Red River, as well as almost 100 slaves. It appears that at least some of this land was purchased for speculation. Garland was at the proposed crossing of the Red River by the Mississippi, Ouachita, and Red River Railroad, which was never constructed, and Wynn placed the house along the major road of the day. The house was constructed circa 1844. The house is …

Wynne Post Office

The Wynne Post Office at 402 East Merriman Avenue in Wynne (Cross County) is a one-story, brick-masonry structure designed in a restrained interpretation of the Art Deco style of architecture. It features 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 September 28, 1935, the Wynne Daily Star Progress reported that a lot on Merriman Avenue was picked as the site of a new post office for Wynne. The U.S. Department of the Treasury paid Lizzie Collins $6,000 for the property. A January 10, …

Wynne Wholesale Commercial Historic District

The Wynne Wholesale Commercial Historic District is situated around what was considered the most vibrant part of Wynne (Cross County) in the early 1900s. The district consists of five structures—four of which are contributing to the historical significance of the district—and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on January 25, 2010. The current building for the Wynne Municipal Waterworks was originally constructed sometime between 1904 and 1908 and altered between 1945 and 1951. The one-story building has a simple rectangular plan with a gabled roof. Two metal vents are centered along the ridge of the roof, and a stepped parapet adorns both the front and back elevations. The building rests on a continuous concrete foundation, and the …

Xenophon Overton Pindall Law Office

Constructed in 1882, the Xenophon Overton Pindall Law Office was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 10, 1999. The building is at the corner of Kate Adams Street and Capitol Avenue in Arkansas City (Desha County), located on the Mississippi River. The Pindall Law Office is named for its main proprietor, the prominent attorney and politician Xenophon Overton Pindall (1873–1935). Pindall practiced law in Arkansas City for decades in the building that today bears his name, as well as maintaining an office in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Pindall was also prominent in Democratic politics, representing the Seventeenth District in the Arkansas Senate, which at the time included Desha and Drew counties, for several terms. As the …

Yell County Courthouse, Dardanelle Judicial District

The Yell County Courthouse for the Dardanelle Judicial District, governing the northern part of Yell County, is located on the west end of Union Street in Dardanelle (Yell County). The Arkansas River and the River Front Park are nearby, and the courthouse is surrounded by county buildings, historical markers and monuments, small businesses, and residential neighborhoods. The Arkansas Historic Preservation Program recognizes the courthouse as architecturally and historically significant to Yell County, as it stands as the best example of the Classical Revival style in the area. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on September 8, 1992. Timber—including cottonwood, gum, elm, sycamore, and ash—made up much of Dardanelle and Yell County’s economy. The city became a …

Young Memorial

The Young Memorial at Hendrix College in Conway (Faulkner County)—originally called the War Memorial Monument of Conway—is a sculptural monument erected to honor students of the school who died serving in the U.S. military during World War I. Six Hendrix students lost their lives in World War I. Five of these men died of diseases either in the United States or abroad; the sixth, Robert W. Young, died in combat. The idea for a war memorial on the Hendrix campus was conceived by the Hendrix Memorial Association, a student-run group, in 1919. With the help of faculty advisor Professor W. O. Wilson, the group soon raised $800 of the expected $1,200–$1,500 cost through student and alumni donations. By the spring …