Entry Category: Stone - Starting with H

Hedges is a historic community located on Gunner Pool Road (Highway 93) about a mile northeast of Fifty-Six (Stone County) and about two miles north-northeast of the recreational area known as Gunner’s Pool, a popular camping, swimming, and fishing site in Stone County. This area is part of the Ozark National Forest. Native Americans hunted and fished in the Hedges area at least 1,000 years ago, as evidenced by a skeleton discovered in 1955 during the first systematic exploration of the caverns by cavers. The skeleton had a fractured skull, fractured ribs, and a fractured leg. How this explorer entered the cave is unknown. Radiocarbon dating of the remains of a cane and wooden torch indicates that prehistoric human exploration …

Herpel is located in Washington Township off Highway 5 on Herpel Road (64) in Cave Hollow on Rocky Bayou Creek. Herpel is about five miles west-southwest of Guion in Izard County and about six miles east-northeast of Mountain View, the county seat of Stone County. Herpel is approximately two miles south of the White River. An early settler of Herpel was Harmon Van Ness, who was originally from Albany, New York, and a Civil War veteran of Company G, Twenty-Fourth Regiment, New York Infantry. Van Ness was wounded in battle and taken as a prisoner of war but escaped and changed his name to Harrison Williams. When the war ended, he worked for the government in military departments, which took …