Entry Type: Place

Arkadelphia Commercial Historic District

The Arkadelphia Commercial Historic District consists of twenty-nine contributing buildings located in the heart of downtown Arkadelphia (Clark County). A total of forty-eight buildings and a park are in the district boundaries. The district was added to the National Register of Historic Places on July 20, 2011. The borders of the district are roughly Main Street between 5th and 7th streets and Clinton Street between 6th and 9th streets. The city of Arkadelphia grew westward, away from the Ouachita River, which is located about a half mile away from the district. The buildings in the district evolved over the years. The earliest buildings in the district are free standing or in a row and are frame or brick constructed on …

Arkansas Academy of Science

The Arkansas Academy of Science (AAS) aims for the promotion of knowledge in the fields of science, engineering, technology, and mathematics and the diffusion of that knowledge. The AAS is the Arkansas component of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The first meeting of the Arkansas Academy of Science occurred in 1917. The AAS was created by a group of Arkansas scientists who wanted to develop a vehicle for the promotion of science as well as dissemination of research by Arkansas scientists. This was achieved by organizing annual meetings and publishing a journal. The annual meetings include sessions in which fledgling scientists present their findings in areas of biological and physical science as well as engineering, mathematics, and …

Arkansas Aerospace Education Center (AEC)

aka: Aerospace Education Center
Located near Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport (Adams Field), the Arkansas Aerospace Education Center (AEC) provided the state with aerospace education through the Workforce Development Center of University of Arkansas-Pulaski Technical College. The center, which was owned by the Arkansas Aviation Historical Society, also housed the state’s only IMAX theater and a library that held the Jay Miller Aviation Collection of aerospace materials. When fundraising began, the center was intended to include a magnet school, a library of aerospace materials, a museum, and an IMAX movie theater. Before the center’s completion, however, the Little Rock School District decided not to build an aerospace magnet school at the center. Another feature, to be called the Arkansas High Technology Training Center, also …

Arkansas Air Museum

“Promoting Aviation by Preserving the Past” is the mission statement of the Arkansas Air Museum in Fayetteville (Washington County). The museum was Arkansas’s first museum dedicated entirely to aviation history. Located in a hangar at Fayetteville’s Drake Field, the museum occupies the oldest aviation-related structure still standing in northwest Arkansas. The hangar was constructed during World War II. Because of wartime resource limitations, Henry George, Fayetteville’s engineering assistant, developed the hangar out of wood, with construction starting on May 1, 1943. As well as designing the hangar, George worked as plumber, electrician, and welder on the project. At no time did the project employ more than four carpenters, three helpers, and George. Total cost for building the hangar was around …

Arkansas Children’s Colony

aka: Conway Human Development Center
Dedicated on October 4, 1959, the Arkansas Children’s Colony was a state-supported center that served Arkansas’s mentally handicapped children. The colony, set on a little over 400 donated acres in Conway (Faulkner County), provided a school and a home away from home for as many as 1,000 developmentally disabled, school age children. Governor Orval Faubus lobbied strongly for funds to build a facility to serve the state’s mentally challenged children. On January 25, 1955, the Arkansas General Assembly created Act 6, which engendered Arkansas’s first facility to serve such children. Arkansas was the forty-eighth state to open such an institution. A donation of $1,200 was made to the facility, and workers began construction in 1958. Less than two years later, …

Arkansas Children’s Hospital (ACH)

Arkansas Children’s Hospital (ACH), with facilities in Little Rock (Pulaski County) and Springdale (Washington and Benton counties),is the only pediatric hospital in Arkansas and is among the ten largest children’s hospitals in the United States. Pediatric specialists routinely treat patients from other states and occasionally other countries. Prior to becoming an independent children’s hospital, ACH was an orphanage. In February 1912, Horace Gaines Pugh of Little Rock helped establish the organization that would become Arkansas Children’s Home Society. Pugh, an Illinois native, moved to Little Rock in 1896, where he worked in real estate and eventually opened his own printing house, H. G. Pugh & Company. Pugh’s early mission was to found a haven for children who were orphaned, neglected, or …

Arkansas Christadelphian Bible School

The Arkansas Christadelphian Bible School was founded in Martinville (Faulkner County) in 1923 as a two-week summer Bible school for Christadelphians. The organizers were Ben Scroggin and S. O. Jones of Biscoe (Prairie County), Oscar L. Dunaway and Charles Martin of Conway (Faulkner County), and J. S. Martin and J. R. Frazer of Little Rock (Pulaski County). The purpose of the school was Bible study for Christadelphians, their children, and interested friends, in tandem with recreation and fellowship. The school was established upon land donated by James Daniel Martin, a Christadelphian. In 1885, Martin erected a pavilion on his land at Cadron Cove (Faulkner County) for the purpose of holding Christadelphian gatherings. The community was renamed in 1887 for Martin …

Arkansas City (Desha County)

Arkansas City is a small town with a population of fewer than 400 people, as of the 2010 Census. Located in southeast Arkansas, it is nestled against a levee that protects it from the Mississippi River. However, before the Flood of 1927, Arkansas City was a major trade and cultural center and was one of the most important ports on the Mississippi River. European Exploration and Settlement At the time of the Marquette-Joliet Expedition, there were four Quapaw villages along the lower Arkansas River and the Mississippi River. Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet spent two days in these villages around 1673. They were the first recorded Europeans in the area. In 1682, René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle and Henri …

Arkansas Confederate Home

The Arkansas Confederate Home was opened late in 1890 in a small remodeled residence on some sixty acres near Sweet Home (Pulaski County) through the efforts of the Ex-Confederate Association of Arkansas. This organization, composed of a group of philanthropic-minded Confederate veterans, founded the home to care for indigent Confederate veterans, along with their widows and orphans, in Arkansas. At its peak, it housed over 200.  On May 21, 1890, the Sweet Home site, consisting of sixty acres and a frame building, was purchased by the association for $3,000. The legislature made its first appropriation of $10,000 for the upkeep of the home in 1891. At that time, the facility included the original frame structure and two buildings referred to as …