Entry Type: Place - Starting with M

Methodist Children’s Home

The Methodist Children’s Home, located in Little Rock (Pulaski County), began as a movement to create an orphanage in the denomination’s Little Rock Conference in 1897. The institution was incorporated on May 3, 1899, in Pulaski County and called the Arkansas Methodist Orphanage of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. The trustees were Colonel George Thornburgh, Dr. James Thomas, Reverend J. A. Cason, and George Culberhouse. Soon afterward, the stockholders of the Women’s Industrial Home at Fifteenth and Commerce Streets offered their property, consisting of three lots and a two-story building, to the orphanage incorporators. Mrs. L. R. Tabor and Mrs. Logan H. Roots were the property’s largest stockholders. Orphanage officials accepted the property, and the home began receiving children. The …

Mid-America Science Museum

Mid-America Science Museum’s mission is to stimulate interest in science, to promote public understanding of the sciences, and to encourage lifelong science education through interactive exhibits and programs. Located near National Park College (NPC) in Hot Springs (Garland County), the museum is a major tourist attraction in Arkansas, with an estimated 100,000 visitors annually. In the mid-1960s, Governor Winthrop Rockefeller conceptualized the Mid-America Science Museum as Arkansas’s first interactive, informal learning environment. Rockefeller held an exploratory symposium with various state leaders and engaged one of the nation’s foremost museum consultants to determine the feasibility of such a project. Eventually, Hot Springs was deemed the ideal location for such a museum. Governor Dale Bumpers continued the support of the idea, and …

Midland (Sebastian County)

Midland is a town in southern Sebastian County; in a journal article in the 1970s, it was described as “a small place in the middle of the road.” In the early years of the twentieth century, however, Midland was a prosperous community of coal miners and supporting industries. The area that would become Midland was sparsely settled in the early history of Arkansas. William Moore obtained a land grant in the vicinity in 1848. He was joined by Francis Daniels in 1855, and Edward Moore and John Moore became their neighbors in 1860. (These Moores are not sons of William; they may have been brothers or cousins.) A school was built in the area in 1866. In 1878, it was …

Midland Holm

Midland Holm was a 5,000-acre plantation situated in the Oil Trough Bottoms on the White River in Independence County. It was established by Virgil Young (V. Y.) Cook. Described by his contemporaries as a young man “with keen foresight and ability, coupled with indomitable energy,” Cook, at age eighteen, began life in Arkansas as a merchant in Grand Glaise (Jackson County) in 1866. Showing an early interest in the Oil Trough Bottoms, he bought his first eighty acres there in 1873 for $500. He would eventually own a plantation of 5,000 acres of the fertile bottomland, making him the largest landowner in the county. After being appointed receiving agent for the Cairo and Fulton Railroad, Cook moved with the railroad …

Midway (Clark County)

Midway is an unincorporated community located in Clark County about one mile northeast of Curtis (Clark County) and three miles southwest of Gum Springs (Clark County). The community is centered on the east side of U.S. Highway 67. Early settlers include Mary Rountree, who obtained a federal land patent for eighty acres in 1848. In the 1850 federal census, she appears along with her four sons. (The name of the family appears in some records as Roundtree.) Mary’s oldest son, Robert, obtained forty acres in 1855. In the 1860 census, Robert appears with his wife, son, and daughter. He worked as a farmer on the land and owned $350 of personal property. Robert enlisted in the Thirty-Seventh Arkansas Infantry Regiment …

Midway (Hot Spring County)

Midway is a town in southern Hot Spring County. Situated on U.S. Highway 67, it lies between Interstate 30 and the Ouachita River. Although several other communities in Arkansas are also called Midway, the town in Hot Spring County is the only incorporated community in Arkansas with that name. Caddo Indians inhabited the Hot Spring County area until 1700. In a treaty in 1818, the Quapaw ceded control of the area to the U.S. government. Over the following years, a network of routes known as the Southwest Trail extended across the state from Jackson (Randolph County) through Little Rock (Pulaski County) and south to Fulton (Hempstead County) on the Red River. One of those highways passed through the Midway area, …

Military Farm Colonies (Arkansas Delta)

As the Federal army moved across Arkansas during the Civil War, thousands of newly freed slaves attached themselves to military units and eventually began to amass in Union strongholds. Helena (Phillips County) and Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) were just two of the towns where Union commanders struggled to provide for this massive influx of refugees. As more freedmen arrived at Helena after it fell to Union forces in 1862, military officers worked to alleviate the strain these civilians put on the supply lines. Eventually, a program that saw some success in Tennessee and Mississippi was adopted by the commanders at Helena. Realizing that the freedmen were an untapped source of labor, Union officers east of the Mississippi River leased abandoned …

Miller County

Miller County’s location in southwest Arkansas made it the “Gateway to the Southwestern United States” through its rivers, stagecoach roads, and Native American trails. It is an area of flat plains and gentle hills with an abundance of pine and hardwood forests. The northern and eastern border is marked by the meandering Red River, and the climate is moderate with a growing season of 254 days. The rich soil grows cotton, sorghum, rice, corn, and other crops. The county is also known for its seat of Texarkana, which borders its sister city of Texarkana, Texas. Pre-European Exploration through European Exploration and Settlement People have lived in the Miller County area for at least 10,000 years. Over 400 archaeological sites known …

Miller’s Bluff (Ouachita County)

Miller’s Bluff is an unincorporated community located in Ouachita County along the Ouachita River. Located in the southeast corner of the county, Miller’s Bluff is about five miles north of Norphlet (Union County), six miles northeast of Smackover (Union County), and seventeen miles southeast of the county seat of Camden (Ouachita County). The community is directly across the river from Calhoun County. The Hunter-Dunbar Expedition passed the future site of the community while exploring the Ouachita River valley in 1804 and 1805 but did not make any special notes of the area. The community is named for an early settler (although the exact details including the settler’s first name are not recorded). Early settlers in the area include Anderson Farris, …

Milligan Ridge (Mississippi County)

Milligan Ridge is a small farming community located along State Highway 158 in the western portion of Mississippi County. It is a part of what is known as “Buffalo Island.” Big Lake and Little River separate the island from the remainder of Mississippi County on the east. The area has the distinction of being one of the last in the state to be claimed for farming from the swampy land around the Mississippi River. A few people inhabited the mosquito-infested swamplands as late as the 1890s. They came to the area to trap, hunt, and fish, or to hide from the law. For example, Lucilius Steven Milligan and his sons, James Riley and Jacob Minton Milligan, were running from the …

Millwood State Park

Located just outside of Ashdown (Little River County) in southwest Arkansas, Millwood State Park is known for its excellent fishing and wildlife habitats. It was established about a decade after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built 29,500-acre Millwood Lake north of Texarkana (Miller County). Held in place by a 3.3-mile-long earthen dam—the longest of its type in Arkansas—the lake’s trademark timber stands have made it a bass-fishing haven by providing cover vegetation and a food source that keep the fish in shallow, more accessible water. The lake was built in 1966 on the Little River, some sixteen miles above its confluence with the Red River. In addition to the Little River, the Cossatot and Saline rivers also contribute to …

Mineral Springs (Howard County)

Mineral Springs is the second-largest city in Howard County. The springs for which it was named were once touted as medicinal—the best and purest such water in Arkansas. A cotton center for much of the twentieth century, Mineral Springs is now home to many of Howard County’s industrial workers. The Caddo Indians once lived in the area that became Howard County. After Arkansas became a state, the first settler to make a home near the springs was Cokely Williams, who arrived in 1840. At that time, Howard County had not yet been established, and the springs were located near the line separating Hempstead and Sevier counties. As other settlers arrived, Williams established a post office in Sevier County. This post …