Entry Type: Thing - Starting with T

T. C. McRae House

The T. C. McRae House is located in Prescott (Nevada County). Designed by architect Charles Thompson and commissioned by Thomas Chipman McRae, the house was constructed in 1919 and added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 22, 1982. Thomas McRae was born in Mount Holly (Union County) in 1851. Educated in New Orleans, Louisiana, and at Washington and Lee University, he began practicing law in Nevada County in 1873. McRae married Amelia Ann White in 1874, and the couple had nine children. Elected to represent Nevada County in the Arkansas House of Representatives in 1876, McRae moved to Prescott after the county courthouse was moved there in 1877. Subsequently elected to represent the Third Congressional District in …

Taborian Hall

Built at 800 W. Ninth Street in Little Rock (Pulaski County) between 1916 and 1918 by local African-American contractor Simeon Johnson, Taborian Hall is the last remaining original building on the Ninth Street “Line,” which was once the center for black businesses and culture in Little Rock. Originally known as Taborian Temple, the Classical structure was built for the Knights and Daughters of the Tabor, a black fraternal insurance organization. More than 1,500 fraternal members came to the grand opening in 1918. Also in 1918, the first floor informally became the Negro Soldiers Club for black soldiers stationed at Camp Pike (now Camp Joseph T. Robinson). Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Taborian Temple housed many black-owned businesses, including offices for Dr. J. V. …

Tales from the South

Tales from the South was a nationally recognized radio show. During its first year in 2005, shows were recorded in the studio of public radio station KUAR (FM 89.1) in Little Rock (Pulaski County). In 2005, Paula Martin Morell and her business partner and husband at the time, Jason Morell, opened the Starving Artist Café in the Argenta Arts District of North Little Rock (Pulaski County) and later began recording shows there. The café closed in 2014, and the show began recording at various venues in Little Rock and North Little Rock, as well as around Arkansas as part of a touring arts program, before ceasing production in 2016. On Tales from the South, amateur and professional writers read their own …

Tamales

Tamales are found on restaurant menus and at roadside stands throughout Arkansas and have been a vibrant foodways tradition in the state for generations. This ancient food with roots in Latin America has had a presence in Arkansas and other parts of the American South since at least the early twentieth century. The familiar ingredients (meat and meal) made tamales popular, as did the practicality of being able to take a warm and filling lunch into a cotton field. There are a handful of hypotheses to help explain how and when tamales crossed the southern border into the United States to become a popular food in the South. Some think there might be a Native American connection. Others opine that …

Tarantulas

Tarantulas are the largest spiders in Arkansas and are among the most recognizable. Tarantulas are relative newcomers to Arkansas, having arrived in the state about 8,000 years ago. At that time, the climate of North America was much warmer and drier than it is today. Because of higher temperatures and lower amounts of rainfall, habitats more typical of the southwestern United States and the Great Plains expanded eastward into Arkansas and Missouri. Along with drier habitats came many of the animals associated with them, such as tarantulas and scorpions. As the climate became cooler and wetter about 4,000 years ago, these species did not retreat west. Instead, they became isolated within suitable patches of open, dry habitat surrounded by increasing …

Tardigrades

aka: Water Bears
aka: Moss Piglets
Tardigrades (sometimes called water bears or moss piglets) are microscopic members of the Phylum Tardigrada, numbering more than sixty-seven subspecies, 1,018 species, four subgenera, 105 genera, fifteen subfamilies, twenty families, five orders, and three classes. Of these, there are fifty-four genera and 380 species known from the Americas, 245 species from the Nearctic ecozone, and 251 in the Neotropical ecozone. Several species of tardigrades can be found in Arkansas. Discovered in 1773 by the German entomologist and pastor Johann August Ephraim Goeze (1731–1793), they were nicknamed “water bears” because of their plump, bear-like appearance; legs with claws; and slow, lumbering gait. The name Tardigrada (“slow steppers”) was given in 1777 by the Italian Catholic priest, biologist, and physiologist Lazzaro Spallanzani …

Taylor Field

aka: Taylor Memorial Field
Taylor Field, located at 1201 East 16th Street in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County), is a regulation-size baseball field featuring a U-shaped grandstand designed by architect Mitchell Seligman. Taylor Field was constructed in 1939 with assistance from the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a Depression-era federal relief agency. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on January 21, 2010. The Pine Bluff Judges of the Pine Bluff Baseball Club played their games at Missouri Pacific Park, built in 1930, until fire severely damaged it a year later. A new structure was erected, but after seven years it was in serious disrepair, leading local baseball boosters to turn to the WPA for assistance in constructing a new field and grandstand. …

TCBY Enterprises, Inc.

During a nineteen-year period, TCBY Enterprises, Inc. grew from a single store in Little Rock (Pulaski County) to a 3,000-outlet franchise. Selling flavored frozen yogurt, TCBY was known around the world. First known as the Capitol Tower, the tallest building in Arkansas was known as the TCBY Tower from 1991 to 2004 and bore those four letters on its upper floors. Frank Hickingbotham, an Arkansas native, opened his first frozen yogurt store in 1981 in Little Rock. Prior to this, Hickingbotham had been a junior high school principal, an insurance salesman, and the owner of several other food businesses, which he sold before founding TCBY. Hickingbotham had become acquainted with frozen yogurt a few years earlier on a visit to …

Teen Pregnancy

Emerging as a social problem in the United States during the late 1960s and early 1970s, teenage pregnancy has become a complex issue in the United States and around the globe. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Arkansas’s state health director Dr. Joycelyn Elders, who later became U.S. surgeon general, made combating teenage pregnancy a major part of public health policy in Arkansas. Despite declines in rates since the 1990s, teen pregnancy remains an important public health issue in Arkansas and elsewhere. From the colonial era through the nineteenth century, the religious and legal concerns associated with teen pregnancy focused less on the parents’ ages and more on whether the parents were wed. Christianity condemned those, especially women, who …

Telegraph No. 3 [Steamboat]

The Telegraph No. 3 was a steamboat used as a transport by the Union army during the Civil War. It suffered a boiler explosion, hit a snag, and sank near Osceola (Mississippi County) on November 23, 1863; three men drowned because of the accident. The Telegraph No. 3 was built at Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1853 for the U.S. Mail Line. The vessel was fast, having made a speed trial from Cincinnati to Louisville, Kentucky, in nine hours and fifty-one minutes. The U.S. Army was using the Telegraph No. 3 as a transport vessel during the Civil War, and the steamer was heading down the Mississippi River from Cairo, Illinois, toward Memphis, Tennessee, on November 23, 1863, with a cargo of …

Telegraph Road (Northwestern Arkansas)

Telegraph Road in northwestern Arkansas was an important transportation thoroughfare of the nineteenth century, linking St. Louis, Missouri, with Fort Smith (Sebastian County). The road brought settlers, supplies, communication, and commerce to northwestern Arkansas. Telegraph Road was initially built by the U.S. Army in 1828, thus starting its existence as a military road; it did not get the name Telegraph Road until a telegraph wire was strung along its path in 1860. The first travelers on the road were with the army, which moved supplies and mail between Springfield, Missouri, and the garrison at Fort Smith. Beginning in 1838, thousands of Native Americans traveled along the road in their forced removal from their ancestral homelands, during the Trail of Tears. …

Telephone Exchange Building (Powhatan)

The Telephone Exchange Building is the oldest commercial building still standing in Powhatan (Lawrence County) in the twenty-first century and visually represents the commercial and civic characteristics of the town during the nineteenth century. The Powhatan Telephone Exchange Building is a one-story brick building that reflects Greek Revival architecture and design. The building was constructed between 1887 and 1888, placed in the heart of the thriving town where commerce, business, and social interaction took place. The Telephone Exchange Building is a rectangular structure with long, straight, flat sides. There are no windows on the south side, and the north side has two windows like those on the front of the building. The design style of the time called for buildings …

Temperate Basses

aka: Moronids
The temperate basses are freshwater, brackish water, and marine species belonging to the Order Perciformes and Family Moronidae. They are represented by two genera and six species—the North American and northern African Morone (four species) and European Dicentrarchus (two species). In North America, two popular freshwater game fish species, white bass (Morone chrysops) and yellow bass (M. mississippiensis), are native, whereas two others, the anadromous striped bass (M. saxatilis) and brackish water white perch (M. americana), have been successfully introduced into several U.S. states. In Arkansas, M. chrysops, M. mississippiensis, M. saxatilis and, rarely, M. americana are found in various watersheds. In addition, hybrid M. saxatilis × M. chrysops have been cultured and stocked in several Arkansas reservoirs. Morphologically, in …

Temple Meir Chayim

Temple Meir Chayim at 4th and Holly streets in McGehee (Desha County) was completed in 1947; it was designed in the Romanesque Revival style with Mission influence. The synagogue serves the Jewish community of southeastern Arkansas and is the only synagogue in McGehee. The first documented Jewish immigrant to Arkansas was Abraham Block, who started a general store in Washington (Hempstead County) by 1825. Although the population of Arkansas had experienced growth by 1840, there were still relatively few Jewish inhabitants. In the 1850s, many Jewish businesses were concentrated in the central, southern, and eastern areas of the state, but there were few places of worship. After the Civil War, the Jewish population of Arkansas reached 4,000. There was a synagogue …

Ten Percent Plan (Reconstruction)

The Ten Percent Plan was the first official Reconstruction policy unveiled by President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. The policy was announced by President Lincoln in December 1863 and was aimed at shortening the war by offering comparatively merciful terms for Confederate states to leave the Confederacy and rejoin the Union. Through this plan, Arkansas Unionists would begin the process of forming a new, loyal state government recognized by federal officials. After the fall of Fort Smith (Sebastian County) and Little Rock (Pulaski County) to the Union army in 1863, Arkansas was effectively split into zones under Union control and Confederate control. Unionists were emboldened by the success of the U.S. Army and began working to solidify the collapse …

Term Limits

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the American political scene was swept by a growing anti-incumbent fervor. Individually, incumbents at both the state and national level continued to win reelection in overwhelming numbers, but reformers sought to address the discontent by seeking legislation and constitutional amendments, usually through statewide referenda, that sought to impose strict term limits on office holders at both the state and congressional levels. Between 1990 and 1994, more than twenty states, including Arkansas, chose to impose limits on the length of time their representatives could serve in both the state legislature and in Congress. In a November 1992 referendum, the Arkansas electorate approved a measure that became Amendment 73 to the state constitution, which imposed …

Termites

aka: Isopterans
Termites belong to the Phylum Arthropoda, Class Insecta, Infraorder Isoptera, and Order Blattodea. They were formerly placed in a separate order (Isoptera) from the cockroaches (Blattodea), but Isoptera is currently classified at the taxonomic rank of infraorder. About 3,106 species are currently described within twelve families, with a few hundred more to still be described. There are several species of termites in Arkansas. Termites are among the most successful groups of insects on Earth, colonizing all continents except Antarctica. Comparatively speaking, the diversity of termite species is rather low in North America and Europe (fifty species are known from North America, and only ten species occur in Europe), but it is higher in South America, where over 400 species are …

Terror at Black Falls

Produced, written, directed, and edited by Richard C. Sarafian, Terror at Black Falls was filmed in Arkansas in Scotland (Van Buren County) in 1959 and released in 1962. The low-budget, black-and-white Western was barely of feature length. A DVD runs sixty-eight minutes, but the movie was probably originally longer. Various sources say the film was seventy, seventy-two, or seventy-six minutes. It was the first film directed by Sarafian and may have been intended as his calling card film in Hollywood, a sample to show studios his ability. The film’s loquacious narrator says that the movie tells “a true story” set “when Arkansas was part of the wild American frontier.” However, it was not based on a true story. Like another …

Texarkana Baptist Orphanage

The Texarkana Baptist Orphanage, founded in 1906 and chartered in 1907, is a charitable ministry of the churches of the State Association of Missionary Baptist Churches of Arkansas. During its more than a century of operation, it has assisted several thousand needy boys and girls. It is administered by a board of five directors appointed annually and is supported by offerings from Missionary Baptist churches of the American Baptist Association across the country. It also enjoys widespread support within the Texarkana (Miller County) business and professional community. Although children of Baptist parents are given first priority, the home is open to all “orphaned, dependent, and neglected” children. Originally, children who met these criteria were referred to the home by Arkansas …

Texarkana Moonlight Murders

An unidentified assailant often known as the Texarkana Phantom Killer committed a number of murders and assaults in Texarkana (Miller County, Arkansas, and Bowie County, Texas) through the spring of 1946. Five people were killed, and three were wounded. While there was one major suspect, he was never convicted of these crimes. The attacks served partially as the basis for a motion picture, The Town that Dreaded Sundown. On February 22, 1946, two young people, Jimmy Hollis and Mary Jeanne Larey, were parked on a secluded Bowie County road outside Texarkana. They were forced out of the car by an armed man, his face hidden by a burlap sack with two slits for eyes. The assailant beat Hollis with the …

Texarkana Regional Airport

aka: Texarkana Air Force Station
The Texarkana Regional Airport is located three miles northeast of Texarkana (Miller County). The airport is a mixed-used facility with the primary focus being general aviation; it also offers limited commercial aviation. In 2015, the total economic impact to the Texarkana area included 420 jobs and more than $32.5 million to the local economy. In 2015, there were sixty-eight aircraft based at the airport, and the airport conducted just under of 48,500 flight operations. The early history of the airport dates back to 1928 when the City of Texarkana acquired 190 acres of land from two local families, the Lathrop and Wheeler families. The following year, the first runways were constructed. Both were made of sod, with one measuring 3,500 …