Entries - Entry Type: Thing - Starting with D

Dillard’s, Inc.

Dillard’s, Inc., based in Little Rock (Pulaski County), is ranked among the nation’s largest fashion apparel, cosmetics, and home furnishings retailers, employing more than 53,000 people across the country. The mid-range-to-upscale department store chain consists of approximately 300 stores throughout twenty-nine states in the South, Southwest, West, and Midwest. In the twenty-first century, Dillard’s stores serve as retail anchors in many suburban shopping malls and continue to evolve with the changing landscape of American consumerism. Born in 1914, Dillard’s founder William T. Dillard grew up in the retail business of his father’s mercantile store in Mineral Springs (Howard County). After his graduation from the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) in 1935, followed by a graduate degree from the School …

Dimension Stone Mining

Dimension stone is defined as rock that is removed from its original site to be used with minor alteration (rough stone) and rock that is broken, sawn, and/or ground and polished (cut or dressed stone) for use as building and/or ornamental stone. While most of the high-quality dimension stone produced in Arkansas is used in state, some is shipped to markets worldwide. Limestone and sandstone are used as dimension stone in Arkansas. Historically, much nepheline syenite was used as hand-worked building stone in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the Little Rock (Pulaski County) area, but beginning in the middle 1940s, those labor-intensive activities gave way to the use of crushed stone for syenite. A small market exists, …

Diphtheria

Diphtheria is a serious contagious disease caused by toxin-producing strains of the bacteria Corynebacterium diphtheriae. Typically occurring in childhood, diphtheria is transmitted from person to person through respiratory droplets or contaminated surfaces. The symptoms appear following an incubation period of two to five days and include fever, chills, sore throat, fatigue, and swollen lymph glands in the neck. The formation of an adherent, thick, grayish pseudomembrane in the throat distinguishes the disease. Respiratory diphtheria can be fatal due to either respiratory obstruction or heart and kidney failure. Cutaneous diphtheria is a skin infection that rarely causes serious systemic illness. Recovery does not confer lifelong immunity. In 400 BC, the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates provided an early description of diphtheria. It …

Diplurans

aka: Two-Pronged Bristletails

The primitive insects known as diplurans belong to the phylum Arthropoda, subphylum Hexapoda, class Insecta and order Diplura. They are considered to have three lineages: the Campodeoidea, Japygoidea, and Projapygoidea. These superfamilies are defined morphologically by three different types of cerci (paired appendages) found across all the dipluran families. There are ten families in this cosmopolitan order distributed from the tropics to the temperate zones. Diplurans belong to one of the four groups of Hexapoda, with other primitive apterygote insects, including springtails (Collembola) and coneheads (Protura). There are about 800 described species, of which around seventy (9%) occur in North America, twelve (2%) in the United Kingdom, and two (0.3%) in Australia. In 2016, species of diplurans were reported from …

Dipteran Parasites

aka: Parasitic Dipterans
aka: flies
aka: mosquitos
aka: gnats

The order Diptera belongs to the Phylum Arthropoda and Class Insecta. The order ranks number two among all insect orders—only behind beetles (Coleoptera)—with about 125,000 described species (there are an estimated 1,000,000 total species), many of which are considered parasitic or serve as vectors for diseases. There are two main groups (suborders): the Nematocera with seven infraorders and Brachycera with six infraorders. Dipterans—including the sixty species of mosquitoes that occur in Arkansas and Missouri—can be irritating to humans and harmful to livestock and other animals. A major repository of voucher specimens of dipterans in Arkansas is the Entomology Arthropod Museum at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville (Washington County). It houses the largest research and reference collection of insects and …

Dipterans

aka: True Flies

The order Diptera belongs to the Phylum Arthropoda, Subphylum Labiata, Superclass Hexapoda, and Class Insecta. Among all insect orders, the order is number two in total number of species, ranked only behind beetles (Coleoptera), with about 125,000 described species (and an estimated 1,000,000 total species). They include house flies, blow flies, mosquitoes, gnats, black flies, midges, crane flies, horseflies, fruit flies, and others. Arkansas is home to many of these species. The first true fossil dipterans are known from the Middle Triassic Period (about 240 million years ago [mya]), and became more widespread during the Middle to Late Triassic. Although modern flowering plants did not appear until the Cretaceous (around 140 mya), the original dipterans may have had a different …

Disease during the Civil War

Disease was a major problem among the armies serving in Arkansas during the Civil War. Large numbers of men living in close confines made the spread of illness likely. As many as 700,000 members of the military across the country lost their lives during the war, and approximately two-thirds of them died from disease. Outbreaks of disease were common in the state even before the beginning of the war. In 1855, a yellow fever epidemic struck Helena (Phillips County), and minor outbreaks of other diseases such as cholera and typhoid were common. The lack of major centers of population and difficulty of travel, however, prevented many large-scale epidemics before the Civil War. The state had a number of doctors in …

Distilleries

In nineteenth-century Arkansas, the distilling of spirits was done mostly for home consumption. Some small-scale distillers set up taverns in their homes or supplied nearby drinking establishments, and several larger operations emerged by the late 1800s. Distilleries at that time were plentiful and could be found all throughout the state, although prohibition efforts in the early twentieth century put an end to legal distilling in the state for many years. In the twenty-first century, the state’s handful of distilleries focus mostly on small-batch specialty spirits. Newspapers of the 1800s frequently advertised distilleries that were opening, closing, or up for sale. One such example was a steam distillery located on Mine Creek in Hempstead County that was listed for sale in …

Division of Arkansas Heritage

DAH was created in 1975 to preserve and promote Arkansas’s natural and cultural heritage as a source of pride and enjoyment for all. The original legislation named the agency the Department of Arkansas Natural and Cultural Heritage and grouped together culturally oriented agencies in one department. The agency’s name was changed to the Department of Arkansas Heritage in 1985, and then to the Division of Arkansas Heritage in 2019. DAH consists of a number of agencies, each with its own special contributions, and a director’s office, which manages general administrative and marketing operations. The agencies are the Arkansas Arts Council (AAC), which seeks to advance the arts in Arkansas; the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program (AHPP), which manages the state’s historic …

Division of Elementary and Secondary Education

Through the Transformation and Efficiencies Act of 2019 (Act 910), the Arkansas Department of Education (originally established by Act 169 of 1931 as the State Department of Education) was renamed the Division of Elementary and Secondary Education and absorbed alongside a number of other education-related agencies into the Arkansas Department of Education (ADE), a new cabinet-level department. The Division of Elementary and Secondary Education  is administered by the State Board of Education and oversees the 244 public school districts in the state. The Division of Elementary and Secondary Education assists schools in developing curriculum, accredits schools, approves textbooks used in state public schools, licenses teachers, provides continuing education programs, and much more. In general, the Division of Elementary and Secondary …

Dixie Association, The

Donald S. “Skip” Hays, who was born in Florida and reared in western Arkansas, developed an early interest in literature and, after a vagabond career that included years of semiprofessional baseball, settled on writing and teaching. He turned out two ribald Southern novels, the more celebrated of which was The Dixie Association, published in 1984, about a wild band of misfits who made up a fictional professional baseball team at Little Rock (Pulaski County) in the late 1960s. The Dixie Association is about Hog Durham’s single season as a professional ballplayer; he is furloughed early from an Oklahoma prison so that he can join the team. Hog then engages in endless maneuvers with his manager, “Lefty,” and a Little Rock …

Dixie Cafe

The Dixie Cafe was a chain of home-cooking restaurants based in Little Rock (Pulaski County) that grew into twenty-three locations in three states before abruptly closing in late 2017. In August 1980, Little Rock businessman Dan Lasater, who had founded the Ponderosa steakhouse chain, and partners Garland Streett and Allan Roberts bought a building at 1220 Rebsamen Park Road in Little Rock and announced they were going to convert it into a new restaurant as part of the Black-eyed Pea chain (based in Dallas, Texas), which offered home-style cooking in a casual dining atmosphere. The new restaurant opened in late October 1980. “The food comes close to rivaling that of smaller, well-established restaurants,” an Arkansas Gazette reviewer wrote in November …

Dodson v. Arkansas Activities Association

Dodson v. Arkansas Activities Association (1979) was a federal court decision concerning the rules for girls’ junior high and high school basketball in Arkansas. Diana Lee Dodson, then a fourteen-year-old student in the Arkadelphia (Clark County) public school system, filed a lawsuit against the Arkansas Activities Association (AAA), the governing body of public and private school athletic programs, asking that girls in Arkansas be permitted to play under the same full-court basketball rules as Arkansas boys played. Arkansas schools at that time required that basketball for girls be played under “half-court” rules. In this version of the game, which had been played in Arkansas and other states since at least the World War II era, girls’ teams had six players. …

Dog Heartworms

aka: Dirofilaria immitis

The canine heartworm (Dirofilaria immitis) is a filarial parasite that belongs to the Phylum Nematoda, Class Secertenea, Order Spirurida, and Family Onchocercidae. There are two subgenera: Dirofilaria and Nochtiella. This parasite is often found in wild and domestic canids throughout the world, especially in the United States where it is endemic from the East to the Midwest, the southeastern Atlantic seaboard, and the southern Gulf Coast. Transmission of the parasite occurs throughout the United States (even Alaska) and in the warmer regions of Canada. In the United States, the highest infection rates are found within 241 km (150 mi.) of the coast from Texas northeast to New Jersey, and along the Mississippi River Valley and its major tributaries. The parasite …

Dog of the South, The

The Dog of the South is the third of five novels written by Charles Portis, Arkansas’s most famous author of fiction. Like each of the other four, it chronicles the odyssey of a young Southerner on some sort of mission—to collect a debt, settle some grievance, solve a mystery, or discover the divine secrets of an ancient order. Portis’s narratives—his most celebrated was True Grit, which was twice made into a movie—are commonly grouped in a category of fiction called the picaresque novel, about oddball characters searching for some meaning for their lives. Portis himself scoffed at such categorizations of his work. Published in 1979, The Dog of the South is the fictional Ray Midge’s account of his journey at …

Domestic Science Building

The Domestic Science Building is located on the campus of Central Primary School and the central office of the Arkadelphia Public School District in Arkadelphia (Clark County). Known for combining both Prairie and Classical architecture styles, the building was constructed in 1917 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 22, 1982. A public school board was formed in Arkadelphia in 1870 and operated schools intermittently for more than a decade. Faced with uncertain finances and several private schools operating as competitors, the public schools had difficulty remaining in operation. A permanent school building was constructed in 1888, and regular sessions began to be offered. The enrollment at Arkadelphia High School grew during the late nineteenth …

Don’t Cry for Me

Don’t Cry for Me, published in 2022, is the seventh novel by Blackwell (Conway County) native Daniel Black. The author uses an epistolary style to explore the complex relationship between a father and his gay son. As in his previous literary works, Black explores the themes of race, class, gender, and sexuality with the ultimate provocation of communal love. The impetus of Don’t Cry for Me is the grief Black was experiencing with the death of his father from Alzheimer’s. As his father’s memory faded, they could not mend their relationship, which was fraught with silences, misunderstandings, and rejection, so consolation could now only happen in Black’s imagination. He uses his literary skill to share an internal conversation on transgenerational …

Dove [Steamboat]

As part of the Union’s Mississippi River Squadron, the steamer Dove served as a chartered vessel on the Mississippi River and its tributaries, including expeditions on the White River during the ongoing battle for control of significant interior rivers in the Trans-Mississippi Department during the Civil War. Dove displaced 350 tons, but specific details about its construction and acquisition by Union forces are not known. In the 1850s, Master John Box operated Dove as a passenger and commercial transport on the Arkansas River between New Orleans, Louisiana; Napoleon (Desha County); and Fort Smith (Sebastian County). On March 30, 1864, the Dove transported Union troops up the White River to Gregory’s Landing (Woodruff County) for Brigadier General Christopher Columbus Andrews’s operations …

Dover to Clarksville Road

The Dover to Clarksville Road is an early nineteenth-century road through what is now Pope and Johnson counties. A surviving segment of the road is significant for its connections with routes taken during the Indian Removals of the 1830s. That segment—located on Hickeytown Road east of U.S. Highway 64 near present-day Lamar (Johnson County)—was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 26, 2005. In March 1834, Lieutenant Joseph Whipple Harris left the eastern United States with a party of 125 Cherokee and set out for the Indian Territory, picking up hundreds of other emigrant Cherokee before crossing the Mississippi River and entering Arkansas. His detachment numbered more than 500, many of them ill with measles and other …

Down from the Hills

Down From the Hills is a two-volume memoir written by Orval Eugene Faubus, the long-serving Arkansas governor who precipitated the national constitutional crisis over school desegregation in 1957 by sending soldiers to block nine Black children from entering Central High School in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Down From the Hills, which essentially covered his first four years as governor and included the school crisis, was published in 1980, while Down From the Hills II appeared in 1986 and covered the last eight years of his administration and his three-time struggle to regain the office while navigating personal and family ordeals. The two volumes, each on oversized eight-by-eleven-inch pages, totaled 1,074 pages. An earlier memoir, In This Faraway Land, published in …

Down in “Arkansaw”

B-movie studio Republic Pictures shot hillbilly situation comedy Down in “Arkansaw” (1938) in California. The only Arkansan in the film was Pinky Tomlin, who was born in Eros (Marion County) but raised in Oklahoma. The film was the first in a series of eleven comedies made by Republic from 1938 to 1943 featuring the Weaver Brothers and Elviry (consisting of Missourians Leon, Frank, and June Weaver), a popular “rube” vaudeville and radio act. The Weaver series also included Arkansas Judge (1941). In his book Hillbilly, Anthony Harkins noted that the years 1937–1945 saw “the hillbilly stereotype at high tide” in popular culture, with the Weavers and Judy Canova making pictures at Republic, Arkansan Bob Burns appearing in films for Paramount …

Dr. Boaz House

The Dr. Boaz House is a dogtrot house located in western Clark County near the Clear Springs community. Constructed around 1891, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 28, 1992. Clear Springs is located about two miles east of Antoine (Pike County) on the road linking Arkadelphia (Clark County) and Murfreesboro (Pike County), now Arkansas Highway 26. Never a large community, in 1890 Clear Springs included a church, store, school, post office, cotton gin, and grist mill. About fifty people lived in the community. There is a lack of information about Dr. Boaz, although oral tradition suggests that he was a medical doctor. The single reference to Boaz in public records is a marriage record …

Dr. E. P. McGehee Infirmary

Located in Lake Village (Chicot County), the Dr. E. P. McGehee Infirmary served as a healthcare facility for both white and African American residents of the surrounding area. After the facility’s service as a medical infirmary ended, the Museum of Chicot County operated there for a period. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 1, 2005. Born in Alabama in 1869, Edward Pelham (E. P.) McGehee studied at Southern University in Greensboro, Alabama, as well as Vanderbilt University and the University of Mobile. After opening a practice in Alabama, he moved to Lake Village in 1899 and set up an office in the John Tushek Building. He married Sue Gordon McMurray in 1904, and the …

Dr. James Wyatt Walton House

The house of Dr. James Wyatt Walton at 301 West Sevier Street in Benton (Saline County) is one of the oldest homes in Saline County. However, the Walton House’s historical importance, unlike the more elaborate and much older Gann House, is tied to both its architect and the family it housed for many years. The Walton House was designed by famous Arkansas architect Charles Thompson of Little Rock (Pulaski County) in early 1902. Construction of the house was finished by Thompson’s contractor John S. Odum in April 1903. Thompson’s firm also designed the Saline County Courthouse just up the street from the Walton House. Dr. James Wyatt Walton is often called the county’s first doctor. In truth, he was the …

Dr. T. E. Buffington House

The home of Dr. T. E. Buffington is located at 312 West South Street in Benton (Saline County), just west of the Benton Commercial Historic District. It was built specifically for Buffington in 1928. His house was designed in the English-Tudor Revival style but with some 1920s Craftsman influences throughout. Its historical significance lies with Buffington himself, an influential figure in the history both of Benton and of Lonsdale (Garland County). Turner Ellis (T. E.) Buffington was born on May 5, 1879, in Benton to William Ellis Buffington and Mary Marceline Miller Buffington. William and Mary moved to Saline County from Georgia in the early 1870s. Buffington was educated in Benton’s rural schools and at the medical school that became …

Draughon School of Business (Little Rock)

aka: Draughon Business College (Little Rock)

Draughon’s Practical Business College opened in Little Rock (Pulaski County) on February 5, 1900. During its more than ninety years of operation, it offered a variety of courses ranging from typing and shorthand to courses in servicing television and radio equipment. The first Draughon School of Business was founded by John F. Draughon in eastern Tennessee in 1879. At the age of sixteen, Draughon would transport books and materials by cart from town to town, offering classes in basic business skills. His first non-mobile instruction was offered in Nashville, Tennessee, a few years later. By the time he died in 1921, thirty-eight such schools had been established in southern and western states from Georgia to Texas, including schools in Savannah, …

Drew County Courthouse

The Drew County Courthouse, located at 210 South Main Street in Monticello (Drew County), is a three-and-a-half-story Classical Moderne–style building that was constructed in 1932. This is the fourth courthouse building that has been constructed for Drew County. The first courthouse in Monticello was built in 1851 and cost less than $5,300. The second building was erected in 1856–57 and was of frame construction, just as the first had been. In 1870–71, the third courthouse (brick this time) was built on the square from local materials, costing $48,620. This courthouse had a 110-foot tower that displayed a four-dial clock. With the completion of the current courthouse, the third courthouse was torn down, and the bell and clock from the tower …

Drug Courts

aka: Adult Drug Courts

Drug courts are a specialty court in the Arkansas judicial system designed to channel those accused of drug infractions into rehabilitation rather than prison. The first drug court in the United States was established in 1989 in Miami-Dade County, Florida, and the first in Arkansas began in Little Rock (Pulaski County) in 1994, created by Pulaski County circuit judge Mary Ann McGowan. By 2016, fifty-eight of Arkansas’s seventy-five counties had drug courts. Adult drug courts deal with individuals eighteen years of age and above who have been arrested and charged for some type of infraction involving drugs. A drug court is an alternative to a standard term of probation or a trial, as a trial could result in a prison …

Dryden Pottery

Dryden Pottery was founded in Kansas by A. James Dryden, who relocated his business to Hot Springs (Garland County) in 1956. Dryden Pottery has become collectible and has been listed in Schroeder’s Antique Guide for many years. Dryden, the son of a successful hardware merchant in Ellsworth, Kansas, grew up working in his father’s store. After serving during World War II in the South Pacific, he returned to Ellsworth and needed a job. He had always had an interest in art with a special aptitude for cartooning, but his attempts at cartooning for publication were not going to support his family. A chance meeting on the streets of Ellsworth with nationally known ceramicist Norman Plumber presented Dryden with an idea …

Dual State Monument

aka: Donaghey Monument
aka: Donaghey State Park

The Dual State Monument, also known as the Donaghey Monument, was built in 1931 on the Arkansas-Louisiana state line to commemorate the centennial anniversary of the establishment of the boundary between the two states. It is also a memorial to the birthplace of George Washington Donaghey, governor of Arkansas between 1909 and 1913, who had the memorial constructed and was born about one mile south of the border. The Dual State Monument straddles the Arkansas-Louisiana border in southeastern Union County, Arkansas, and north-central Union Parish, Louisiana. The rectangular monument features Art Deco-style bas-relief sculptures on its eastern and western faces and inscriptions flanked by stylized, vertical flutes on its northern and southern faces. Though he spent most of his life …

Dueling

Dueling was a popular means of settling disputes among the well-bred, higher-class population on the Arkansas frontier, and though it was considered part of the code of honor for a Southern gentleman, its popularity added to Arkansas’s reputation for violence that remained until well after the Civil War. An insult, real or imagined, likely would bring a challenge from the injured party. Duels traditionally took place at dawn to avoid interruptions, and the two parties usually met somewhere just outside the territory to get around the laws against dueling that were passed as early as the 1820s. Friends would accompany the combatants, acting as “seconds,” to see that things were carried out fairly. Seconds had to be of equal social …