Entry Type: Thing - Starting with M

Mantodea

aka: Mantids
aka: Mantises
Mantises belong to the Phylum Arthropoda, Class Insecta, and Order Mantodea. The order contains over 2,400 species within about 430 genera in fifteen families. The largest family is the cosmopolitan Mantidae. Mantises are distributed worldwide in mostly tropical but also temperate habitats. Little has been published on the mantises of Arkansas, although the Carolina mantid, Stagmomantis carolina, has been investigated in the central part of the state. In the fossil history of mantises, fossils of the group are rare. For example, by 2007, only about twenty-five fossil species were known. The earliest, from Siberia, are about 135 million years old. Fossil mantises, from Cretaceous amber, include a specimen from Japan with spines on the front legs, as in modern mantises. …

Maple-Leaf Oak

aka: Quercus acerifolia
Maple-leaf oak (Quercus acerifolia) is a rare tree species commonly agreed to occur at just four sites in the world, all of which are in Arkansas. All of these sites are open, rocky woodlands on sandstone or novaculite substrate and are located at the tops of high-elevation ridges in the Arkansas Valley and Ouachita Mountains: Magazine Mountain in Logan County, Porter Mountain in Polk County, Pryor Mountain in Montgomery County, and Sugarloaf Mountain in Sebastian County. The growth form of maple-leaf oak ranges from short, stunted multi-trunked shrubs to single-trunked trees up to fifty feet tall. It is most easily distinguished by its upper leaves, which are commonly as wide or wider than they are long, with three to five …

Marianna Waterworks

The Marianna Waterworks, located at 252 U.S. Highway 79 in Marianna (Lee County), is a water distribution complex constructed in 1936–37 with the assistance of the Public Works Administration (PWA), a Depression-era federal relief program. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on January 24, 2007. As the United States struggled with the Great Depression of the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration enacted the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) to ease the effects of businesses closing. The act included an organization called the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works (or Public Works Administration), which was created on June 16, 1933, to help finance federal construction projects and create jobs. Like many other Arkansas communities, Marianna had …

Marion County Courthouse

The Marion County Courthouse is located in downtown Yellville (Marion County). The Arkansas Historic Preservation Program recognizes the two-story building as architecturally and historically significant as an example of a Queen Anne-style building with Art Deco influences. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on May 19, 1994. Even with all its contributions to Arkansas history, Marion County has been unlucky in keeping a courthouse. Since the Civil War, four courthouses have burned down. Union soldiers burned the first one, and additional courthouses burned down in 1887, 1899, and 1943. The fourth courthouse, set afire by an arsonist in 1943, had stood as an impressive representation of the Queen Anne and Romanesque styles. Law enforcement determined that …

Marion Hotel

aka: Hotel Marion
The Marion Hotel (also known as the Hotel Marion) in downtown Little Rock (Pulaski County) was one of the most famous businesses in Arkansas for much of the twentieth century. Construction began on the hotel in 1905. The Marion was the tallest structure in the state from when it opened in 1907 until 1911. The hotel closed in early 1980 and was demolished to make way for the Excelsior Hotel (which later became the Peabody and then the Marriott) and the Statehouse Convention Center. The Marion Hotel was built by Herman Kahn, who moved to Little Rock from Frankfurt, Germany, in 1870. (Kahn’s great-grandson, Jimmy Moses, has been the driving force behind many of the developments in downtown Little Rock …

Marjoun and the Flying Headscarf

Directed and written by Lebanese American Susan Youssef, Marjoun and the Flying Headscarf (2019) is a feature film made and set in and around Little Rock (Pulaski County), including at Central High School and rural Pulaski County. Filming also took place at Magnolia Grove Monastery, a Buddhist community in Batesville, Mississippi. Youssef had previously made one feature film and several shorts, including a 2006 short of the same title, Marjoun and the Flying Headscarf, which told a similar story with a different cast.   The feature’s young heroine, Marjoun, is played by Veracity Butcher, who is of mixed Moroccan and Cajun heritage. In Little Rock in 2006, the Lebanese American teenager faces many problems. She is angry that her father has been unjustly imprisoned by U.S. authorities for innocent cash transfers to relatives in Lebanon. At school, her little sister Jinane is bullied, and Marjoun is harassed for her style of dress, snapping at …

Marked Tree Siphons

Constructed in 1939 by the Memphis District Corps of Engineers for Drainage District Number Seven of Poinsett County, the Marked Tree Siphons were an integral part of the St. Francis River Basin Flood Control Project. The siphons were also a unique application of an engineering structure of their type, designed to lift the flow of the St. Francis River over an earthen levee and deposit it in the river channel on the other side of the levee. In 1917, Drainage District Number Seven of Poinsett County was authorized by the Arkansas General Assembly. The St. Francis River meandered from north to south through the district, which encompassed most of the county east of Crowley’s Ridge, and carried a considerable traffic …

Marquette Hotel

aka: Riviera Hotel
The Marquette Hotel is located at 719 Central Avenue in downtown Hot Springs (Garland County), near the Hot Springs Convention Center. The building was constructed in the Chicago School style of architecture by the prominent Arkansas firm of Thompson, Sanders and Ginocchio. The Marquette Hotel thrived in conjunction with Hot Springs’ greatest period of popularity as a resort destination in the early 1930s through the late 1940s. On October 8, 1976, the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places under the name Riviera Hotel. The five-story Marquette Hotel was built on the site of a previous Marquette Hotel (which had been constructed in 1901 as the Navarre Hotel, renamed the Marquette Hotel in 1910, and expanded in …

Marr’s Creek Bridge

The Marr’s Creek Bridge is a reinforced concrete bridge with an open spandrel arch. It was built to carry U.S. Highways 62 and 67, as well as South Bettis Street, over Marr’s Creek in Pocahontas (Randolph County) near its confluence with Black River, although the bridge is no longer an active part of Highway 67. The Marr’s Creek Bridge was an important component of New Deal recovery programs in Arkansas and was constructed in 1934 as one of the Public Works Administration (PWA) projects in Arkansas. The construction of Highway 67 and its subsequent bridges, including the 135-foot-long Marr’s Creek Bridge, was a part of a larger modernization campaign to rebuild Highway 67 into Pocahontas. This campaign created jobs within …

Marshall House (Little Rock)

The Marshall House is located on 2009 South Arch Street in Little Rock (Pulaski County). It was built in 1908 for Joseph C. Marshall, a lawyer and the secretary of the Little Rock and Hot Springs Electric Railroad Co. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982 due to its architectural significance, having been designed by notable Arkansas architect Charles L. Thompson. The wood-frame house has two stories. The exterior of the 4,000-square-foot home has French doors on either side of the main entryway. Each French door has sidelights, is lined with dentil molding, and is topped with arched fanlights. The Doric-style pillars and hip roof add character to the home. These are typical characteristics …

Martha Washington [Steamboat]

The Martha Washington was a steamboat that caught fire on the Mississippi River south of Helena (Phillips County) on January 14, 1852, with as many as nine people losing their lives. Several trials were held later amid allegations that the fire was deliberately set for insurance purposes. The Martha Washington was a 299-ton sidewheel paddleboat built at Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1847 for runs between Cincinnati and New Orleans, Louisiana. The steamboat was heading south on the Mississippi River when it caught fire near Island 65 at around 1:30 a.m. on January 14, 1852. Captain John N. Cummings “was everywhere in attempting to save life,” and “the pilot and engineer stood at their post like heroes amid the smoke and flames; …

Mary E. Poe [Steamboat]

The Mary E. Poe was a sternwheel steamboat that caught fire and burned on October 17, 1873, north of Osceola (Mississippi County); at least six passengers and crew members died in the accident. The Mary E. Poe was built at Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1871. Powered by three boilers, the Poe was 188 feet long and thirty-three feet wide and had a draft of five feet. It was built for Captain Thomas Poe and ran the St. Louis to Red River route for the Carter Line Packet Company. Poe was in command of the Mary E. Poe, having moved to that vessel after the loss of the Nick Wall in December 1870, an accident in which his wife was fatally injured. …

Mary Woods No. 2

The Mary Woods No. 2 was a sternwheel towboat that plied the Mississippi, White, and Cache rivers before being donated to Arkansas State Parks in 1967. The vessel survived a sinking and a direct hit by a tornado but was sold after damage from a second sinking precluded its restoration. Eugene Woods, owner of the Woods Lumber Company, had the Mary Woods No. 2, which was named for his daughter, built in 1931. The Nashville Bridge Company of Nashville, Tennessee, constructed the steel hull, which contained sixteen compartments, and the boat was finished out in Memphis, Tennessee. The $75,000 towboat weighed 149 tons, was 111 feet long, and measured twenty-six feet wide with a 4.4-foot draft. The Mary Woods No. 2 …

Maternal and Infant Mortality

Maternal and infant mortality are global indicators of community health that require highly contextualized solutions. Maternal mortality refers to deaths that occur during pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period. The maternal mortality rate (MMR) is a yearly measure of maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. The infant mortality rate (IMR) measures the annual death rate of live-born infants under the age of one. In the twenty-first century, both the nation as a whole and the state of Arkansas struggle to address maternal and infant mortality effectively. Few records of infant and maternal mortality rates survive from before the early twentieth century. Late nineteenth-century estimates suggest that fifteen to twenty percent of infants under one year of age died from infectious …

Maudelle: A Novel Founded on Facts Gathered From Living Witnesses

Maudelle: A Novel Founded on Facts Gathered from Living Witnesses, written by James Henery Smith and published by Mayhew Publishing Company of Boston in 1906, is reputed to be the first novel written by an African American residing in Arkansas. Smith was a prominent Little Rock (Pulaski County) dentist, a leader in the black community who spoke in opposition of the proposed Separate Coach Act of 1891, and the father of Arkansas composer Florence Smith Price. Maudelle is a novel about miscegenation, focusing on the “illicit commingling” between a U.S. Senator from Kentucky, George Morroe, and his slave Mary. Their child, Maudelle, becomes orphaned after a series of melodramatic events: the stabbing of Morroe; his deathbed request to be married …

Maumelle Ordnance Works Bunker No. 4

Maumelle Ordnance Works Bunker No. 4, located at 4 Willastein Drive in Maumelle (Pulaski County), is a reinforced concrete structure built in 1942 to store picric acid and ammonium picrate produced to create explosives during World War II. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 24, 2006. The U.S. War Department approved the contract with the Cities Service Defense Corporation on July 15, 1941, to construct a plant to produce picric acid and ammonium picrate to be used in American weapons in World War II on 7,614 acres near West Marche (Pulaski County). Construction began on September 2, 1941, and by March 29, 1942, the first ammonium nitrate manufacturing facility began production. The Maumelle Ordnance …

Maumelle River Bridge

The Maumelle River Bridge formerly carried Arkansas Highway 300 over the Maumelle River, approximately half a mile southwest of the town of Natural Steps (Pulaski County), before the highway was relocated. However, the bridge remains a part of the Ouachita National Recreation Trail and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on January 21, 2020. The Maumelle River Bridge is an example of a Pratt through truss, which is a type of bridge developed by Caleb Pratt in 1844. Pratt truss bridges are characterized by diagonals in tension and verticals in compression. The through truss is designed to carry the traffic load with the bridge’s bottom chords or beams. The Maumelle River Bridge is a riveted seven-panel Pratt …

Maxie Theatre

When the Maxie Theatre opened in August 1947 in Trumann (Poinsett County), it was considered to be one of the most modern theaters in the area. The Maxie represented a prime example of Art Deco–style architecture in the Trumann area. For many years, the theater was one of the few single-screen movie theaters in the northeastern Arkansas area in operation. The theater was added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 7, 2011. It closed its doors in 2012. Local entrepreneur Zell Jaynes served three and a half years in the U.S. Army during World War II. Zell and his brother Lonnie ran and operated several businesses in the Trumann area, including the Allis-Chalmers tractor dealership, a taxi …