Entries - Entry Type: Thing - Starting with S

Shoppach House

aka: Sadie Praytor Home

The Shoppach House, located at 503 North Main Street (although some sources, including the National Register nomination form, give the address as 508 North Main Street) in Benton (Saline County), is the oldest surviving brick structure in Saline County. The Shoppach House was built by German immigrant John (or Johann) William Shoppach after he purchased the land in 1853. (Many sources give the building date as 1852, but it was likely a bit later, soon after the 1853 land purchase.) The bricks used to build the house, and its well, were made on site. Shoppach was born in Hessen, Germany, and immigrated to the United States in the mid-1830s, eventually making his way to present-day Saline County, where he built …

Shrews

Shrews are very small, secretive, mouse-like mammals that inhabit moist, shady woodland areas. Generally, they have long, flexible, pointed snouts and very small eyes and ears. Their fur is soft and dense, and most species have prominent scent glands. All shrews belong to the Family Soricidae (subfamilies Soricinae, Crocidurinae, Myosoricinae) and Order Eulipotyphia, which also includes moles, shrew-like moles, desmans, gymnures, hedgehogs, and solenodons. True shrews, talpids, and solenodons were formerly grouped in the clade Soricomorpha; however, Soricomorpha has been found to be paraphyletic (descended from a common evolutionary ancestor or ancestral group, but not including all descendant groups). Members of this order are nearly cosmopolitan in distribution, with the exception of Australia, New Zealand, Antarctica, extreme southern South America, …

Shrimps

aka: Prawns

Arkansas shrimps belong in the cosmopolitan Family Palaemonidae (subfamily Palaemoninae) and Order Decapoda, which also contains the crayfishes. Taxonomically, shrimps are differentiated from crayfishes by their first pair of legs with chelae and the abdomen laterally compressed, while crayfishes have the first three pairs of legs with chelae and their abdomens dorsoventrally flattened. The Palaemonidae is a large family (950 species within 137 genera) and is distributed on all the continents except in the deep oceans, in temperate and tropical regions, and having representatives in marine, brackish, and fresh water. Representatives of this family are mainly carnivores that feed on small invertebrates. The most prominent genus in the family is Macrobrachium, with over 240 species that include commercially fished species; …

Shrubs

In 2016, a total of 436 kinds of woody plants were known to occur in the wild in Arkansas, comprising 419 species plus another seventeen varieties and subspecies. Of these, 185 can be considered trees, 189 are best described as shrubs, and sixty-two are woody vines. In some cases it is difficult to draw a hard line between these categories, and various references differ in their criteria for each. For the purposes of this entry, however, each category is defined as follows: Trees are defined as perennial, often single- or relatively few–stemmed woody plants typically greater than five meters (sixteen feet) in height at maturity. Shrubs are defined as perennial, often multi-stemmed woody or semi-woody plants usually less than five …

Siloam Springs Museum

The Siloam Springs Museum has been preserving and exhibiting the history of Siloam Springs (Benton County) and its vicinity since 1969. Permanent and changing exhibits tell the story of this area that was once an Osage hunting ground and now boasts a diverse industrial base, beautiful parks, three National Register Historic Districts, and John Brown University (JBU). Citizens concerned that important pieces of local history were being lost met at Siloam Springs City Hall beginning in July 1969 to discuss the establishment of a museum to preserve this history. The Siloam Springs Museum Society was incorporated on November 13, 1969. The society’s nine-member board of directors oversees operation of the museum and owns the collection. The last run of the …

Silver Mining

The silver in Arkansas is mixed sulfide ores of lead, zinc, copper, and antimony in small, scattered deposits in parts of the southern and eastern Ouachita Mountains. Most of the known mining activity involving silver took place between 1840 and 1927 and rarely resulted in profit to owners and operators. Sale of claims or mines to unsuspecting investors was usually the only route to profit. The mines opened in the 1800s were shallow, reaching maximum depths of less than 200 feet. Most of the deposits where mining was undertaken are clustered in three groups. One is along Kellogg Creek in Pulaski County, north of the Arkansas River. Deposits in another group were clustered along tributaries near the confluence of the north …

Silverfish

aka: Bristletails

Silverfish are small, wingless insects in the order Zygentoma (formerly Thysanura). There are four families: Lepidotrichidae (single species), Lepismatidae (about 200 species), Maindroniidae (three species), and Nicoletiidae (about twenty species). In the late twentieth century, it was recognized that the two suborders were not sister taxa; therefore Thysanura was paraphyletic, and the two suborders were each elevated to the status of an independent monophyletic order, with Archaeognatha the sister taxon to the Dicondylia, including the Zygentoma (fishmoths, firebrats, and silverfish). A nicoletiid, Speleonycta ozarkensis, occurs in eight different cave systems in Arkansas in Benton and Newton counties and in Oklahoma in Adair, Cherokee, and Delaware counties. In concert with jumping bristletails (Order Microcoryphia), the predecessors of silverfish are considered the …

Simmons First National Bank

Simmons First National Corporation is the largest publicly traded financial holding headquartered in Arkansas. By 2007, it had paid dividends for ninety-nine consecutive years and employed more than 1,000 people. It has total assets of nearly $8 billion. Founded by Dr. John Franklin Simmons, Simmons National Bank opened its doors for business at the corner of Main and Barraque streets in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) on March 23, 1903, with four employees. First day deposits totaled $3,338.22. Simmons opened its trust department on June 5, 1922, and was one of the first Arkansas banks to reopen, without restrictions, after the federally imposed “bank holiday” in 1933, during the Great Depression. In 1937, the bank opened its personal loan department. The …

Simmons First National Bank Tower

Simmons First National Bank Tower is a forty-story skyscraper located at 425 West Capitol Avenue in downtown Little Rock (Pulaski County). It is the tallest skyscraper in Arkansas at a height of 546 feet and an area of 740,000 square feet. (The previous record was held by Regions Center, formerly known as the First National Building, at 454 feet.) Originally known as Capitol Tower (1986–1991), the skyscraper was subsequently renamed TCBY Tower (1991–2004) and Metropolitan National Bank Tower (2004–2014) before its acquisition by Simmons First National Bank. The project originally started when John Flake, a local real estate developer, and Jerry Maulden, president of the Arkansas Power and Light (AP&L), wanted to see a new skyscraper in the Little Rock …

Simple Life, The

The Simple Life is a reality television series broadcast on the Fox network depicting two wealthy young socialites, Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie, as they struggle with everyday tasks, including manual labor and low-paying jobs such as doing farm work, serving meals in fast-food restaurants, and working as camp counselors. The first season of The Simple Life (2003–2004) was set in Altus (Franklin County), a small town in the Arkansas Valley known for its vineyards. Fox executives wanted to return to the heyday of the sitcom, when such low-concept shows as Green Acres originally aired. The idea for the show involved doing Green Acres as a reality show. Hilton was chosen because of her popularity with young people. Richie was …

Sink-Crumb Post 72 American Legion Hut

The Sink-Crumb Post 72 American Legion Hut, located on the northeastern corner of 2nd and Cherry streets in the small Clay County community of Knobel, is a tin-roofed cypress log building designed in the Rustic aesthetic common among American Legion buildings erected during the early 1930s. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 25, 2008. As with other towns around Arkansas, Knobel was home to many World War I veterans, and when the state’s American Legion leadership began encouraging the creation of additional posts in the late 1920s, members decided to band together and create Sink-Crumb Post 72. The post—likely named for local men who died while in military service—was founded in the spring of …

Skyline Cafe

The Skyline Cafe, located at 618 Mena Street in Mena (Polk County), is one of Arkansas’s oldest restaurants. It is one of Mena’s oldest businesses still in operation and lays claim to being the oldest eatery in town. Since opening its doors in 1922—though some sources indicate 1921—the Skyline Cafe has operated under various names, including Picchi’s, the Harvey Cafe, and the Skyline Cafe. However, its location has not changed in over a century. Originally opened by John Picchi, the restaurant was first named Picchi’s. It changed to the Skyline Cafe after the U.S. Forest Service began construction of Skyline Drive (which extends from Mena to the Queen Wilhelmina State Park at the top of Rich Mountain and serves as …

Slave Codes

Slave codes were the legal codification of rules regulating slavery. These official parameters for slavery were enacted in every colony or state that condoned the institution. Even before Arkansas was a recognized territory, slave codes existed in the region. Adopted by the French in 1724, the Code Noir, or Black Code, set the legal structure of slavery in Louisiana during the French and Spanish periods. The Code Noir was a comprehensive and detailed policy that set forth guidelines for almost every facet of slavery. The initial laws were partly designed to set limits upon slave owners and convey certain responsibilities to the masters regarding their slaves, including setting minimal standards for food, clothing and shelter, long-term care of sick or …

Slave Resistance

Enslaved people in Arkansas resisted dehumanization, demands on their labor, and limits on their activity in a variety of ways, ranging from indirect (often referred to as “passive”) to direct, even violent. Many factors—such as gender, age, location, and personality—determined slaves’ resistance strategies. Enslaved people also met with varying levels of circumscription within the system of slavery, causing them to push back against that regime in very different ways. While there is not enough evidence to determine for certain exactly how resistance strategies may have varied between slaves on Arkansas’s smaller holdings and those who resided on the state’s large plantations, it is reasonable to assume that the size of the slave-holding had some effect on resistance. For example, farm …

Slavery

American chattel slavery was a unique institution that emerged in the English colonies in America in the seventeenth century. Enslaved peoples were held involuntarily as property by slave owners who controlled their labor and freedom. By the eighteenth century, slavery had assumed racial tones as white colonists had come to consider only Africans who had been brought to the Americas as peoples who could be enslaved. Invariably, the earliest white settlers who moved into Arkansas brought slave property with them to work the area’s rich lands, and slavery became an integral part of local life. The enslaved played a major role in the economic growth of the territory and state. Their presence contributed to the peculiar formation of local culture …

Slime Molds

Slime molds are among the more interesting yet relatively little known organisms found in Arkansas. They do not have a particularly attractive name, but some examples produce fruiting bodies that are miniature objects of considerable beauty. The organisms commonly referred to as slime molds actually belong to two different taxonomic groups—the myxomycetes and the dictyostelids. Members of both groups are common-to-abundant organisms in forests throughout Arkansas, but only the myxomycetes (also called plasmodial slime molds) can be observed directly in nature. As a result, the myxomycetes are by far the better known group, and to most people (including many biologists), they are the only “slime molds” of which they are aware. However, the dictyostelids (also known as cellular slime molds) …

Sling Blade

Filmed entirely in Benton (Saline County) by Arkansas native Billy Bob Thornton, Sling Blade was one of the most critically acclaimed movies of 1996 and earned Thornton—who wrote, directed, and starred in the movie—an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay as well as a nomination for Best Actor. Sling Blade opens on the day that Karl Childers (Thornton), a developmentally challenged man, is released from an asylum for the criminally insane, twenty-five years after murdering his mother and her lover with a sling blade—a scythe-like tool that Karl prefers to call a kaiser blade. Karl demonstrates a talent for fixing small engines and is able to find work as a repairman in his hometown of Millsburg. One day at a …

Sloan-Hendrix Academy

In 1891, the board of trustees of Hendrix College in Conway (Faulkner County) recommended, in part to help provide for an educated clergy, a plan to build affiliated academies. The recommendation was adopted unanimously, and five academies were organized, the second being Sloan-Hendrix Academy in Imboden (Lawrence County). Imboden was selected due to the support of the local citizens and the influence of businessman W. C. Sloan, reportedly the wealthiest man in the county. The community provided land for the campus and money for buildings and equipment. The school was established in 1899 and set to open a campus located southeast of town. The buildings were not completed on time, however, and the classes of the first session were held …

Smallpox

Smallpox is an infectious disease characterized by the formation of a rash and blisters across the face and extremities. With an overall mortality rate of approximately thirty-five percent, it was one of the most feared diseases in the world before coordinated vaccination efforts resulted in the disease being eradicated in 1979. In Arkansas, smallpox greatly affected Native Americans and played a role in the creation of later public health initiatives. Smallpox was first introduced into North America by European explorers, who brought to the New World any number of diseases to which Native Americans had not previously been exposed. Some historians estimate that perhaps ninety percent of the indigenous population of the Americas may have been killed by diseases brought …

Smelts

aka: Osmerids

Smelts belong to the family Osmeridae and order Salmoniformes. There are seven genera and about eleven species. Fishes of the genus Osmerus, to which the rainbow smelt (O. mordax) belongs, include the following: a North Pacific and Arctic species, O. dentex; the European smelt (O. eperlanus) of the Eastern North Atlantic; and the landlocked pygmy smelt (O. spectrum) of eastern Canada and New England, which some authorities suggest is not a valid species. In general, smelts are north circumpolar in geographic distribution, and they occur in marine and freshwater habitats in Asia, Europe, and North America. They date to the Paleocene Epoch (over 55 million years ago). The closest relatives are galaxioid (Protacanthopterygiid) fishes, and the marine argentinoid fishes are …

Smithville Public School Building

The Smithville Public School Building, located on Highway 117 in Smithville (Lawrence County), is a single-story, T-shaped educational structure built in 1936 by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a Depression-era public relief program. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on January 14, 1993. The first school in Smithville, then the county seat of Lawrence County, was a one-room log building built before the Civil War at the southwest corner of the Smithville Cemetery. School teacher Jasper N. Hillhouse later built a one-room building in 1872 on land that was donated by W. C. Sloan. As Smithville thrived in the late nineteenth century, two rooms were added to accommodate the growing student population. Smithville’s fortunes waned in …

Snag Boats

As American settlers pushed westward following the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, their goals of settlement, civilization, and trade were hindered by the hazardous nature of the western rivers. The pioneers found the Mississippi River and its tributaries, such as the Arkansas and Red rivers, filled with obstacles and debris. Snag boats, tasked with the removal of sunken trees and the clearing of the rivers, were one of the first answers to the growing loss of life and property. The navigability of the rivers became a priority to settlers, who believed the future prosperity of the Lower Mississippi Valley and the western frontier, including Arkansas, was acutely tied to the safety of river trade. As western river trade became more important …

Snake Eyes: Murder in a Southern Town

Snake Eyes: Murder in a Southern Town is a true crime nonfiction book written by Bitty Martin of Hot Springs (Garland County) and published by Prometheus Books in 2022. The book received much acclaim, garnering positive reviews, brisk sales, and requests from across the nation for the Arkansas-based author to appear on true crime media programming. Over the six years she spent writing the book and interviewing more than fifty sources, Martin uncovered underlying secrets about the death of a teenage girl in what was originally called an accident but later revealed to be a murder. The book’s title is evocative not only of the scene of the crime but also the era in Hot Springs history when it was …

Snake Fungal Disease

aka: Ophidiomycosis

Snake fungal disease (ophidiomycosis) is an emerging infectious disease of numerous species of snakes caused by the fungus Ophidiomyces ophiodiicola within the family Onygenacea. Formerly, Ophidiomyces was classified as the Chrysoporium anamorph of Nannizziopsis vriesii species complex (CANV species complex), a group of fungi that are frequently associated with emerging infections in various groups of reptiles. However, recent phylogenetic analyses have demonstrated that CANV represents a species complex that also includes fungi of the genera Nannizziopsis and Paranannizziopsis and that Ophidiomyces is known to occur only on both colubrid and viperid snakes. It was first definitively identified in 2006 in a population of timber rattlesnakes (Crotalus horridus) in New Hampshire. However, although identification has not been conclusively proven because cultures …

Snawfus

In the Ozarks of Arkansas and Missouri, the Snawfus is a mythological creature of regional folklore. Described as an all-white, deer-like creature, but much larger, the Snawfus is usually reported to have plum or dogwood branches in full bloom growing from its head instead of antlers. Most of what is known about the Snawfus was collected and recorded by the folklorist Vance Randolph, who related the various stories he heard about the creature in the animals and plants chapter of his book, We Always Lie to Strangers: Tall Tales from the Ozarks. The blue haze that hangs over the Ozark Mountains in the fall and winter is attributed to the exhalations of the Snawfus, which is believed to emit spirals …

Snowball Gymnasium

The Snowball Gymnasium is a one-story concrete-block building located to the west of downtown Snowball (Searcy County). As the site of sporting events and other community gatherings, the Snowball Gymnasium has been an important community center and gathering place for the Snowball community since the mid-twentieth century. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 16, 2020. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) constructed a new school at Snowball in 1938. The school campus was expanded in 1956 with the construction of the gymnasium. The gymnasium was built by contractors Vance Crow and Bea Stuart of Harrison (Boone County), and they boarded in Snowball with the Joe Cash family while the building was being constructed. The first …

So Sad about Gloria

aka: Visions of Doom
aka: Visions of Evil

So Sad about Gloria is a ninety-minute horror/thriller movie that was filmed in central Arkansas and released in October 1975. Rated “PG” for Parental Guidance, it was directed by Arkansan Harry Thomason for Centronics International, a production company based in Little Rock (Pulaski County). So Sad about Gloria was also re-released under the titles Visions of Doom and Visions of Evil. The plot, credited to Marshall Riggan, centers around a young woman who moves back to the family home after being released from a mental hospital. She soon experiences frightening visions concerning a series of ax murders. There is an element of romance after she meets young writer Chris Kenner, who is lounging in a tree. His rationale: “I sit …

Soil and Water Conservation Districts

The most destructive period to the soil and water resources of Arkansas was during the years 1900 to 1930. During this time, farmers generally received money only from the sale of timber and cotton. Sheet erosion insidiously removed the fertile, more absorbent upper layers of topsoil. This increased the rate of runoff from the fields, and gullies soon appeared. Reduced fertility led to crop failures, and repeated failures led to abandonment of farms in many instances. The appearance of the countryside rapidly deteriorated in the absence of an organized program of soil conservation. Agricultural colleges of the day were teaching terracing and crop rotation, but typical forty- to eighty-acre subsistence farmers viewed these practices as being too sophisticated for their …

Soil Conservation

Around 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, the first human inhabitants of what was to become the state of Arkansas could be characterized as scattered, small bands of hunter/gatherers who had little impact on the soil and water resources. Soil erosion that occurred was primarily due to natural events associated with dramatic post-glacial weather patterns. Human cultivation of Arkansas soils began around 3,000 years ago during the late Archaic Period when small patches of mostly squash, gourds, sunflowers, beans, and, later, corn were cultivated. Early crop cultivation did not appear to harm the soil and water resources due to the small size of the gardens and the relatively low density of human inhabitants in the region. As human population increased, so …

Soils

Arkansas has a diversity of rich soils that developed in a favorable environment for growing plants. The soils of Arkansas are the foundation of the number-one industry in the state—agriculture. Arkansas soils are natural, dynamic bodies of broken-down and weathered mineral and organic matter, in some places altered by human activity, capable of growing plants. Soils are unique and exist as a creation of five soil-forming factors: parent material, climate, topography, organisms, and time. Soil parent material is the geological source of the mineral component, defined as particles less than two millimeters in diameter. Arkansas soils developed from residium, loess, alluvium, and old marine sediment parent materials. Residium is weathered rock, and Arkansas’s residium is mostly soil derived from sandstone, …

Soldier’s Story, A

A Soldier’s Story is a 1984 dramatic movie filmed entirely in Arkansas at four locations: Clarendon (Monroe County), Fort Chaffee, Fort Smith (Sebastian County), and the Lamar Porter Athletic Field in Little Rock (Pulaski County). After being turned down by several studios, it was produced on an extremely low budget and went on to win numerous awards, earning more than four times what it cost to produce. At a critical point in the filming when there was very little money to pay extras, Governor Bill Clinton helped the production by approving use of Arkansas Army National Guard personnel in full military dress for an essential scene. The movie starred a number of distinguished actors including Denzel Washington, Howard E. Rollins …

Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV)

The Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) is a historical, patriotic, and non-political organization established to honor the memory of soldiers who fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War. In Arkansas, there are eighteen camps of the SCV (as of 2010), and the organization works to commemorate Arkansas’s Confederate heritage through annual memorial events and more. The SCV is a direct offshoot of the United Confederate Veterans (UCV), a voluntary organization of many veterans who fought for the Confederacy during its brief existence (1861–1865). The SCV was organized at Richmond, Virginia, in 1896 at the convention of the UCV. Initially, the SCV was charged with two duties: assisting the UCV and its elderly members at their conventions and other activities, …

Soulesbury Institute

aka: Soulesbury College

The Arkansas Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was organized in 1836 and held its first meeting in Batesville (Independence County) that fall. The Methodist Church had a longstanding interest in education, and by 1860 it was sponsoring Ouachita Conference Female College in Tulip (Dallas County), Wallace Institute in Van Buren (Crawford County), Arkadelphia Female College in Arkadelphia (Clark County), the Washington Male and Female Seminary in Washington (Hempstead County), the Elm Springs Academy at Elm Springs (Hempstead County), and the Soulesbury Institute in Batesville. The Soulesbury Institute was established in 1849, and classes began in January 1850. The name Soulesbury was chosen to honor Bishop Joshua Soule, a leader in organizing the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and Francis …

Souls Aflame

aka: Thou Shalt Not Kill

Written and directed by Raymond Wells, Souls Aflame (1928) was a late-silent-era film made either entirely or partly in Norfork (Baxter County). The movie is sometimes described as a Civil War film, but it dealt with a fictitious feud between the Buck and Lilly families during Reconstruction. Souls Aflame may have been the first movie filmed largely or entirely in Arkansas. It is now considered a lost film. One valuable secondary source with authoritative information on this movie is the American Film Institute Catalog of Feature Films Produced in the United States: Feature Films, 1921–1930. Entries in the catalog were based on copyright information and articles and reviews in contemporary periodicals. The entry on Souls Aflame reads, “Drama. Shortly after …

South Arkansas Heritage Museum

The South Arkansas Heritage Museum (SAHM), located in Magnolia (Columbia County) in the donated Longino home at 317 West Main Street one block from the town square, is dedicated to the history and heritage of southern Arkansas. The museum’s collection consists primarily of donations from the museum’s founder and benefactors, with a focus upon tools used by workers, craftsmen, and artisans, as well as clothing and related fabric arts, home crafts, artifacts from occupations and pastimes in southern Arkansas, and items relating to prominent families in the area. It also includes photographs, documents, and a 1948 fire truck. The first floor of the museum houses the collections and is open to visitors, and the top floor is for staff offices …

South Arkansas Regional Airport

aka: Goodwin Field

The South Arkansas Regional Airport at Goodwin Field is located eight miles west of El Dorado (Union County). The airport is owned by the municipality of El Dorado and is a mixed-use airport primarily used for general aviation. There has been spotty commercial service in the history of the airport. The airfield was constructed in the early 1940s by the Civil Aeronautics Administration under the auspices of the National Defense airport program. The terminal building was built in 1947. There is minimal evidence that the Army Air Force actually used the airport to a great extent during World War II, despite the construction of it for that purpose. The airport uses two asphalt runways, the longer one (4/22) at 6,601 …

South Elementary School (Wynne)

South Elementary School, located at 711 East Union Avenue in Wynne (Cross County), is a single-story, brick-veneered four-room schoolhouse constructed in 1939 by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a Depression-era public relief program. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 24, 2006. In the early part of the twentieth century, white children in Wynne’s segregated school system were attending classes in a 1906 building; in 1928, an elementary school and gymnasium were erected when President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal offered an opportunity for funds for a new school. The school district successfully applied for financing from the WPA to build a new school in the fall of 1938. The Wynne Daily Star-Progress reported in …

South Fork Nature Center

South Fork Nature Center (SFNC), which opened in 2010, is the Gates Rogers Foundation’s premier conservancy project. Located in central Arkansas just east of Clinton (Van Buren County), it lies in the Boston Mountains range of the Ozark Mountains on the banks of the South Fork of the Little Red River section of Greers Ferry Lake. Featuring two miles of interpretive nature trails on the peninsula and a spectacular view of the lake, the center serves as a model to educate and inspire the public to be aware of the environment, to protect vulnerable plant and animal species, and to adopt practices that are ecologically sound. It seeks to preserve Arkansas’s native flora and fauna in a manner that ensures …

South Side High School Sign

The South Side High School Sign, located on the grounds of the South Side Bee Branch School District complex in Van Buren County, consists of large stones that were placed by workers of the National Youth Administration (NYA) in 1937 to mark the location of the local high school. The South Side Bee Branch School District was established in the fall of 1929 to serve the students living south of the small, thriving town of Bee Branch (Van Buren County). The Great Depression began around the same time, and Van Buren County took advantage of the federal relief programs established to bring jobs to afflicted areas. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) established a camp at Damascus (Faulkner and Van Buren …

Southern Cavefish

aka: Typhlichthys subterraneus

The southern cavefish (Typhlichthys subterraneus) is one of the two species of blind cave fishes found in Arkansas. The other is the Ozark cavefish. The southern cavefish is found in the subterranean waters of two major non-overlapping ranges separated by the Mississippi River: in the Ozark Plateau of central and southeastern Missouri and northeastern Arkansas and in the Cumberland and Interior Low plateaus of northwest Alabama, northwest Georgia, central Tennessee, and Kentucky. They are usually found at considerable depths (mostly between 175 and 240 meters below the land surface). This species, which can grow as long as ninety millimeters, has a large, broad head. The caudal fin has from zero to two rows of sensory papillae (one on the upper …

Southern Ladies’ Journal

The Southern Ladies’ Journal, a weekly newspaper for women, operated from 1881 to 1887 in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Launched on June 21, 1881, as a section for women in the Rural and Workman newspaper under the title the Ladies’ Little Rock Journal, it would later become an independent publication. On August 8, 1884, it became the Arkansas Ladies’ Journal; in April 1886, it was renamed the Southern Ladies’ Journal. It ceased publication the following year. Its founding editor was Mary Ann Webster Loughborough, the bestselling author of the Civil War memoir My Cave Life in Vicksburg. Its founding business manager was Sophie Crease, a resident of Little Rock known for her energy and enterprise. A women’s stock company, with …

Southern Strategy [Novel]

In his long career as a journalist, Bob Lancaster wrote a single novel, Southern Strategy, based upon and perhaps inspired by his experiences as a young reporter during the crisis that followed the showdown between Governor Orval E. Faubus and the federal courts over school desegregation at Little Rock (Pulaski County) in 1957. Southern Strategy, published in 1981 by Seaview Books of New York, followed the moral journey of its picaresque main character, Amos Shellnut, a contented sawmill worker whose life in a small town outside Little Rock is disrupted by the sudden flight of his sweetheart Norma to Hollywood to seek her destiny and also by discombobulations in his town caused by Faubus’s racial demagoguery. In the novel, Shellnut, …

Southland Park Gaming and Racing

aka: Southland Greyhound Park

Southland Park Gaming and Racing, formerly known as Southland Greyhound Park, is a gambling and entertainment center in West Memphis (Crittenden County) near the intersection of Interstates 55 and 40. Begun as a dog-racing track, it now includes games of skill such as blackjack and live poker games played with electronic cards along with trivia contests, karaoke, and live music. Southland Park began as a dog track in 1956. It was the only gambling venue in the Mid-South region and drew visitors from several nearby states. The track offered pari-mutuel betting (French for “mutual stake”), a system common to horse racing as well as greyhound racing. In this system, bets are put together in a pool with odds established before …

Southwest Experimental Fast Oxide Reactor (SEFOR)

The Southwest Experimental Fast Oxide Reactor (SEFOR), which is located east of Strickler in rural Washington County, was completed in 1969 at the direction of the federal government, specifically the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, to test the feasibility of breeder reactors in the production of electricity. It closed in 1972, and the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) took over ownership of the site in 1975 and conducted research at the facility until 1986. A fast breeder reactor such as SEFOR uses fast neutrons for fission, making it possible for the nuclear reactor to produce more new fuel than it consumes, essentially “breeding” new fuel in the process. SEFOR was developed by a consortium of private energy companies, …

Southwest Trail, The [Computer Game]

The Southwest Trail was a 1987 text-based computer game designed by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC) as a follow-up to that company’s highly successful game The Oregon Trail, in which the player assumes the role of the leader of a wagon train following the trail from Missouri to Oregon. However, The Southwest Trail, which follows settlers from the St. Louis, Missouri, area through Arkansas and on to Texas, was much less popular than its predecessor, being seen largely as a cheap imitation of the first. In addition, the game drew criticism for misrepresenting Arkansas in several important ways. The original Oregon Trail game was designed by Don Rawitsch in 1971 for use in his eighth-grade history class. Three years …

Spanish Land Grants

Arkansas inherited a complex legacy of land grants from its time as part of Spanish Louisiana. Beginning in 1769, royal governor Alejandro O’Reilly established regulations concerning the size of permissible concessions and the conditions by which applicants could perfect titles to their land. Subsequent governors upheld and expanded similar regulations, but in practice, most grants made during Spanish rule were approved upon request only by the commandant of the nearest settlement. Formal surveys of the grants were rarely made, which further frustrated attempts to determine rightful ownership of granted land once Spanish Louisiana became part of the United States. O’Reilly’s regulations prescribed a three-year probationary period during which claimants were expected to clear the frontage of their land, build ditches …

Speckled Pocketbook

aka: Lampsilis streckeri

The speckled pocketbook is a bivalve mollusk belonging to the family Unionidae, commonly referred to as freshwater mussels, naiads, or clams. Each freshwater mussel is composed to two halves (valves) of a hard outer shell with the living animal (soft tissues) residing securely inside. The speckled pocketbook, scientific name Lampsilis streckeri, was described as a species new to science in 1927 by Lorraine Screven Frierson, a naturalist and landowner/merchant/planter residing south of Shreveport in the company town of Frierson, Louisiana. Frierson named the species in honor of his friend, colleague, and fellow naturalist John K. Strecker of Waco, Texas. Adults may reach a length of slightly more than 3.5 inches (or more than 90 millimeters), with a maximum life expectancy …

Spirit of the American Doughboy Monuments

The Spirit of the American Doughboy Monuments in Helena-West Helena (Phillips County) and Fort Smith (Sebastian County) are memorial sculptures erected following World War I to honor Arkansas servicemen who fought and died in the war. The Arkansas statues were dedicated as part of a nationwide series of Doughboy sculptures designed by artist E. M. “Dick” Viquesney. At least 136 Viquesney Doughboys survive in thirty-five U.S. states, and some experts consider the Doughboy to be one of the most-seen pieces of outdoor statuary in the nation. Viquesney, who lived from 1876 to 1946, devoted two years to perfecting what was to become his trademark. He interviewed scores of World War I veterans, studied hundreds of photographs, and used two soldiers …

Sponges

The phylum Porifera, which contains the sponges, is a highly successful group of metazoan animals that includes about 8,600 living species of marine and freshwater forms as well as some that inhabit brackish waters. The majority are marine, but there are about 150 species of freshwater sponges, including twenty-seven to thirty species found in North America north of Mexico. The family Spongillidae is the most speciose and widespread group of freshwater sponges and includes twenty-two genera and more than 130 species from a wide variety of habitats. Seven species of freshwater sponges have been documented in Arkansas. Sponges are an ancient group of asymmetrical invertebrates with a fossil record preceding the early Cambrian period (541 million years ago), and even …

Spring River

Flowing through northeastern Arkansas for approximately seventy-five miles in a southeastern direction, the Spring River empties into the Black River near Black Rock (Lawrence County). Mammoth Spring (Fulton County), adjacent to the Arkansas-Missouri state line, serves as the headwater for the Spring River. It expels more than nine million gallons of water each hour through a vent located eighty feet below the surface of Spring Lake, a low-turbidity body of water created by a dam downstream from the spring in what is now Mammoth Spring State Park. Although the water from the spring flows into the lake with great force, the vent’s depth prevents viewers on the surface from seeing the characteristic bubbling that springs typically produce. The consistent discharge …