Entry Type: Thing - Starting with C

Carroll County Courthouse, Western District

The Carroll County Courthouse, Western District in Eureka Springs (Carroll County) was built in 1908 from a design by local builder William Octavos Perkins and reflects the Italianate style of architecture. After Carroll County was created in 1833, its first seat of justice was in the home of William Sneed Jr., located between Carrollton (Carroll County) and Osage (Carroll County). Carrolton was selected as the county seat, and a two-story log courthouse was built in 1836, serving until a more substantial brick building was erected in 1844–1845. Fire destroyed that courthouse in the winter of 1859–1860, and a new one was not built until 1865 after the end of the Civil War. That building burned a year later, and a …

Carrollton Road

The Carrollton Road was part of an east-west road that crossed northern Arkansas in the 1830s and is noteworthy as one of the few documented roads used by the John Benge Detachment of Cherokee during the Indian Removal of the late 1830s. A segment of the road survives today. The Cherokee Removal detachment led by Captain John Benge initially consisted of 1,079 people and seventy wagons, though others would join the group as it headed west. The detachment departed from Fort Payne, Alabama, in late September and early October 1838. It crossed into Tennessee and later crossed the Mississippi River at Iron Banks in Kentucky. Traveling west and southwest through Missouri on the Military Road, the detachment crossed into Arkansas …

Carver Gymnasium

The Carver Gymnasium, located at 400 Ferguson Street in Lonoke (Lonoke County), is the last remaining structure associated with the town’s first African-American school. The plain-traditional-style concrete block construction building was added to the National Register on September 23, 2009, under Criterion A, due to its significance to local African-American history. In 1889, Goodspeed’s history documented that Lonoke was home to two schools, one for white students and one for “colored people.” A total of 1,640 African-American students were recorded in the county. The African-American school consisted of a two-story frame structure. It provided educational opportunities for grades one through eight. Attendance was sporadic due to the vast majority of students living and working on farms. In the fall of …

Case-Shiras-Dearmore House

The Case-Shiras-Dearmore House, located at 351 East 4th Street in Mountain Home (Baxter County), is a two-story wood-frame house in the Plain Traditional style, with a cut-stone outbuilding located to the rear (west side) of the house. The house is perhaps best known for its association with the noted Baxter County newspaper publisher Tom Shiras of the Baxter Bulletin. However, it was also the home of Dr. J. H. Case, the first dentist in Mountain Home. The Case-Shiras-Dearmore House was added to the National Register of Historic Places on February 3, 1992. The ell-shaped, intersecting gable roof plan of the main house features a historic gable roof addition at its northern end. The front (east) façade consists of a gable …

Cash: The Autobiography

Published on November 1, 1997, Cash: The Autobiography was the second autobiography written by Johnny Cash. As was true of his previous memoir, Man in Black, this book contains numerous stories about his upbringing in Arkansas. Written amid Cash’s mid-1990s comeback, the book was a success among fans and critics. Cash was Johnny Cash’s third book. After the publication of Man in Black, Cash had published a novel, Man in White, about the apostle Paul. For writing his second autobiography, he had the help of English music critic Patrick Carr. Carr conducted extensive interviews with Cash and then transcribed what Cash said in narrative form, much of it verbatim. Cash is markedly different in tone and structure from Man in …

Catfish Industry

aka: Ictalurus punctatus
The catfish industry is the largest component of aquaculture in the United States and a significant industry in Arkansas. Arkansas is the birthplace of the commercial catfish industry, with at least two farms selling catfish in the late 1950s. Arkansas farmers began to replace buffalofish (Ictiobus spp.) with catfish (Ictalurus punctatus) in the 1960s. By 1966, Arkansas had 4,500 acres in catfish production and three processing plants. However, increases in the price of fishmeal (an ingredient used in making fish feeds), an economic recession, and the lack of year-round production technology resulted in an industry downturn in the mid-1970s. Multiple-batch production technologies developed in the 1980s allowed for year-round supplies to processing plants. Catfish are raised in ten- to twenty-acre earthen …

Cave Crayfishes

aka: Troglobitic Crayfishes
Crayfishes belong to the Phylum Arthropoda, Subphylum Crustacea, Class Malacostraca, Order Decapoda, and Family Cambaridae. Crayfishes are a taxonomically diverse cosmopolitan group with more than 669 species worldwide. There appear to be two centers of geographic diversity, one in southeastern Australia (Southern Hemisphere center) and one in the southeastern United States (Northern Hemisphere center) in the southeastern Appalachian Mountains. Obligate cave-dwelling taxa in the United States occur in five main karst (limestone) geographic regions: (1) the Cumberland Plateau of the southern Appalachians of eastern Kentucky, eastern Tennessee, and northern Alabama; (2) the Interior Lowlands of southern Indiana, western Kentucky, and northwestern Tennessee; (3) the Greenbrier Valley of West Virginia; (4) the Ozark Plateau of southwestern Missouri, northern Arkansas, and eastern …

Cave Fishes

aka: Hypogean, Phreatic, Stygobitic, Subterranean, Troglomorphic, and Troglobitic Fishes
Cavefishes, found in fresh and brackish water, are adapted to living in caves and other subterranean habitats. There are more than 200 species of obligatory cavefishes found on all continents, except for Antarctica. New cavefish species continue to be described annually, and there are certainly undescribed species yet to be discovered. In terms of relative numbers of species on various continents, by far the greatest diversity is in Asia with more than 120 species, followed by South America with more than thirty species, and about thirty species in North America. In comparison, nine species are known from Africa, five from Oceania, and only a single species from Europe. China possesses the greatest diversity with more than eighty species, followed by …

Cavender’s All-Purpose Greek Seasoning

Lester “Spike” Cavender of Harrison (Boone County) created Cavender’s All-Purpose Greek Seasoning with his son Ronald Stephen Cavender in the late 1960s. It was adapted from a recipe by a Greek friend of Cavender’s who was a chef. For many years, the seasoning was shared only with their friends and family until they began selling it in 1969. Since 1978, Cavender’s All Purpose Greek Seasoning has been manufactured and sold by the S-C Seasoning Company, Inc. In May 1988, the company moved from its original location to a larger facility in Harrison. By 2015, a third generation of the Cavender family was producing and selling their world-famous Greek seasoning. Lester Robert “Spike” Cavender was born in Cooper, Delta County, Texas, …

Caves and Caverns

Caves and caverns are natural underground openings large enough for humans to enter. They are primarily formed by volcanic activity or the eroding effects of water and wind. The caves of Arkansas are of the latter variety, the result of the dissolution of limestone and other soluble rock throughout the state’s mountainous regions. Hence, the highest concentration of caves is in the northwest and north-central areas of the state. Arkansas boasts several caves of sufficient size to be of interest to tourists and spelunkers, and all of these can be described as “living caves”—caves in which water remains present, along with its continuing ability to alter cave structure. The caves of Arkansas display vast arrays of stalactites and stalagmites, underground …

Caviar

Arkansas caviar, which is distributed nationally, consists of eggs from certain freshwater fish caught in the state’s rivers. The commercial fishermen who supply the product to wholesalers generally obtain the eggs from the Arkansas, Mississippi, White, Cache, and St. Francis rivers in eastern Arkansas from late November until early April. The eggs come from paddlefish (commonly referred to in the Arkansas Delta as spoonbill catfish), shovelnose sturgeon, and bowfin. Armenian brothers Melkoum and Mouchegh Petrossian often are credited with popularizing caviar in Paris, France, in the 1920s and spurring a worldwide interest in the product. Paddlefish eggs make up the majority of the Arkansas caviar that is harvested. Paddlefish can be distinguished by their large mouths and elongated snouts, called the rostrum. …

CCC Company 749 Powder Magazine

The CCC Company 749 Powder Magazine is located north of Forest Service Road 4128 and south of Briggsville in Yell County. Company 749 of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) built the structure around 1933 to store explosives (powder or blasting caps) for its work in the rugged forests of the area. The CCC Company 749 Powder Magazine is a small stone and concrete structure originally constructed for use by the Civilian Conservation Corps working in the Ouachita National Forest. The square building measures six feet on each side. It is five feet high with a four-inch-thick concrete top and a concrete floor. The cut-stone and concrete walls vary from six to eleven inches in thickness. Civilian Conservation Corps Company 749 …

Cedar Creek Bridge

aka: Goodie Creek Bridge
The Cedar Creek Bridge, located on Independence County Road 235 where it crosses Cedar Creek about one and a half miles south of its intersection with Arkansas Highway 14 near Rosie (Independence County), is a stone, closed-spandrel deck arch bridge. It was constructed in 1941 by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a Depression-era public relief agency. The road to the site of the Cedar Creek Bridge did not appear on Arkansas maps until 1936, five years before the structure was erected, indicating it was likely the location of a ford. Independence County leaders turned to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal for funding to improve this and other roads throughout the county during the Great Depression. On January 29, 1940, …

Cedar Grove Cemetery (Johnson County)

aka: Mason Cemetery
aka: Darnell Cemetery
The Cedar Grove Cemetery near Clarksville (Johnson County), not to be confused with cemeteries of the same name in Boone and Scott counties, was used by the initial settlers of the area and is located between the Interior Highlands of the Boston Mountains and the Arkansas River Valley of Arkansas. The cemetery is currently covered with overgrowth of vegetation. The graves have recessed, and many of the headstones have been toppled. Also, there are small trees and shrubs growing throughout the area both near and over marked gravesites. According to tradition, early white settlers founded the cemetery. Unevenly cut headstones carved from local sandstone were used as grave markers, although some no longer have readable markings. It is unknown what …

Cedar Grove School No. 81

Located five miles north of Pocahontas (Randolph County) in the Brockett community is the Cedar Grove School No. 81. The school opened after a redistricting of Randolph County school districts in 1890 and offered classes through the eighth grade. The original school building served the local community until it was destroyed by a tornado on March 30, 1938. The building that replaced it held classes until the school district consolidated with the Pocahontas School District in 1949. After consolidation, the building served for a time as a meeting place for the Brockett Home Extension Club and as a community building. Cedar Grove School No. 81 is a Greek Revival–style building with the original well house and outhouse. The well house …

Celeste

As part of the Union’s Mississippi River Squadron, the sternwheel steamer Celeste served 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. The Celeste displaced 300 tons, but specific details about its construction and acquisition by Union forces are not known. In late August 1864, Brigadier General Christopher Columbus Andrews, commanding the Second Division of the Seventh Army Corps headquartered at DeValls Bluff (Prairie County), ordered an expedition up the White River to locate and pursue the troops under the command of Brigadier General Joseph Orville Shelby and Colonel Archibald Stephenson Dobbins. The initial phase of this expedition …

Centennial History of Arkansas

Dallas Tabor Herndon’s three-volume Centennial History of Arkansas (1922) was created in the early days of the Arkansas History Commission (AHC), now the Arkansas State Archives. Herndon, the AHC’s first director, wrote that “the state had no history that could be relied upon as authentic,” and he saw a need for a more “comprehensive state history” to aid him in his work with researchers at the AHC. Herndon believed that his history would be more reliable and accessible than any other before it, such as Little Rock (Pulaski County) native Fay Hempstead’s multi-volume Historical Review of Arkansas, published in 1911, when Herndon first began work at the AHC. Unlike Hempstead, Herndon was not from Arkansas, and thus he believed his …

Centipedes

Centipedes (class Chilopoda) are myriapods that include two subclasses, five living orders, and about 2,800 described species (out of an estimated worldwide fauna of approximately 8,000 species) within about twenty-three families. Their fossil history dates back over 410 million years ago to the late Silurian Period of the Paleozoic Era. In terms of worldwide geographic distribution, centipedes are found north of the Arctic Circle and inhabit all subarctic regions but are most abundant in temperate, desert, and tropical areas, where they are common terrestrial invertebrates. Humans have unintentionally introduced several species onto most oceanic islands. However, one order (Craterostigomorpha) is endemic to New Zealand and Tasmania. Members of the families Oryidae and Scutigeridae and of the subfamily Otostigminae have been …

Central Arkansas Library System

The Central Arkansas Library System (CALS) is the largest library system in Arkansas. Created in 1975, the system includes fourteen libraries located in Pulaski and Perry counties. The first public library to open in central Arkansas was the Little Rock Public Library in 1910. Earlier efforts to create libraries in the city included the library of the Little Rock Debating Society in the 1830s and newspaper publisher William Woodruff’s circulating library in the 1840s. After the Civil War, the Mercantile Library opened in the city and was available to professional men. After a merger with the Marquand Library, created for use by employees of the St. Louis and Iron Mountain Railroad, the library was acquired by the Young Men’s Christian …

Central College for Women

Founded in 1892, Central College operated in Conway (Faulkner County) until 1950, educating female students and supported by the Arkansas Southern Baptist Association. Efforts by Arkansas Baptists to open a college to educate women date to the 1880s. In 1890, the state convention authorized Colonel G. W. Bruce of Conway to chair a committee to select a location and open the institution. Bids for the college were received from Bentonville (Benton County), Conway, Ozark (Franklin County), and Rogers (Benton County). Reporting back to the convention the following year, Bruce and the committee stated that Conway delivered the best offer. Conway offered the committee more than $27,000 in pledges, ten acres of land, and a completed building by January 1, 1893, …

Central Mudminnows

aka: Umbrids
The central mudminnow (Umbra limi) is a small (51 to 132 mm [2 to 5 in.]) fish that belongs to the Family Umbridae and Order Esociformes. There are three other North American members of the family: the eastern mudminnow (U. pygmaea) of the Eastern Seaboard and Atlantic Coastal Plain, the Alaska blackfish (Dallia pectoralis) that occurs in Alaska and adjacent Siberia, and the Olympic mudminnow (Novumbra hubbsi) of the Olympic Peninsula of Washington. All of these are strictly Northern Hemisphere freshwater species. A third Umbra species, the European Mudminnow (U. krameri), occurs widely throughout Europe. Mudminnows are most closely related to esocids (pikes and pickerels). The fossil record includes specimens that date back to the Oligocene of Eurasia and North …

Central Theater

Built in the 1930s, the historic Central Theater is located at 1008 Central Avenue in downtown Hot Springs (Garland County). It is said to be the oldest stage and motion picture theater in Hot Springs. Chris Rix acquired the property in 2020 and set about restoring it, upgrading HVAC, safety mechanisms, and technical systems to modern standards. Many of the original Art Deco design elements from the 1930s can still be seen in the auditorium, which seats more than 300 people. The 10,000-square-foot Central Theater building was constructed in the 1930s as a garage; pillars remain where the garage doors once were. The building was converted to a theater in 1937. It presented first-run movies through the post–World War II …