Entries - Entry Type: Thing

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 …

Springfield to Fayetteville Road

The Springfield to Fayetteville Road was built upon elaborate networks of horse trails that were likely established by the Osage. The trails extended into northwestern Arkansas and as Springfield, Missouri, was being established in southwestern Missouri in the late 1820s, settlers co-opted the established trails for their own use. The trail from Springfield to Fayetteville (Washington County) came to be called by that name and was established in 1835, totaling 146 miles. It was the major road prior to the 1838 establishment of what later became known as the Wire Road or Telegraph Road by the United States military. Also called Pioneer Road, the Springfield to Fayetteville Road was employed by the U.S. Army in 1838 to remove Native Americans …

Springfield–Des Arc Bridge

aka: Springfield Cadron Bridge
aka: Springfield Bridge

The Springfield Bridge is the oldest bridge in Arkansas, although it has been moved from its original location. It was erected in 1874 across the North Cadron Creek three miles east of Springfield (Conway County) on the Springfield–Des Arc Road. This early thoroughfare connected Des Arc (Prairie County), a thriving port for steamboat traffic on the White River, with Springfield, the county seat of Conway County from 1850 to 1873. Before the bridge was built, C. A. Simmons operated a ferry at the river crossing, charging five cents for a pedestrian, fifteen cents for a person on horseback, or seventy-five cents for a two-horse spring carriage. On November 8, 1871, Conway County awarded a contract to the King Bridge Company …

Springs

Springs are naturally occurring geologic features that transport emerging groundwater to the land surface. They also represent a transition from groundwater to surface water. This water can be released through one opening, multiple openings, or numerous seeps in the rock strata or soil. Springs have unique properties such as discrete habitats with relatively constant conditions like temperature, dissolved oxygen concentration, and flow. The underground reservoirs from which springs arise may be cavernicolous limestone, gravel, sand, sediment, soil, or other permeable formations. A spring’s presence depends on the nature and relationship of permeable and impermeable units, the position of the water table, and the land topography. Faults often play an important role in the location of springs by damming up an …

SS Ouachita Victory

The SS Ouachita Victory was a Victory ship launched on May 8, 1945, from Wilmington, California and named for Ouachita College (now Ouachita Baptist University). The title of SS stands for “steam ship” and should not be confused with USS, which signifies it as a “United States Ship.” Although it was used during World War II, the Ouachita was not associated with the United States Navy. The California Shipbuilding Corporation built the SS Ouachita Victory. The ship was 455 feet long and was composed of three decks. It could travel at a speed of fifteen knots. Lightly armed with small guns, Victory ships were never meant for battle. Their primary function was to transport cargo and troops. Only three victory …

St. Agnes Catholic Church

St. Agnes Catholic Church in Mena (Polk County) is the center of worship for St. Agnes Parish, which was established by Bishop Edward Fitzgerald in 1896. A temporary wooden structure first served the congregation, with a two-story frame building following. A new church building was completed in 1922, and St. Agnes Catholic Church was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991, having retained all of its significant architectural and decorative features. Mena was incorporated as a township on September 18, 1896, as settlers began to flood into the area around the Kansas City Southern rail line. Within a month of Mena’s incorporation, Bishop Fitzgerald established the parish, and with the help of Father Patrick Enright of Fayetteville …

St. Andrew’s College

St. Andrew’s College, located near Fort Smith (Sebastian County), was the first attempt to found a Roman Catholic college in Arkansas. It was established in 1849 by Irish native Andrew Byrne, the first bishop of the Diocese of Little Rock. Byrne never had more than ten priests in Arkansas, and he maintained the Church with funds from the Austrian-based Leopoldine society and the French-based Society for the Propagation of the Faith. With this support, Byrne purchased land near Fort Smith to found the first Catholic college in Arkansas. When later incorporated into Fort Smith, the area was known as the “Catholic mile.” It was bordered on the north by Grand Avenue, on the south by Dodson Avenue, and on the east …

St. Charles Battle Monument

The St. Charles Battle Monument, located in the center of the intersection of Arkansas Street and Broadway in St. Charles (Arkansas County), is a commemorative monument erected in 1919 in honor of the casualties of the 1862 engagement at St. Charles. On June 17, 1862, a Union flotilla steamed up the White River to bring supplies to Major General Samuel R. Curtis’s Army of the Southwest, which was threatening Little Rock (Pulaski County) from eastern Arkansas. Confederate troops had sunk the gunboat CSS Maurepas and a pair of steamboats at St. Charles to block the river and placed cannon on shore to bombard any approaching vessels. The USS Mound City led the Union force. Around 10:00 a.m., a Confederate shell …

St. Edward Catholic Church

St. Edward Catholic Church is part of the second Catholic parish to be established in Little Rock (Pulaski County) and is located on the east side of the city. It began to accommodate increased German settlement in Arkansas during the 1870s and 1880s. Its first building was dedicated in August 1885 as St. Edward Catholic Church in honor of the patron saint of Little Rock bishop Edward Fitzgerald. A new building was built in the early 1900s, and there have been several renovations over the years; it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. As more Hispanics moved to central Arkansas in the 1990s, St. Edward attracted these parishioners by giving sermons in Spanish. Growing oppression …

St. Francis River

The St. Francis River originates in the northeast corner of Iron County, Missouri, and flows for twenty-five miles through the St. Francois Mountains, where it is a clear, fast-flowing whitewater stream until it reaches the Mississippi Alluvial Plain north of Poplar Bluff, Missouri, at which point the river becomes a sluggish, silt-laden stream. The river there turns south and travels 207 miles, forming the boundary between the Missouri bootheel and northeast Arkansas and then coursing between Crowley’s Ridge and the Mississippi River. The mouth of the St. Francis where it flows into the Mississippi is in the St. Francis National Forest just north of Helena-West Helena (Phillips County). The St. Francis River valley has been the site of human habitation …

St. John’s Episcopal Church (Camden)

St. John’s Episcopal Church, located in Camden (Ouachita County), was constructed in 1926. The building includes Gothic Revival details and is in the shape of a cross. Added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 24, 2017, the church continues to have an active congregation. The parish was organized on March 6, 1850. Early efforts to purchase a building in which to hold services proved difficult due to a lack of funds, but in 1871, the parish obtained a former school on Adams Street. By 1887, that building was in such poor condition that it was demolished, and a new building began to be constructed on the same site in 1888. Around the late 1910s, the parish purchased …

St. John’s Seminary

St. John’s Seminary opened in 1911 in Little Rock (Pulaski County) on Gaines Street as a wing of the Little Rock College for Boys. In its fifty-six-year run, the seminary produced hundreds of pastors, teachers, chaplains, and priests. The seminary was relocated to North Tyler Street in Little Rock’s Pulaski Heights neighborhood in 1916 but was closed in 1967 due to financial constraints and a shortage of trained faculty. Today, the campus is the home of the St. John Catholic Center, housing the administrative offices of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Little Rock. St. John’s Seminary was started in September 1911 by Bishop John Baptist Morris, who decided the best way to obtain new priests was to open a seminary …

St. Johns’ College

St. Johns’ College in Little Rock (Pulaski County), a school created and run by Arkansas Freemasons, was the first institution of higher education chartered in Arkansas (though the third to open its doors). During its short life, it trained some of the most important future leaders in Arkansas. The vision of the people involved set the stage for Arkansas to provide a quality education for its citizens. Grand Master Elbert H. English, at the annual communication of the Grand Lodge of Arkansas in November 1850, announced the desire of state Masons to create a college for the purpose of educating Arkansas’s citizenry: “Several of the Grand Lodges of our sister states have led off in this noble cause by the …

St. Joseph [Steamboat]

The St. Joseph was a steamboat that burst a boiler on the Mississippi River on January 23, 1850, resulting in the deaths of between fifteen and twenty passengers and crew members. The St. Joseph was a 217-ton sidewheel paddleboat built at St. Louis, Missouri, in 1846 that ran a route along the Mississippi between St. Louis and New Orleans, Louisiana. The St. Joseph was heading up the Mississippi River on January 23, 1850, with a load of passengers—many of whom were immigrants—and cargo when, while apparently racing with the steamboat South America, its larboard boiler burst as the vessel neared the mouth of the Arkansas River. The boiler blew backward, killing a boy and mortally wounding the ship’s second engineer. …

St. Louis Southwestern Railway

aka: Cotton Belt

The St. Louis Southwestern Railway began in Tyler, Texas, in 1875. Construction began in Arkansas in 1881. When completed in 1883, the railroad ran diagonally across the state from Texarkana (Miller County) to St. Francis (Clay County). In 1930, the company operated 712 miles of track in Arkansas. The Cotton Belt, as it was better known, would reach its peak mileage in the state in the early 1930s. By the middle to late 1930s, the Great Depression and declining passenger revenue led the railroad to begin abandonment of many of its subsidiary companies and branch lines. Southern Pacific Railroad gained control of the Cotton Belt in 1932 in an effort to gain connections to eastern markets at St. Louis, Missouri, …

St. Louis–San Francisco Railway

aka: Frisco

The St. Louis–San Francisco Railway Co. (SLSF), better known as the Frisco, was organized in 1876 in Missouri. By 1881, the company consisted of a handful of lines concentrated in central and southern Missouri but reaching to Wichita, Kansas; Vinita, Oklahoma; and Fayetteville (Washington County), Arkansas. Although the Frisco never built into the heart of Arkansas, its feeder lines across northwestern and northeastern Arkansas connected communities with other lines across the state as well as the markets throughout the nation, allowing development of agricultural resources, industrial hubs, and resort communities on the periphery of the state. The Frisco was built on remnants of the older Atlantic and Pacific Railroad, acquiring right of way and trackage in Missouri and Indian Territory (present-day …

St. Nicholas [Steamboat]

The St. Nicholas was a steamboat that ran between St. Louis and New Orleans, Louisiana. It suffered a catastrophic boiler explosion on April 24, 1859, and caught fire on a stretch of the Mississippi River near where the Pennsylvania had met a similar fate a year earlier. Sixty passengers and crew members were killed in the accident. The St. Nicholas was a 666-ton sidewheel paddleboat built at California, Pennsylvania, in 1853 for James Wood, P. R. Friend, and P. O. Scully of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. By 1859, it was owned by Ambrose Reeder of St. Louis, Missouri, and Ben V. Glime, who served as clerk on the St. Nicholas. Oliver H. McMullen was captain. The vessel was headed toward New Orleans …

St. Vincent Hot Springs

aka: St. Joseph's Mercy Health Center
aka: Mercy Hot Springs
aka: CHI St. Vincent Hot Springs

Founded as St. Joseph’s Infirmary, St. Vincent Hot Springs is the second-oldest hospital in Arkansas, serving the medical needs of Hot Springs (Garland County) and its surrounding communities since 1888. St. Vincent Hot Springs is a 282-bed, acute-care hospital located on Werner Street in Hot Springs. In the 1880s, the Reverend Patrick McGowan, who settled in Hot Springs after retiring, asked Hot Springs physician Dr. J. M. Keller to buy a suitable building and its surrounding property for a hospital. In 1888, Mother Aloysius Burke and Sister Mary Clare, two Sisters of Mercy, came to Hot Springs from Little Rock (Pulaski County) to prepare the thirty-bed hospital, St. Joseph’s Infirmary, for its grand opening. The hospital opened to Hot Spring residents …

Star City Confederate Memorial

The Star City Confederate Memorial is a commemorative sculpture erected in Star City (Lincoln County) in 1926 by the Captain J. Martin Meroney Chapter No. 1831 of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) to remember local men who had served in the Confederate army during the Civil War. Though Lincoln County was not formed until 1871, portions of two Confederate infantry and two cavalry companies, as well as a company of Home Guards, were raised in the area that would later encompass the Reconstruction-era county. In the early twentieth century, the members of the Captain J. Martin Meroney Chapter No. 1831 of the UDC decided to emulate other chapters around Arkansas and erect a statue in memory of local Confederates. …

Star of India

Star of India, an award-winning restaurant in western Little Rock (Pulaski County), has become a renowned part of Arkansas’s cuisine scene since its establishment in 1993. It is said to have been the state’s first Indian restaurant and has become known not only for its food but also for its service under the charismatic personality of chef/owner Sami Lal. Born in the Indian state of Punjab in 1956, Lal has said that he took an interest in cooking at an early age by watching his mother prepare the family’s meals. In 1979, he left for Hamburg, Germany, to attend cooking school. While a student, he found work at a local restaurant, starting as a dishwasher and quickly working his way …

State of Arkansas v. Artoria Smith

aka: Arkansas v. Smith (2015)

State of Arkansas v. Artoria Smith is a decision of the Pulaski County Circuit Court written by Judge Herbert T. Wright Jr. and filed on January 20, 2015. The decision declared unconstitutional Arkansas’s failure-to-vacate statute—a statute that criminalizes failure to pay rent while remaining on the premises (an act that no other state criminalizes). Three other circuit courts in Arkansas followed suit in declaring the statute unconstitutional. The parties in Arkansas v. Smith stipulated to several facts. Smith and her landlord, Primo Novero, had a lease agreement in 2014. On July 9, 2014, Novero gave Smith ten days’ notice under Arkansas’s failure-to-vacate statute, claiming she had breached the lease. Under the statute, a tenant who remains on the premises more …

State of Arkansaw, The

The ballad, or narrative folksong, usually titled “The State of Arkansaw” has been a principal exhibit in Arkansas’s recurrent laments about its disreputable image. It is a clear example of the expressive culture of the late nineteenth century that depicted Arkansas pejoratively. The story, which the ballad relates in first person, has its protagonist—known by several names, including “Sanford Barnes” and “John Johanna”—leave his home, most frequently “Buffalo town” or “Nobleville town,” to seek employment. He hears of job opportunities in Arkansas, sets out by railway, and arrives in an Arkansas community, variously identified as Fort Smith (Sebastian County), Van Buren (Crawford County), Little Rock (Pulaski County), or Hot Springs (Garland County). There he meets a “walking skeleton” who conducts …

State Parks Division

aka: State Parks
aka: Arkansas State Parks

The State Parks Division, which is part of the Arkansas Department of Parks, Heritage and Tourism, manages the state’s fifty-two state parks and promotes the state of Arkansas as a tourist destination for people around the country. Arkansas’s first state park, Petit Jean State Park, was established in 1923 after the passage of Act 276, which authorized the commissioner of state lands to accept land donations for state parks and reservations. However, Arkansas did not have an agency overseeing the development of state parks until 1927, when the legislature, through Act 172, created the seven-member State Parks Commission “to select and acquire such areas of the State of Arkansas which, by reason of their natural features, scenic beauty and historical …

State Treasurer, Office of

aka: Office of Treasurer

The treasurer of Arkansas is the state’s financial officer and one of seven constitutional officers elected at large. Responsibilities of the treasurer, who is part of the executive branch of state government, include receiving and keeping monies collected by the state, managing and investing funds, and disbursing funds according to state law. In 1819, the territorial legislature created the position of treasurer, and the first to serve as territorial treasurer was James Scull. The constitution of 1836 established the position of state treasurer, though it was not a popularly elected position. Instead, the treasurer was selected by a vote of the Arkansas General Assembly. William E. Woodruff, publisher of the Arkansas Gazette, was the first to serve as state treasurer. …

Stave Mills

Stave mills produce the narrow strips of wood that compose the sides of barrels. Barrels were vital for the transportation of goods in the days before easily fabricated boxes and waterproof plastic containers. Stave mills were frequently established in areas where timber was being harvested so as to take advantage of the easy availability of needed resources. As such, they were an important component of local economies in Arkansas, with small towns in timber-producing areas possessing at least one, and larger cities with railroad connections often having several. Stave mills processed either hardwood—used to make “tight,” or waterproof, barrels—or softwood—used to make “slack” barrels, or those that were used for transporting dry goods and foodstuffs. Logs were cut near the …

Stay More [Book Series]

“Stay more,” according to Arkansas novelist Donald Harington, was the polite entreaty that settlers of the Ozarks would use at the end of a visit to keep their guests from leaving. Visitors who knew their mountain manners would never simply decline the invitation, but instead respond with an equally polite counter-invitation to their hosts to come home with them. The leave-taking formality could go on and on, with host and guest affirming over and over their affection for the other’s company and their reluctance to give it up. “Stay More” was also the name of the fictional Ozarks town that Harington created and returned to many times in thirteen of the fifteen novels he published during his lifetime. The origins …

Steamboats

The steamboat played an important role in Arkansas from the earliest days of the Arkansas Territory. Before being superseded by the railroad in the post–Civil War era, steamboats were the primary means of passenger transport, as well as moving raw materials out of Arkansas and consumer goods into the state. The inland rivers steamboat, invented in the Mississippi River Valley in the first half of the nineteenth century, eventually connected every person on or near a stream to the larger world. The first major historian of the steamboat, Louis Hunter, saw the steamboat as the “most notable achievement of the industrial infancy” of the United States, not to mention the chief technological means by which the frontier advanced and by …

Steamboats (Civil War)

Steamboats during the Civil War won little glamour but played a critical role. With rivers serving as the lifeblood of the Confederacy, steamboats permitted the rapid movement of heavy cargo up and down the waterways. Both Union and Confederate forces in Arkansas relied on steamboats to move troops and supplies, with Little Rock (Pulaski County), Helena (Phillips County), Pine Bluff (Jefferson County), and DeValls Bluff (Prairie County) serving as supply centers and shipping hubs. Essentially, steamboats made the war effort possible. By the start of the Civil War, the great majority of Arkansas’s commerce traveled by steamboat. Flatboats and keelboats had once moved agricultural products downriver to New Orleans, Louisiana, but neither type of boat could easily make the return …

Stern’s Medlar

aka: Crataegus × Canescens
aka: Mespilus canescens

Stern’s medlar (Mespilus canescens or Crataegus × canescens) is a rare shrub in the rose family known in the wild from about twenty-five individual plants at a single site near Slovak (Prairie County). It was first discovered in 1969 by Jane Stern but was not named until 1990, when it was formally described (as Mespilus canescens) by Dr. James Phipps of the University of Western Ontario. Its origin, taxonomic placement, and proper scientific name are a matter of debate among botanists and represent one of the most curious and persistent mysteries in North American botany. Stern’s medlar is a showy species with a number of desirable ornamental properties including dense groupings of quarter-sized white flowers, multiple trunks, arching branches, patchy …