Entry Type: Thing

Ruled by the Whip

Ruled by the Whip: Hell behind Bars in America’s Devil’s Island, the Arkansas Penitentiary is a 1958 self-published autobiographical account written by Dale Woodcock. One of the few printed accounts by an Arkansas prisoner, the book chronicles Woodcock’s experiences at Cummins prison farm in the 1950s. While the book garnered little attention when it was written, its tales of violence, corruption, and brutality corroborated abuses documented later during the governorship of Winthrop Rockefeller, who began work to reform the prisons. The author was born Charles Dale Woodcock on March 21, 1925, in Rogers (Benton County). He was the son of Henry Lee Woodcock (1900–1928) and Lillie Dell “Honey” Townsend Woodcock (1907–1988), both of whom were Arkansas natives. After the death …

Rumor Has It [Book Series]

“Rumor Has It…” is a three-book romance novel series written by Penny Richards and published in 2000–2001 by Silhouette Books, an imprint of Harlequin Books. The three books are set in the fictional town of Lewiston, Arkansas, and center upon the themes of high school romance rekindled later in life and of hidden paternity coming to light. The intended location of Lewiston is unclear. A map included in the first book, Sophie’s Scandal, places Lewiston in approximately the location of Mountain View (Stone County), and the cover of this first book depicts rolling hills, but a similar map in the next two books, Lara’s Lover and Judging Justine, has Lewiston corresponding a little more closely to Brookland (Craighead County) in …

Rumph House

The Rumph House is a Craftsman-style home located in Camden (Ouachita County). Constructed in 1874 with Victorian details, the house was extensively remodeled in 1925. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on September 25, 2003. The house and accompanying four acres are also located in the Washington Street Historic District. The early details of the house are unknown. Dr. Junius Bragg lived in the home with his family in the late nineteenth century. In 1899, his daughter, Helen Bragg Gaughan, married in the home. Early in the twentieth century, Bragg sold the home to Samuel and Mary Green. In 1904, the Greens sold the home to Garland Rumph, the son of Dr. John Benjamin Rumph and …

Running and Walking

In Arkansas, running and walking have long been used for exercise and fitness. Enthusiasts support each, especially as Arkansans become more health conscious. Arkansas also is home to a number of events and organizations devoted to running and walking. Walking draws the largest percentage of people exercising, but, beyond basic fitness walking, there are also speed walkers (sometimes referred to as power walkers) who walk at paces ranging from ten to sixteen minutes per mile. There are also race walkers who must abide by specific USA Track and Field (USATF) rules when it comes to form and style of walking. They can be very speedy, often walking faster than many runners. One club in the state is dedicated only to …

Russell Jail

The Russell Jail, located off Elm Street in Russell (White County), is a one-story, reinforced concrete structure built around 1935 with apparent assistance from the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a Depression-era federal relief agency. The Russell Jail was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on July 23, 1992. The small railroad and farming community of Russell was apparently in need of a jail during the Great Depression and turned to the WPA, one of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal agencies, for funding around 1935, though no record of the project exists in WPA project files at the Arkansas State Archives. The Russell Jail is one-room building constructed of steel rod–reinforced cast concrete, including a concrete roof and foundation. …

Russellville Public Library

aka: Heritage Hall
The Russellville Public Library, located at 114 East 3rd Street in Russellville (Pope County), is Colonial Revival–style brick-veneer building constructed in 1936–1937 with assistance from the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a Depression-era federal relief program. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 20, 2000. Russellville’s efforts to create a public library began in 1885 when the Excelsior Club, a men’s civic group, raised money to acquire a small collection of books that could be checked out for five cents per book per week, with additional books purchased through the proceeds. This campaign was augmented in 1889 when A. E. Lee, Russellville’s school superintendent, bought books for the high school and added these to the collection. …

Saline County Career Technical Campus

Located at 13600 I-30 in Benton (Saline County), the Saline County Career Technical Campus (SCCTC) offers courses in automotive technology, construction, cybersecurity, health sciences, HVAC-R, industrial technology, manufacturing, medical professions-CNA, networking, and welding, in addition to allowing regional high school students to earn college credit hours during their junior and senior years. The SCCTC was created through a partnership of several school districts, Saline County municipalities, the Saline County judge, state legislators, the Saline County Economic Development Corporation (SCEDC), and Arkansas State University Three Rivers. In 2015, Saline County leaders began considering a temporary 3/8-cent sales tax to fund the construction of a new career technical education center that offered ten pathways to high school students from the school districts …

Saline County Courthouse

The Saline County Courthouse, located at 200 North Main Street, is in the historic commercial district of Benton (Saline County). The courthouse square is surrounded by Conway and Sevier streets, named after two Arkansas families that joined together to create an influential political faction in the nineteenth century called “the Family.” The Arkansas Historic Preservation Program recognizes the structure as architecturally and historically significant due to its Romanesque Revival architecture. The Saline County Courthouse, featured in the 1973 movie White Lightning because filmmakers considered it to be a typical Southern courthouse, is the third seat of justice in the county’s history. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 22, 1979. In 1836, William Woodruff, editor …

Saline County Library

The Saline County Library, owned and operated by the county, is one of the oldest institutions of its kind in central Arkansas. There are two branches: the Bob Herzfeld Memorial Library in Benton (Saline County) and the Mabel Boswell Memorial Library in Bryant (Saline County). The Saline County Library seeks to “serve the citizens of Saline County by providing materials, technology, and programs that educate, connect, and entertain.” Until 2023, the library was governed by the Saline County Library Board, whose five members are appointed by the county judge (with one who serves as liaison between the board and the quorum court). However, in 2023, the quorum court effectively put management of the library into the hands of the county …

Saline County News-Pacesetter

Between 1955 and the mid-1970s, an independent weekly newspaper (first called the Saline County News, then—after consolidation with the Saline County Pacesetter—the News-Pacesetter) existed in direct opposition to the Benton Courier in Saline County. Veteran newspaperman Harold Johnson and his wife, newspaperwoman Elsie Cabe Johnson, left the Benton Courier to start their own paper, the Saline County News, in June 1955. It lasted until 1972, when Whitney Jones, son of Dr. Curtis Jones, purchased it from the Johnsons. Continuing as the Saline County News-Pacesetter, the paper lasted until the mid-1970s, when it too was sold. In addition to covering local news and sports, it helped launch the careers of many Arkansas writers and photographers. The first newspaper to carry the …

Saline County Regional Airport

The Saline County Regional Airport, now located at 1100 Hill Farm Road in Bryant (Saline County), has a history dating back to World War II. Governed by the Saline County Regional Airport Commission, the airport serves hundreds of small-aircraft pilots daily. The airport sits on 1,200 acres of open field located southeast of Bryant, eight miles from Little Rock (Pulaski County). The Saline County Regional Airport features thirty-six T-hangars, ten private hangars, and three large corporate hangars. The first privately owned airstrip in Saline County was built outside Benton (Saline County) by Mike Richards, a used-car dealer and contractor, in 1942. However, Richards’s airstrip was bisected when Highway 67/70 was built in the late 1950s. On March 9, 1958, the …

Saline Courier

aka: Benton Courier
The Saline Courier (formerly known as the Benton Courier) is the largest and oldest newspaper in Saline County. The paper began its life as the Saline County Digest, established by Vermont native W. A. Webber in 1876, as the official mouthpiece of Saline County Democrats, although it later lost that affiliation. The Digest was published weekly in a seven-column folio with an average circulation of 1,000. In November 1882, the Digest changed hands for the first time. It was purchased by B. B. Beavers, who renamed it the Saline County Review; in November 1883, Colonel Samuel Houston Whitthorne bought Beavers’s interest in the paper and renamed it the Saline Courier. Whitthorne was the father-in-law of prominent Benton doctor Dr. Dewell …

Saline Memorial Hospital

Originally known as the Saline County Memorial Hospital, present-day Saline Memorial Hospital was constructed in 1954 in Benton (Saline County). The hospital was created in response to the rising population of the Benton area following World War II, the Korean War, and Saline County’s postwar industrial boom. The hospital had forty-two beds at its creation and cost about $325,000 to build. In 2017, Saline Memorial Hospital encompassed approximately 400,000 square feet, with 177 beds and more than 180 active and consulting physicians. According to census data, the population of Benton was 3,502 in 1940 and had nearly doubled by 1950 to 6,277. In February 1955, Saline County judge Charles O. Smithers named the first governing board for the hospital. Dr. …

Saline River

The Saline River is known throughout the South for its scenic beauty and its unique characteristic of being a mountain stream at its origin in the Ouachita Mountains and a Delta-type bayou near its mouth at Felsenthal (Union County), where the stream converges with the Ouachita River. It is the last free-flowing river in the Ouachita basin. The river derived its name from a salty marsh located near its mouth, called by the French the “Marias Saline,” though some historians claim that a salt works started near Benton (Saline County) as early as 1827 gave the river its name. At one time, these salt works supplied the bulk of salt used in the territory as well as surrounding states. Although …

Salmonids

aka: Trout
aka: Salmon
Salmonids include chars, graylings, salmon, trout, and freshwater whitefishes, all of which belong to the superorder Protacanthopterygii, order Salmoniformes, family Salmonidae, three lineages or subfamilies (Coregoninae, Thymallinae, and Salmoninae), eleven extant genera, and about 120 species. There are thirty-nine species known in North America. The family is widely distributed, with various species found north of the equator in Asia, Europe, and North America. Some important North American genera include Coregonus, Oncorhynchus, Prosopium, Salmo, Salvelinus, and Thymallus. Although no members are native to Arkansas, salmonids have been introduced, primarily for purposes of sports fishing. The family initially appears in the fossil record in the middle Eocene (48 to 38 million years ago) from fossils found in central British Columbia, Canada. A …

Salt Making

Salt making was an enterprise carried out in Arkansas for more than 600 years, first by the prehistoric Native Americans, who began to make salt around AD 1400, during the time in which they adopted a diet rich in corn and other domesticated plants. Salt was desirable for flavoring stews and other corn dishes, and it was an important nutrient for people living in a hot climate. It may have had a number of other uses, including for rituals, but it was not commonly used by Indians then to salt meat in much the same fashion that Europeans were accustomed to. European explorers and American settlers made salt for their own uses and for sale, until good quality, commercially available …

Saltpeter Mining

Potassium nitrate, or saltpeter, is a naturally occurring mineral that is vital to the production of gunpowder. Found in limestone caves in the Arkansas Ozarks, it became one of the state’s most important chemical industries during the Civil War due to the Confederacy’s demand for arms. Although this resource was a definite advantage for the Confederacy, problems with labor, security, and transportation made Arkansas’s saltpeter mines an ultimate failure. Saltpeter deposits were known by early Arkansas settlers long before the Civil War in Madison, Searcy, Independence, Marion, and Newton counties. A geographical survey was conducted by Dale David Owens from 1857 to 1860. His findings were published in 1860, and, by 1862, the Confederacy, looking to arm itself for the …

Sam Epstein House

The Sam Epstein House in Lake Village (Chicot County), constructed in 1910, was of historical and cultural significance on several counts. The wood-frame house itself was an interesting blend of Colonial Revival design with touches of Craftsman and Vernacular, primarily in the additions and the second story. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 21, 1992, but burned down approximately twenty years later, on June 30, 2012. Sam Epstein came to America from czarist Russia at the end of the nineteenth century. As a young adult, he moved to Memphis, Tennessee, with his brother Nathan and peddled a variety of goods between that city and the Louisiana border. Epstein left Memphis to become one of the …

Sand and Gravel Mining

aka: Gravel and Sand Mining
Sand is usually defined as an accumulation of mineral grains in sizes ranging from one-sixteenth to two millimeters. Sand normally consists predominantly of quartz grains of variable degrees of roundness. Other mineral grains within the sand size range are also present and typically consist of feldspar, chert, ilmenite, and other less abundant resistant minerals. Gravel is considered to be an unconsolidated mixture of rock fragments, pebbles, cobbles, and boulders of indefinite size, but always larger than sand-sized materials. Gravel normally consists of a mixture of rock types, depending upon the original source, and may consist of various quartz rock varieties, such as chert, sandstone, novaculite, agate, and milky vein quartz, as well as limestone, dolostone, and other resistant rock types. …

Sanitation

The term “sanitation” is used today to describe the elimination or control of dangerous bacteria, especially in drinking water and food supplies and through personal hygiene. Prior to the development of the germ theory and the subsequent discoveries in bacteriology and microbiology, the term covered all elements of health and well-being. Sanitation, in the sense of the elimination of dangerous bacteria, is common to animals, which instinctively try to keep their feces and urine at a distance from their habitations. When humans abandoned nomadic patterns and resided in settled communities, more complicated arrangements had to be worked out. Examples practiced in the absence of scientific proof included the use of latrines, attempts to protect the purity of water supplies, and …

Sarah Bird Northrup Ridge House

The Sarah Bird Northrup Ridge House is the oldest house still standing in Fayetteville (Washington County), dating back to 1836. Its original pine flooring and field stone fireplaces have endured to the present. It was built with the latest methods of the time, including mortised construction, shake shingles, and square-headed nails. The original cabin style was called “dog-trot” or “dog-run” and consisted of two single rooms separated by an open passage called a breezeway. A common roof covered the two rooms and the breezeway. In later years, the house was made into two stories and converted to “salt box” style, and the breezeway was converted into a central hallway. The Ridge House, at 230 West Center, is now owned and …