Entries - Gender: Does not Apply - Starting with C

Chewaukla Mineral Springs Co.

The cold-water springs below the site of the bottling factory of Chewaukla Mineral Springs Co. (later the Sleepy Hollow Water Co.) outside Hot Springs (Garland County) became a national sensation, with backers from Chicago and an “expert” touting their “radioactive medicinal value.” Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians wrote a song dedicated to this “Sleepy Water of Hot Springs, Arkansas.” Radio programs and newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune disseminated testimonials of what the water could cure. The bottling factory was located on what is now Sleepy Valley Road off of Highway 7 South just north of Hot Springs proper and within Hot Springs National Park. In the twenty-first century, the remains of the facility are not marked by any …

Chicken War of 1962–1963

The Chicken War of 1962–1963 was a trade dispute between poultry producers in Arkansas and other states and the European Economic Community (EEC). In the late 1950s, Arkansas poultry producers began to market U.S. chicken in western Europe. In collaboration with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, M. H. “Bill” Simmons of Plus Poultry in Siloam Springs (Benton County) and other business leaders helped post–World War II Europeans develop their own poultry industry. Noting that Arkansas’s Benton County produced more chicken than some European nations, Simmons assumed it would be decades before European producers could compete with their American mentors. “There is a considerable movement of poultry from Northwest Arkansas into the export channels almost weekly,” Simmons wrote to U.S. Senator …

City of Fort Smith v. Wade

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), one of the most significant governmental reform laws ever enacted by the Arkansas General Assembly, withstood many efforts in the state legislature and the courts to curtail the public’s right to know what state and local governments were doing. The efforts multiplied in the second and third decades of the twenty-first century. One such tactic that did succeed was a lawsuit, cited as City of Fort Smith v. Wade, in which the Arkansas Supreme Court altered the meaning of a public meeting so that private emails among city officials about an issue before the city board of directors did not violate the FOIA because the emails probably did not directly affect the city board’s …

Congressional Districts

The Arkansas delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives has been made up of four members since redistricting took place in the early 1960s. Since statehood in 1836, the total number of seats allotted to the state has fluctuated from one to seven. The boundaries of the districts continue to shift based on population growth or decline in certain portions of the state. The Arkansas Territory gained representation in the House in 1819 when delegate James Woodson Bates of Batesville (Independence County) took his seat in the Sixteenth Congress. Previously, what is now the state of Arkansas received representation from the delegates of the Louisiana Territory and later the Missouri Territory. With the Missouri Territory on schedule to enter the …

Couch-Marshall House

Located in Magnolia (Columbia County), the Couch-Marshall House is an example of what has become known as the Plain Traditional style of architecture, which in this instance took on characteristics of the Queen Anne Revival style. The “high style” of the Queen Anne Revival type of residence had become the preferred style of design and construction in Arkansas by 1880 and was to remain so until the beginning of the twentieth century. The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places on July 24, 1992. The house takes part of its name from Thomas G. Couch, who was born in Columbia County on February 28, 1852, not long after his parents had relocated from their ancestral home in …