Photos of the Day - Starting with N

Created in 1833, Pike County was named in honor of American general and explorer Zebulon Pike. While best known for his later exploration of the American Southwest and the discovery of Pike’s Peak, he also led an expedition of the upper Mississippi River at approximately the same time as the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Also named in his honor was Camp Pike, the World War I training camp located in North Little Rock (Pulaski County). Pike died during the War of 1812 from battle wounds.

Born in Crittenden County in 1913, regional artist Carroll Cloar used his childhood memories as subject matter for his art. The works he created from his life experiences and old photographs gained him national recognition, especially in his later years. While well known for his lithographic work, Cloar also produced many paintings, such as this 1981 acrylic on panel entitled Fishing (Anglers II).

Francis Cherry was a chancery judge, Arkansas’s thirty-fifth governor, and chairman of the federal Subversive Activities Control Board. Cherry is most remembered for his political ineptness, which resulted in the election of Orval Faubus as governor in 1954. He is shown here with his family outside his home in Jonesboro (Craighead County) in 1952.

The fourth governor of Arkansas, John Selden Roane was a lawyer, planter, and soldier. He is best known for his service in the Mexican War and his efforts to deal with the failure of the state’s banking system. As governor, Roane supported internal improvements, the establishment of a state college, and the recruitment of immigrants to Arkansas. On national issues, Roane sympathized with the Southern Radical Republicans, believing that the states were sovereign bodies, slaves were property, Congress had no right to restrict the taking of such property into the territories, and any state had the right to leave the Union.

Montgomery County native Lon (Lonnie) Warneke, known as “The Arkansas Hummingbird,” was a major league baseball pitcher for the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals during the 1930s. In 1933, thirty-six of the best baseball players in the major leagues squared off at Comiskey Park in Chicago, Illinois, for the first All-Star baseball game. Warneke registered the first triple and scored the first National League run in All-Star history. He was inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame in 1961. Warneke is shown here in the 1930s.

Many competitions are held throughout the state involving the varied agricultural products produced in Arkansas. One such event is the World Cup PurpleHull Pea Shelling Competition held each year in Emerson (Columbia County) during the Emerson PurpleHull Pea Festival. Shown here are the 2006 competitors eagerly seeking the coveted world title.

Mississippi County was once the world’s major producer of rain-grown cotton. Shown here is a caravan of wagons loaded with newly picked cotton lined up at a Keiser (Mississippi County) gin in the 1940s.

Homer Adkins, governor during World War II, was strongly opposed to the internment of Japanese Americans at Jerome (Chicot County) and Rohwer (Desha County), citing the principle of white supremacy. During his term, the Alien Land Act was passed, prohibiting land ownership by either Japanese-American citizens or aliens. He was also opposed to allowing Japanese-American enrollment in any Arkansas college, fearing it could lead to racial integration. As a result, the University of the Ozarks in Clarksville (Johnson County) was the only school to allow such enrollment.

The 1958-59 school year, during which all of the Little Rock (Pulaski County) high schools were closed in an attempt to prevent desegregation, is commonly referred to as the Lost Year. For the entire school year, 3,665 students were denied the opportunity to attend their local schools. In an attempt to lessen the damage caused by lost time, three local commercial television stations briefly broadcast lessons taught by fifteen white teachers. For a few weeks, students such as the one shown here were able to continue their education in this manner.

In 1918, Harvey Jones purchased an old Springfield wagon and two mules and began hauling goods between Rogers (Benton County), Springdale (Washington County), and Fayetteville (Washington County). In 1919, he sold his wagon and mules to buy a Federal truck and named his business Jones Transportation Company. Jones would eventually build Jones Truck Lines into the largest privately owned and operated truck line in the United States. By 1980, company trucks were traveling more than 100,000 miles a day, with forty-one terminals in fifteen states and 2,300 employees. Jones died in 1989.

In the 1940s, in an attempt to reinvigorate the Sebastian County economy during the recent Depression, local citizens began to cultivate a hybrid variety berry recently brought to the area. Named after Lavaca (Sebastian County), the new Lavacaberry saw rapid sales. By the late 1940s, thousands of crates, with labels such as the one shown here, were being shipped each month. Out-of-state competition brought an end to the berry boom in the late 1950s, and today they are only grown in a few scattered family patches.

The public schools of Little Rock (Pulaski County), which were closed during the 1958 school year following the 1957 desegregation of Central High School, were reopened in 1959. Segregationists are shown here rallying at the Arkansas State Capitol to protest the reopening of the schools.

Pharmacist Frank Coffin operated one of the first black-owned drugstores in Little Rock (Pulaski County), Children’s Drug Store, which he purchased in 1898. A native of Mississippi, Coffin held a Ph.G. degree from Fisk University and a pharmaceutical degree from Meherry Medical College, both in Nashville, Tennessee. He was also a published poet and at one time served as the secretary for Philander Smith College.

Of the seventy-five counties in Arkansas, ten have been named in honor of presidents of the United States. On September 30, 1836, the state legislature named the newest county to be created in honor of the nation’s fourth chief executive, James Madison of Virginia.

In late 1890, the Ex-Confederate Association of Arkansas remodeled a residence located on sixty acres near Sweet Home (Pulaski County) for the care of indigent Confederate veterans and widows. Approximately two years later, this new Confederate Home (shown here) was built and later remodeled. By 1955, the number of residents, now only widows, were so few that they were moved to a small building constructed on the grounds of the Arkansas Schools for the Blind and Deaf in Little Rock (Pulaski County). The home officially closed in 1963.

The Capital Citizens’ Council, formed in 1956, was the most important segregationist organization during the desegregation of Little Rock Central High. The group’s main objective was to oppose Superintendent Virgil Blossom’s plan for gradual desegregation through many methods, including harassment, petitioning government officials, organizing public rallies, and distributing literature such as the example seen here. The group, which claimed over 500 members, faded from the scene by the early 1960s.

Arkansas is home to one of the smallest frogs to inhabit the United States. The cricket frog (Acris crepitians) reaches a maximum length of approximately 1.2 inches and has a life expectancy of one to two years. The multicolored, non-tree-climbing common amphibian lives near shallow bodies of water with cover vegetation.

This early 1900s photograph shows the Washington County Courthouse with its bell tower. A century later, the downtown Fayetteville landmark is still used as Washington County’s courthouse.

At age twenty-two, Robert Crittenden became the first secretary of the Arkansas Territory, and due to the governor’s absences, he also was the first acting governor. Though young, he quickly became a major leader in territorial politics. Perhaps he is best known for an 1827 duel in which he killed Henry Conway, a member of the “Family” political dynasty. With his political career on the decline, he died in Vicksburg, Mississippi, on December 18, 1834.

In 1993, the Arkansas General Assembly passed House Bill 2110 designating the white-tailed deer as the official state mammal. Governor Jim Guy Tucker subsequently signed the bill into law, making Arkansas one of eleven states that claim the white-tailed deer as an official symbol.

Opened in 1990 by Scott and Heidi Riddle, Riddle’s Elephant and Wildlife Sanctuary, located on 330 acres outside of Greenbrier (Faulkner County), provides a permanent home for African and Asian elephants in need of sanctuary for any reason, regardless of age, sex, species, health, or temperament. Elephants come from private owners, circuses, or zoos. The nonprofit sanctuary, which raises money through grants and donations, houses up to a dozen elephants at any given time.

Oxen were the primary draft animal in America until replaced by the mule in the 1930s. Oxen, which can be seen pulling the wagon to the left in this 1911 Eudora (Chicot County) image, were typically used in pairs. While the two pulling the wagon are more common, teams of up to twenty oxen were sometimes used to transport heavier loads.

Long before the emergence of the supermarkets of today, citizens of small-town Arkansas depended upon local stores such as the Southern Mercantile Store in Prairie Grove (Washington County) for many of the goods that they could not produce themselves.

Neil Compton, shown here in 1993 at age eighty, was an obstetrician by profession and a conservationist by avocation. He is widely recognized as founding president of the Ozark Society to Save the Buffalo River, which succeeded in having the Buffalo River declared the nation’s first National River in 1972.

Italian-born poet Rosa Zagnoni married Antonio Marinoni in Brooklyn, New York, on July 30, 1908, and then moved to Fayetteville (Washington County), where her husband was on the faculty of the University of Arkansas (UA). There, Rosa Zagnoni Marinoni quickly became known for her efforts to promote poetry. From 1953 to 1970, the prolific poet served as the poet laureate of Arkansas. Among her many works was Whoo-Whoo the “Howl” of the Ozarks Says: Think and Wink!, published in 1967.

Visitors to the small city of Lepanto (Poinsett County) are greeted with a sign proclaiming the community to be the home of the Lepanto Terrapin Derby and the house from the film made from the John Grisham novel A Painted House. The Terrapin Derby has been a major attraction since first staged in 1930. The house became an attraction after its use as a set in the 2002 filming of a television movie based on A Painted House.

Upon the advice of Elvis Presley, Sonny Burgess of Newport (Jackson County) and his bar band traveled to Memphis, Tennessee, and were able to secure a recording contract with Sun Records. Renamed Sonny Burgess and the Pacers, the band became one of Sun’s original rock and roll recording artists. As of 2007, Burgess, who is shown here in the black suit, and the Pacers continue to tour.

Following the collapse of the fruit industry in northwest Arkansas in the late 1920s, many area residents, such as John Tyson, turned to poultry. In 1935, Tyson began delivering poultry by truck, and he later introduced shipment by air. Tyson’s Hatchery personnel are shown here circa 1947 loading chicks onto an airplane.

The hot springs in present-day Garland County were known for their healing qualities long before John C. Hale built the first bathhouse in 1854. The first Hale Bathhouse, shown here, was demolished in 1892 and replaced by a more modern structure that opened approximately a year later.

Batesville (Independence County) native Mark Martin (right) has been called one of NASCAR’s most talented drivers. In 1988, he and Jack Roush (left) formed a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series team that became one of the premier programs in auto racing. Roush and Martin worked together as driver and team owner for approximately nineteen years.

The Nevada County Depot and Museum, founded in 1976, is the only museum in Nevada County. Located in the 1912 Iron Mountain Railroad Depot in downtown Prescott (Nevada County), it is a nonprofit organization that preserves and promotes the history of Nevada County. The museum exhibits and archives an impressive collection of artifacts and documents related to the history of the county.

In 1815, federal surveyors Prospect Robbins and Joseph Brown entered Arkansas to establish the initial survey point, or baseline, for lands acquired in the Louisiana Purchase. That baseline, determined on November 10, 1815, in present-day Monroe County near Brinkley, is marked by this granite monument placed there in 1926 by the Arkansas Daughters of the American Revolution, L’Anguille Chapter. Today, the monument is located within the boundaries of the Louisiana Purchase Historic State Park.

In 1861, Confederate general William J. Hardee was dispatched to the northeast border of Arkansas to organize the state troops for Confederate service. Within a few months of his arrival, Hardee moved back east of the Mississippi River, taking with him many of the Arkansas troops he had been in charge of organizing. Many of those same Arkansas men served under Hardee for the duration of the war.

In late 1890, the Ex-Confederate Association of Arkansas remodeled a residence located on sixty acres near Sweet Home (Pulaski County) for the care of indigent Confederate veterans and widows. Approximately two years later, a new Confederate Home was built and later remodeled, as shown in this 1915 postcard. By 1955, the number of residents, now only widows, were so few that they were moved to a small building constructed on the grounds of the Arkansas Schools for the Blind and Deaf in Little Rock (Pulaski County). The home officially closed in 1963, but the small 1955 building is still in use.

The fossilized remains of “Arkansaurus fridayi” are the only dinosaur bones unearthed in Arkansas that have been brought to the attention of the scientific community. The bones of a right hind foot were found in 1972 in Sevier County by Joe B. Friday. Shown here is a cast of the foot bones of the dinosaur, which was informally named in honor of its finder.

Elias Cornelius Boudinot was a mixed-lineage Cherokee lawyer, newspaper editor, and lobbyist. He was active in civic life and Democratic Party politics in Arkansas during the Civil War era, serving in the Confederate Cherokee forces and the Confederate Congress during the conflict. In the following years, he maintained close connections with leading Democratic politicians in Arkansas while engaging in legal, economic, and political activities.

Young men and a few young women enjoy themselves at a 1921 dance held at the Citizens Military Training Camp (CMTC) conducted at Camp Pike, which was built as a World War I training camp. The CMTC was a voluntary summer program from 1921 to 1940 designed to provide basic military training for America’s young men. Over 400,000 men completed at least one session of the nationwide program.

The small city of Caraway (Craighead County), originally known as White Switch, began as a lumber camp in about 1912. Incorporated on September 14, 1923, the farming community was one of the last cities to incorporate in northeast Arkansas. It is also the only city in Arkansas to be named in honor of U.S. Senator Thaddeus Caraway.

The Colored Industrial Institute of Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) was one of several African-American educational institutions established in Arkansas in the years following the Civil War. Founded by the Sisters of Charity in 1889, the school was supported by the Roman Catholic diocese and by subscription from local families. Local businessman Wiley Jones was a strong supporter and served on the school’s board of directors. Shown here is the circa 1893 student body.

In 1890, Joseph Merrill, a Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) philanthropist, opened the Merrill Institute, which consisted of several rooms, a library, and a swimming pool. The building, shown here in an illustration shortly after its construction, eventually became the first home of the Pine Bluff Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). It was remodeled in 1937, at which time the pool was covered and converted into a bowling alley.

The artistry of stone carver Nick Miller is found in cemeteries throughout northwest Arkansas. The tombstones he made, crisp and legible well over a century later, employ the mourning symbols of his time: clasping hands, weeping willows, lambs, and doves. Yet Miller’s bas-relief motifs and deeply incised lettering exhibit a level of skill and detail not generally found among contemporary carvers.

In 1855, the seat of Arkansas County, the oldest county in the state, was moved from Arkansas Post to the more centrally located DeWitt. Founded in the early 1850s, the town was named after New York governor DeWitt Clinton. The story goes that, upon learning that another Arkansas town was named Clinton, the citizens opted for his first name instead. This early 1900s scene shows the long-gone courthouse built in the late 1800s.

Sharp County native Elwin Roe, better known by his nickname “Preacher,” was an All-Star pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals, Pittsburgh Pirates, and Brooklyn Dodgers in the late 1940s and early 1950s. He pitched in three World Series, was selected to the All-Star team five times, and was the Sporting News Pitcher of the Year in 1951. By the time he retired in 1954, he had amassed an impressive record of 127 wins and 84 losses.

On April 27, 1865, just ten miles north of Memphis, Tennessee, the worst maritime disaster in American history occurred. Following the close of the Civil War, approximately 2,400 former Union prisoners of war were being sent home up the Mississippi River via the steamboat Sultana. The ship was overloaded, being built for only 376 passengers. During the early morning hours of April 27, the boiler exploded, killing approximately 1,800 on board. The ship burned to the water line and floated to the Arkansas side, where today it lies buried beneath a soybean field near Marion (Crittenden County).

Thomas Franklin “Mack” McLarty’s friendship with Bill Clinton began in kindergarten in Hope (Hempstead County). Later, President Clinton appointed him as his White House chief of staff, making McLarty the first Arkansan to serve in that position. After serving from 1993 to 1994, he resigned to become the nation’s special envoy to the Americas.

Post Familie Vineyards and Winery is located on state Highway 186 in the town of Altus (Franklin County), on the old farm of Professor Joseph Bachman, a noted creator of new grape varieties. Post Familie Winery has its origins in the immigration into the area of German and Swiss Catholics in the 1880s, which made Altus one of the leading wine communities in the state by the turn of the century.

In 1934, William Townsend established Camp Wycliffe in Benton County. Later changed to Wycliffe Bible Translators (WBT), it was a linguistic training program to promote Bible translation among minority language groups. The WBT, along with other organizations he founded, were credited with the translation of more than 700 New Testaments and Bibles. Townsend is shown here on a trip to Papua New Guinea.

From the 1890s to the late 1960s, many white populations in towns across the United States purposely established policies to keep African Americans out. Such towns were commonly called “sundown towns” because of signs occasionally posted at the edge of town warning African Americans to be gone by sundown. One such sundown town, Cotter (Baxter County), is the subject of this 1950s advertisement proudly advertising the fact that it was “100 per cent white.”

Most people recognize Bill Valentine as the former longtime general manager of the Arkansas Travelers baseball team who brought considerable attention to the team with his many and varied promotions. Few know that Valentine was also a groundbreaking American League umpire for eighteen years before he was fired from the league for attempting to organize an American League umpires’ union. Valentine was part of the effort to build a new home for the Travelers, Dickey-Stephens Field in North Little Rock (Pulaski County), which opened in 2007.

In 1911, the Mosaic Templars of America, an African-American burial and life insurance agency located in Little Rock (Pulaski County), began construction on this four-story, 10,000-square-foot national headquarters. Completed approximately two years later, it was dedicated by Booker T. Washington. The building, which contained offices, businesses, and an elegant auditorium, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1990. While under restoration, the building burned in 2005. It was rebuilt in 2008 as an African-American cultural center.