Photos of the Day

Wabbeseka (Jefferson County) native Eldridge Cleaver became world famous in the 1960s as a member of the militant activist group the Black Panthers. Cleaver became the spokesperson for the Panthers in 1967 when he was chosen as the organization’s minister of information. While serving a stint in prison, he wrote a series of autobiographical essays that were published in 1968 as Soul on Ice. That same year, he ran for president of the United States as the candidate of the Peace and Freedom Party. In the early 1980s, he joined the Republican Party, supporting Ronald Reagan for president in 1984.

Eddie Hamm of Lonoke (Lonoke County) was perhaps the greatest athlete produced by the state in the first half of the twentieth century. As a track and field star, he set many state marks, and, at the U.S. Olympic trials in 1928, he set a world record in the long jump at 25 feet 11 1/2 inches. Later that year, at the Olympic Games in Amsterdam, he set the Olympic long jump record at 25 feet 4 3/4 inches. His gold-medal record performance stood until broken by Jesse Owens in 1936.

Known as the “King of Ragtime,” Scott Joplin composed more than forty ragtime piano pieces, including “Maple Leaf Rag” (which sold more than a million copies) and “The Entertainer” (which was used in the 1973 film The Sting). He spent his formative years in Texarkana (Miller County), and his major opera, Treemonisha, is set in the plantation area of Rondo (Lafayette County) north of Texarkana. He died in 1917.

Little Rock (Pulaski County) native and Horace Mann graduate James Ronald Rodgers Sr. attained a number of important firsts in his life. He was the first African American appointed as manager of a major commercial airport (Little Rock Regional), the first black head of a major independent city agency, and the first black commercial loan officer in the state. He served as airport manager from 1981 until his death in 1993. He was inducted into the Arkansas Aviation Hall of Fame in 1994.

Before his career as a teacher, businessman, and philanthropist, Jay Lawhon was a heralded football player. Nicknamed “Mule,” he received a scholarship to the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) after graduating from Catholic High School in Little Rock (Pulaski County). As a Razorback, he was named Honorable Mention All-American. Though drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles of the National Football League, he suffered a knee injury that ended his football career.

In 1964, construction was completed on the Dardanelle Dam near Russellville (Pope County), creating the 34,300-acre Lake Dardanelle. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was convinced by local and state authorities to allow its recreational area near Russellville to become a state park. Approval was granted, and the park was commissioned in 1966 with 292 acres spread over three locations in Pope County. Today, Lake Dardanelle State Park includes two areas that are leased from the Corps of Engineers—163 acres in Russellville and eighty-three acres in Dardanelle (Yell County).

Congressman John Paul Hammerschmidt, the first Republican congressman from Arkansas since Reconstruction, is shown here meeting with President Lyndon Johnson in 1968 (David Pryor is in the background). Hammerschmidt served in the U.S. Congress for twenty-six years. His ability to relate to and serve the home population through effective casework management is perhaps his most lasting legacy.

Once their crop was harvested, many cotton farmers brought their ginned and bailed cotton to the nearest town to sell. Such farmers are shown here at a cotton auction in 1914 in Forman (Little River County).

Invited to Arkansas in 1901 to join the faculty of Arkansas Baptist College in Little Rock (Pulaski County), J. H. McConico became a leader in civil rights. He was the first president of the Little Rock branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1942, as secretary of the Arkansas Negro Democratic Association, he gained national attention after protesting his exclusion from the Democratic white primary. After the Supreme Court overturned the white primary two years later, he was said to be one of the first to appear at the polls at the next election.

In 1950, the mineral miserite was named in honor of Benton County native Hugh D. Miser, longtime geologist with the United States Geological Commission. The unusual cerium-bearing potassium silicate that bears his name has been unearthed in Canada and Garland County.

Shown here prior to its restoration is the second Elkhorn Tavern, located on the Civil War battlefield of Pea Ridge (Benton County). The original structure, named for the elk horns mounted over the front door, was burned by Confederate guerillas in early 1863. The tavern was rebuilt shortly after the war using the original south fireplace and the foundation. When veterans began to visit the battlefield, the owner turned the building into a small museum, displaying battlefield artifacts on the walls. The tavern was deeded over to the Pea Ridge National Military Park in 1960 and restored to its wartime appearance.

As early as 1833, a number of Lutherans resided in or near Little Rock (Pulaski County); however, a church was not officially organized until 1868. In that year, the First Lutheran Church of Little Rock began holding services. Among the early leaders was J. H. Neimann, shown here, the first pastor of the new congregation.

The Pea Ridge Mule Jump is an annual event held each autumn in Pea Ridge (Benton County). Each year on the second Saturday in October, spectators come from all around to enjoy this unique competition. First held during the town’s Fall Festival in 1985, the event has been called the Pea Ridge Mule Jump since 1989. Now sponsored by the Pea Ridge Parks Commission and the Friends of Pea Ridge, the event has become a popular attraction.

Chester Ashley moved to Little Rock (Pulaski County) shortly before the territorial capital was moved there in 1821. He was one of the first lawyers to reside in the town and quickly became a leading attorney of the territorial and early statehood days. At one time, he was rumored to be the richest man in the state. In 1844, he became the third Arkansan elected to the U.S. Senate, an office he held until his death in 1848. He is buried in Little Rock’s Mount Holly Cemetery.

In 1990, Melanie and Jim Bowles adopted and cared for their first abused horse. Two years later, the couple founded Proud Spirit Horse Sanctuary in Florida. In 2004, the award-winning, nationally recognized sanctuary was moved to a 320-acre facility, a part of which is shown here, near Mena (Polk County).

To help finance the Arkansas Centennial celebration in 1936, the Arkansas congressional delegation secured a federal grant of $75,000, of which $10,000 was used in the production and placement of 143 cast-iron markers at historic sites throughout the state. Many of those markers, including this one located at the early settlement of Cadron (Faulkner County), are still standing.

With Act 156 of 2007, the Arkansas General Assembly designated the Diana fritillary as the official state butterfly. It is among the most spectacular of the 132 resident species of butterflies found in Arkansas. Of the fifty states, only Arkansas has chosen it as its official butterfly. It has been sighted in twenty-seven of Arkansas’s seventy-five counties.

Dr. Jim Correll, University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture plant pathologist, evaluates levels of blast infection in plant samples inoculated with the fungal disease. The research uses rice plants from the Uniform Regional Rice Nursery to determine whether commercial varieties and breeding lines are resistant to blast.

When the railroad construction boom of the post-Civil War years came to Arkansas, many new towns were founded. One of those towns was the Greene County seat of Paragould, incorporated in 1883. Due to the railroad’s presence, the town saw rapid growth, and with a population of 3,324 in 1900, it was the eleventh largest city in the state. Some of the construction of that time period can be seen in this 1899 photograph.

In 1941, attorney C. Hamilton (Ham) Moses became president of Arkansas Power and Light after the death of company founder Harvey Couch. In the mid-1940s, Moses and a group known as the Committee of 100 sought to improve the state’s image by promoting economic development and reversing the trend of many of the state’s most productive citizens leaving Arkansas for better opportunities elsewhere.

Atkins (Pope County), which was incorporated on November 3, 1876, has long been identified as the pickle capital of Arkansas. Approximately eighteen years after the town’s incorporation, George L. Parker founded a weekly newspaper, the Atkins Chronicle. The paper has been in continuous publication since 1894, making it the oldest business in town. Shown here is the location of the newspaper’s office in 2009.

Well into the twentieth century, many Arkansas students received their formal education in a typical one-room schoolhouse, such as the Pleasant Springs School located near Monticello (Drew County) shown here in the 1890s. In such schools, students of all ages typically received the opportunity to complete a course of study through the eighth grade.

One of the many factors that contributed to a decline in apple production in Northwest Arkansas by the 1960s was the damage done by the codling moth, which had been introduced from England years before. Although popular culture usually attributes the “worm in the apple” to the earthworm, it is actually the larva of the coding moth.

The Syllamo Mountain Bike Trail, located in the Ozark National Forest Sylamore District just north of Mountain View (Stone County), consists of fifty miles of single-track trails. The trail attracts riders from all over the nation. In 2005, the International Mountain Biking Association listed the Arkansas trail as one of its “Epic Rides.”

Arkansas Industrial University, the state’s only land grant college, conducted its first session on January 22, 1872, in buildings on a farm about a mile northwest of downtown Fayetteville (Washington County). From those humble beginnings, the educational institution now known as the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville developed into the state’s flagship university. Shown here are some of the early buildings used by the institution.

When her husband died in 1897, Bernie Babcock decided she could support herself and five children with her writing. During the next sixty-five years, she authored more than forty popular novels and numerous other pieces. In 1903, she became the first Arkansas woman to be included in Authors and Writers Who’s Who. She was also the first president of the Arkansas branch of the National League of American Pen Women. In the early 1950s, she retired to a small home atop Petit Jean Mountain, where she died in 1962. She is shown here as a young woman in the early 1900s.

The bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) nested in Arkansas during pioneer days but disappeared from the area as a breeding bird due to pollution and other factors by the twentieth century. Once on the brink of extirpation, the bald eagle has recently made a strong recovery, with several active nests in the state each year. It was officially removed from the federal government’s list of endangered species on June 28, 2007.

After the Civil War, Union veteran Logan Holt Roots settled in Arkansas, engaging in planting and trading from a plantation he acquired near DeValls Bluff (Prairie County). He was actively involved in politics as a Republican and campaigned for the state constitution of 1868. In 1868, he was elected to the U.S. Congress for the First Congressional District. After leaving Congress in 1871, he served as president of the First National Bank of Little Rock (Pulaski County) until his death in 1893.

When Act 126 of 1875 transferred the responsibility of building bridges to the county courts, the state was flooded with bridge construction salesmen. Bridges were built of various materials, but from 1914 to 1935, many concrete bridges were constructed over Arkansas waterways. One of these companies, the Luten Bridge Company of Nashville, Tennessee, constructed this concrete bridge spanning the White River at Elkins (Washington County) in 1921. The bridge still stands as of 2007.

In 1954, Orval Faubus of Madison County narrowly defeated incumbent governor Francis Cherry in a primary runoff election. This was the first time since 1926 that an incumbent first-term governor had been defeated and denied a second term. Faubus went on to defeat Republican candidate Pratt Remmel by some 81,000 votes in the general election. Faubus is shown here in his official gubernatorial portrait.

Little Rock (Pulaski County) native Richard C. Butler Sr. was a lawyer, banker, real estate developer, and philanthropist. His most well-known case as a lawyer involved the 1957 Little Rock desegregation crisis. As a philanthropist, Butler helped create Arkansas’s United Methodist Foundation, and he supported, among other things, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, the Little Rock Boys Club, Hendrix College, Wildwood Park for the Performing Arts, and the Central Arkansas Library System (CALS). In 1997, CALS named its Arkansas and genealogy department the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies in his honor.

In 1928, Mount Nebo State Park became the second state park established in Arkansas. The park consists of 3,000 acres on a flat-topped plateau some 1,350 feet above the Arkansas River Valley in Yell County. Among the attractions are a visitor center, camp sites, cabins, a swimming pool, hiking trails, and a spectacular view, as shown in this photo.

On August 17, 1967, Cowie Wine Cellars was established as a federal- and state-bonded winery in Paris (Logan County), fulfilling the lifelong passion of founder Robert Cowie, who had begun making wine as a hobby at age fifteen. Cowie Wine Cellars remains, by choice of its founder, the smallest winery in the state, though it has won a number of state and national awards, in particular for its Cynthiana and Robert’s Port. The Cowie family practices a “hands on” approach to the art of winemaking, bottling and labeling the wine by hand.

Though Lutherans have been a part of Arkansas’s religious fabric since the 1790s, the first formal congregation was not chartered until the late 1860s. Education has always been stressed by the Lutheran faithful, and on many occasions, a congregation constructed a school building before the church. This 1907 photo shows a parade celebrating the importance of the many Arkansas Lutheran schools at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Before 1938, the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayettevile (Washington County) football team played at a 300-seat stadium located near the present-day Mullins Library. On October 8, 1938, the school dedicated the new, much larger facility, Bailey Stadium. The Razorbacks lost the dedication game by a score of 9-6 to Southwest Conference foe Baylor University. Shown here at the microphone during the dedication is the administrator of the Works Progress Administration, Harry Hopkins.

Thomas S. Drew, a native of Tennessee who moved to Arkansas in 1817, was the first governor elected by a plurality of the vote instead of a majority, the first reelected to a second term, and the first to resign. Elected in 1844, he was awarded a second four-year term in 1848 but resigned due to a dispute concerning his salary. He later moved to Texas, where he died and was buried in 1879. However, in 1923, his remains were exhumed and reburied in Pocahontas (Randolph County), his former home.

The Reverend Agnes Diffee, who came to the Little Rock First Church of the Nazarene in 1929, became one of the most recognized voices in Arkansas due to her daily devotionals and Sunday sermons that were broadcast live on the church’s radio station, KARK. As a result, many knew the Nazarenes as simply “Sister Diffee’s Church.”

Poison Spring State Park, west of Camden (Ouachita County), commemorates a Civil War engagement that was part of the Camden Expedition. The Engagement at Poison Spring is remembered as a Confederate ambush of Union troops, which resulted in the massacre of many African Americans. Created by Act 182 of 1961, the eighty-five-acre park contains interpretive exhibits, as well as picnic sites and a short trail. The park, one of three to commemorate the Camden Expedition, is located on Highway 76 ten miles west of Camden.

Greene County native Junius M. Futrell was elected governor during the Great Depression in 1932. Campaigning as a fiscal conservative, he opposed almost all proposals to raise money for the state. However, he did support repealing state prohibition and was in favor of the selling of alcohol from proposed distilleries operated at the state prison facilities. This unusual failed proposal was popularly known as the Convict Corn Plan.

Dry goods and grocery stores were once the heart of Arkansas rural economies. Businesses like the Brinneman Brothers General Store, shown here in Hunter (Woodruff County) in the early twentieth century, rapidly began to close by the 1950s. The abandoned rural store quickly became something of a symbol of the effects of modernization throughout the state.

In 1906, John Huddleston (left) found two odd stones on his Pike County property. Expert examination determined them to be diamonds, making Huddleston the first person outside South Africa to find diamonds at an original volcanic source. With Huddleston in this photograph is Sam Reyburn, the man who led a group of businessmen in obtaining options on the diamond-bearing land.

Long before sports became embedded in the state’s high schools and universities, fans were entertained by teams fielded by local communities. Baseball has always been the most popular. Starting in the late 1800s and continuing in some form to the present, many teams participated in what is sometimes called “town ball.” Shown here is an 1894 “town ball” baseball team from Walnut Ridge (Lawrence County).

Republican gubernatorial candidate Frank White surprised the state and nation when in 1980 he defeated Democratic governor Bill Clinton in the statewide race. White served only one term, being defeated by Clinton in his reelection bid in 1982. White is shown here in his official portrait as the state’s forty-first governor.

Zero Mountain consists of a series of limestone caverns located at Johnson (Washington County) that have been developed into a refrigeration/freezer space of approximately thirty million cubic feet. The caverns, known as “the cave,” are owned by Zero Mountain, Inc., a $50 million operation founded in 1955 employing about 300 workers. The caverns are shown here in this 1929 photograph long before their development as a storage facility.

Arkansas artist Robyn Horn has been regionally and nationally recognized for her artwork. Working in several media, she began her career as a wood artist in 1983. Horn, whose work is regularly featured in craft and woodworking magazines, is the founder and first president of Collectors of Wood Art, an organization established in 1997 to foster interest in wood art. Shown here is one of her many pieces, Hypothetical Destination.

The Clark County community of Amity was settled by pioneers in the 1840s. Reportedly named by settlers who hoped to gain peace and brotherhood, the area developed slowly until the construction of the railroad shortly after the start of the twentieth century. Becoming a shipping and trading center, the town, shown in this early 1900s photograph, was officially incorporated in 1907.

The Arkansas Historic Wine Museum, located at Cowie Wine Cellars in Paris (Logan County), is the only museum in the United States dedicated to preserving the wine heritage of an entire state. Though not incorporated until 1994, the museum was started as a hobby by Robert Cowie in 1967. Over the years, Cowie has accumulated an impressive collection of wine-related artifacts. The museum has been recognized with several honors and awards.

The Ozark cavefish (Amblyopsis rosae) is found in the Springfield Plateau of the Ozark Mountains. Its geographic distribution covers approximately 8,200 square miles. This species has been reported in at least fifty-two caves over three states: Missouri, Arkansas, and northeast Oklahoma. Cave Springs Cave in Benton County hosts the largest population for this species.

James Wiseman Honnoll was one of the three founding fathers of the town of Leachville (Mississippi County). In the late 1890s, Honnoll and business associate Gilbert Leach incorporated a land development company that promoted the area. In Leach’s honor, Honnoll named the growing settlement Leachville. The First Methodist Church, which was built by Honnoll, is the town’s oldest surviving structure.

The initial act passed by the first state legislature in 1836 established the Real Estate Bank of the State of Arkansas. Capital was raised for the bank by the issuing of $2 million worth of five-percent bonds. The bank, which was a hotbed of political corruption and financial mismanagement, was taken over by the state in 1855. The legacy of the failure much damaged Arkansas’s financial future. Shown here is an 1838 draft note from the state’s failed banking venture.