Photos of the Day - Starting with N

On December 22, 1956, Arkansas hosted the Aluminum Bowl, the only college football bowl game ever played in the state. The first national championship game of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics drew a disappointing crowd of 5,000 who braved horrible weather to watch a scoreless tie between Montana State College and St. Joseph’s College of Indiana.

Within months of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, the U.S. government began relocating over 100,000 Japanese Americans from the West Coast to the nation’s interior, fearing they might assist in an invasion attempt. Two of ten centers, Jerome (Drew County) and Rohwer (Desha County), were constructed in Arkansas. Over 16,000 internees spent most of the war years in one of these relocation centers. Shown here is a typical street scene at the Rohwer compound in 1942.

Herman Davis of Mississippi County was named to General John Pershing’s list of the top 100 soldiers of World War I. As a member of the 113th Infantry, Twenty-ninth Division, he was awarded a number of decorations, including the Distinguished Service Cross. Today, his burial place is the site of the Herman Davis State Park.

In 1966, Little Rock Central High School biology teacher Susan Epperson became the center of controversy as the plaintiff in the court case, Epperson v. Arkansas. Epperson contended that the Arkansas anti-evolution law, which outlawed the teaching of evolution in the public schools, violated the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution. Though upheld by the Arkansas Supreme Court, the law was down struck by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967, thus settling the issue of the constitutionality of teaching evolutionary theory in the public schools, although controversy over the issue remains.

Architect Clyde Ferrell designed three courthouses in Arkansas, including the one shown here in Heber Springs (Cleburne County). The old, wood-framed seat of government was moved to make room for the new brick structure on the city square. The brick, flat-roofed building with an octagonal dome was completed in 1915 at a cost of $65,000. When it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976, it was called “one of the more architecturally significant courthouses in Arkansas.”

For five weeks in the fall of 2002, Hallmark Hall of Fame Productions came to Arkansas to film a television movie version of John Grisham’s novel A Painted House. The movie, with major parts being filmed in Lepanto (Poinsett County), aired on the CBS network on April 27, 2003. This Lepanto house, now a tourist attraction, was used in the filming of the movie.

Archibald Yell, a larger-than-life and colorful figure in Arkansas history, was Arkansas’s first congressman, second governor, founder of Arkansas’s first Masonic lodge, and Mexican War hero. While a congressman, he returned to Arkansas to serve as a private in Captain Solon Borland’s company of Arkansas volunteers at the onset of the Mexican War. At the Battle of Buena Vista on February 23, 1847, Yell was killed while leading a charge against about 1,000 Mexican soldiers.

Until 1971, black students at Newport (Jackson County) attended public school at a segregated campus, originally known as the Newport Colored School, located on Arrington Avenue. In 1954, the same year as the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas decision, the name was changed to W. F. Branch High School. The name change was in honor of William Franklin Branch, who had retired in 1948 after serving as the school’s principal for twenty-three years.

Lucius Polk, a native of North Carolina, moved near Helena (Phillips County) in 1852. When the Civil War began in 1861, he enlisted as a private in the Confederate Arkansas infantry company known as the Yell Rifles. Before the end of the war, he rose to the rank of brigadier general, one of seven Confederate generals to hail from the Helena area. He died in 1892 and is buried at Ashwood near Columbia, Tennessee.

The Climber, an automobile built from 1919 to 1924 in Little Rock (Pulaski County), was designed for Arkansas’s rough roads. To publicize its abilities, a test was held in the winter of 1919-1920. A Climber was kept running constantly for 20,239 miles of “winter mud and rain over nearly impassable roads of the South.” Shown here is an advertisement from the November 20, 1919, Arkansas Gazette.

One of the more popular nature trails at Lake Catherine State Park near Hot Springs (Garland County) is the two-mile-long Falls Branch Trail. The moderately difficult trail winds through the forest, crossing scenic Little Canyon Creek several times. It ends at the scenic waterfall shown here before doubling back to the trail’s head.

The Levi Wilcoxon Demonstration Forest, located about three miles south of Hamburg (Ashley County) along U.S. Highway 425, is a remnant of the old-growth pine forest that once covered much of southern Arkansas. Most of the pines in this roughly ninety-acre stand are between 100 and 200 years old and over 100 feet tall. The forest was established in 1939. The entrance to the forest is shown here.

During the Civil War, approximately 15,000 Arkansas men, about one-third of them African American, served in the Union forces. While several regiments of infantry and cavalry were raised, only one artillery unit was mustered into Arkansas Union service. That unit, the First Arkansas Light Artillery Battery, is shown here in this 1863 Fayetteville (Washington County) photograph about the time they were mustered into service.

In 1972, after years of conflict between conservationists and dam supporters, President Richard Nixon signed Public Bill 92-237, making northwest Arkansas’s Buffalo River America’s first national river. The Buffalo National River is one of the few free-flowing, unpolluted streams in the lower forty-eight states. Today, the National Park Service administers approximately 135 miles of the long-admired 150-mile river. The river, shown here just north of Harriet (Searcy County), is one of the most popular canoeing streams in Arkansas.

Freeman Owens of Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) invented the Phonofilm, the first synchronized sound and film camera. He filed a patent application in June 1923. His employer, Dr. Lee De Forest, with Owens in this photo, also filed for the patent. Owens lost the rights in a legal decision stating that the company owned all rights to inventions made by the inventor.

In 1967, Marion Taylor became the first African-American trooper in the Arkansas State Police. During most of his career, Taylor served primarily as a safety education officer traveling around the state making presentations. He is shown here in 1968 speaking about driver safety.

During the defense of Little Rock (Pulaski County), Confederate brigadier general Lucius Walker was killed in a duel by fellow general John S. Marmaduke. Walker had issued a challenge after Marmaduke expressed critical remarks about Walker’s conduct shortly after the Action at Bayou Meto. Walker died on September 7, one day after being critically wounded in the duel fought near Little Rock. Marmaduke was briefly placed under arrest but then returned to active duty.

Sentinel of Freedom, artist Adrian Brewer’s most famous painting, was completed in 1941. Commissioned by a Little Rock (Pulaski County) insurance executive, the painting was unveiled at a special ceremony in Washington DC. The popularity of the painting resulted in the printing and distribution of millions of prints. Most every school, church, and government building displayed Brewer’s work. Today, the original painting is owned by the U.S. Naval Academy, where it is displayed in the school’s library.

Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Jay Hanna “Dizzy” Dean was born in Logan County in 1910. A professional career that began in 1929 with a Texas semi-pro team soon led to great fame with the St. Louis Cardinals. In the 1934 season, he and his younger brother, Paul, combined to win forty-nine games, and in the World Series that same year, they won two games each, leading the Cardinals to the championship. After a nagging injury led to his retirement in 1941, Dean became one of the first former players to become a radio sports broadcaster.

In 1894, more than twenty years before his 1916 election as Arkansas’s governor, eighteen-year-old Charles Brough graduated with honors from Mississippi College. He was a member of the college’s Philomathean Literary Society, showing the interests and skills he later demonstrated in his career as a professor, politician, and public speaker.

In 1867, Professor Isaac A. Clarke opened a school in Berryville (Carroll County) named Clarke’s Academy. The school attracted students from all over the United States, but, after five years, the school suffered a serious setback when the building completely burned. The school was temporarily relocated until a new building, shown here, was constructed. At this location, Clarke educated both male and female students for the next thirty-eight years.

The Levi Wilcoxon Demonstration Forest, located in Ashley County, is notable for the dimensions of the loblolly and shortleaf pines growing within its boundaries. One such giant loblolly pine, the “Morris Pine,” measures fifty-six inches in diameter and 117 feet tall, and is estimated to be at least 300 years old.

During the early 1800s, the American Colonization Society promoted the settlement of freed slaves to Africa, resulting in the founding of Liberia. With the discrimination in the Jim Crow South by the late 1890s, a new Back-to-Africa movement emerged. During that time, approximately 650 Arkansas emigrants made the long journey. Among them were approximately a dozen black Arkansas missionaries, such as this Methodist missionary group that posed for this photo before making the trip to Liberia in 1898.

During the early 1800s, the American Colonization Society promoted the settlement of freed slaves to Africa, resulting in the founding of Liberia. With the discrimination in the Jim Crow South by the late 1890s, a new Back-to-Africa movement emerged. During that time, approximately 650 Arkansas emigrants made the long journey. Among them were approximately a dozen black Arkansas missionaries, such as this Methodist missionary group that posed for this photo before making the trip to Liberia in 1898.

During the early 1800s, the American Colonization Society promoted the settlement of freed slaves to Africa, resulting in the founding of Liberia. With the discrimination in the Jim Crow South by the late 1890s, a new Back-to-Africa movement emerged. During that time, approximately 650 Arkansas emigrants made the long journey. Among them were approximately a dozen black Arkansas missionaries, such as this Methodist missionary group that posed for this photo before making the trip to Liberia in 1898.

On October 3, 1963, President John F. Kennedy officially dedicated Greers Ferry Dam near Heber Springs (Cleburne County). Kennedy complimented the power of the Arkansas congressional delegation in attendance and spoke of the prosperity that the dam and lake would bring to the area. Shown here is the official invitation to the dedication.

In 1910, the first patients were admitted to the Arkansas State Tuberculosis Sanatorium located near Booneville (Logan County). During over sixty years of operation, the sanatorium served as the relocation center for the treatment of more than 70,000 white Arkansans stricken or suspected of being stricken with the disease (there was a separate facility in central Arkansas for African Americans). The facility officially closed in 1973 and is home to the Booneville Human Development Center.

Eugene John Weibel was ordained as a priest in the Benedictine order on August 15, 1876. A native of Switzerland, Weibel is best known for his almost thirty years of service in northeast Arkansas, during which he helped to establish churches, convents, schools, and St. Bernards Medical Center in Jonesboro (Craighead County). He was instrumental in so many church activities that he has been called the Catholic “Apostle to northeastern Arkansas.” By 1922, he had returned to Europe, where he died in 1934.

Towns, both large and small, commonly were home to a cotton gin during the heyday of cotton cultivation in the state. One such gin, which removes the seeds from the cotton boll, is shown here at the Independence County town of Oil Trough in the 1930s.

The Ouachita dusky salamander (Desmognathus brimleyorum) reaches a length of three to five inches at maturity. This rare, mostly aquatic, nocturnal salamander inhabits the shorelines of creeks and small streams in the Ouachita Mountains in the state’s southwest counties, south of the Arkansas River.

Shown here during the April 3, 1944, commissioning ceremonies is the crew of the USS Razorback (SS-394), a Balao-class submarine that saw service in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. Decommissioned in 2001, after having been transferred to the Turkish Navy and renamed in 1970, the submarine became part of the Arkansas Inland Maritime Museum located in North Little Rock (Pulaski County).

Known today for truck farming, especially of tomatoes, the area around Warren (Bradley County) was a center for the timber industry in the early twentieth century. Housing areas such as this one were built specifically for lumber mill workers as the town’s population grew from 954 in 1900 to 2,523 in 1930.

A visitor to many of the small towns of Arkansas will discover that one of the oldest buildings in the community is often the railroad depot. In the days of passenger trains, any town of modest size was usually home to such a structure. As passenger service declined over the years, many of the buildings, such as the one shown here in Coy (Lonoke County), were closed and left to decay.

The Zerbe Air Sedan is a curiosity in the history of aviation in Arkansas constructed by aircraft builder Professor Jerome S. Zerbe. It was an early attempt to construct a passenger plane. The only known flight of the airplane took place at the Washington County Fairgrounds, when it was piloted for approximately 1,000 feet. Little documentation exists for this event. Some reports say the plane flew forty to fifty feet off the ground, but others say the height was forty or fifty inches. Zerbe subsequently disappeared from the historical record, and the fate of the Zerbe Air Sedan remains a mystery.

Approximately a year after the Little River County seat was moved to Ashdown in 1906, a new spacious courthouse was constructed to house the county government. Built in 1907, the building has gone through many renovations and restorations through the years. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.

The town of Wynne (Cross County), shown in this early 1900s photo, was settled in 1882 after a train derailed in the area. A boxcar left behind was turned upright, and the town was named Wynne Station in honor of Captain Jesse Wynne of Forrest City (St. Francis County). The town quickly grew when it became the headquarters for the construction of railroad tracks from Memphis, Tennessee, to Bald Knob (White County) in 1885. By 1888, the town’s name was shortened to Wynne, and, in 1903, the growing town became the county seat.

In 1893, Millard Berry of Springdale (Washington County) acquired an incubator with the intention of raising chickens on a large scale. Over 100 years later, due to many factors, including advancements in technology, northwest Arkansas is a leader in poultry production in the United States. One of these technological advancements, the Springdale Electric Hatchery, was proudly advertised at the 1941 Rogers (Benton County) broiler show.

Oklahoma Row was one of three hotels built in the early twentieth century by promoter William “Coin” Harvey at his Monte Ne (Benton County) resort. Completed in 1910, the 316-foot-long structure had a two-story central entrance and boasted a fireplace in every room. At the time of its construction, it was one of the largest log structures (composed of more than 6,000 hand-hewn logs) in the world. The hotel is shown here in the 1920s after it changed ownership and was known as the Club House Hotel.

In 1972, a six-lane highway bridge known as the Hernando de Soto Bridge connecting West Memphis (Crittenden County) with Memphis, Tennessee, opened as part of I-40. The double-arch truss-suspended deck bridge, which was named after Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto, spans a total of 19,535 total feet and is 109 feet above the Mississippi River.

Two-term U.S. Congerssman Clyde T. Ellis of Garfield (Benton County) was a pioneer in the national rural electrification movement, a New Deal program designed to bring electricity to rural America. In 1943, he was appointed the general manager of the National Rural Electrification Association (NREA), a post he held for over twenty years, with only a brief absence while serving in World War II. He played a key role in the development of electric cooperatives and, for his efforts, was referred to as “Mr. Rural Electrification.” After suffering a stroke and a heart attack in 1967, he resigned as general manager of the NREA.

George William Stanley Ish was one of Pulaski County’s most respected African-American physicians. A 1909 graduate of Harvard Medical School, Ish was instrumental in the establishment of the United Friends Hospital and the J. E. Bush Memorial Hospital in Little Rock (Pulaski County). It was chiefly through his urging that the state built the McRae Memorial Tuberculosis Sanatorium, a segregated facility for the treatment of black patients. Ish died in 1970 and is buried in Little Rock’s Haven of Rest Cemetery.

Freeman Owens of Pine Bluff (Jefferson County), shown here in 1915, invented the Phonofilm, the first synchronized sound and film camera. He filed a patent application in June 1923. His employer, Dr. Lee De Forest, also filed for the patent. Owens lost the rights in a legal decision stating that the company owned all rights to inventions made by the inventor.

All eyes likely turned to the sky when this early biplane flew over the town of Leslie (Searcy County) in 1912. Just nine years after the famous Wright brothers’ motorized flight at Kitty Hawk, the flight shown here over the mountain town must have been an early one in the state. Though common today, large numbers of planes did not arrive in Arkansas until the United States entered World War I in 1917.

The Conway County Courthouse in Morrilton was designed by architect Frank Gibb and constructed in 1929–30. During the Great Depression, at least one-fourth of the county courthouses in Arkansas were either rebuilt or redesigned in the Art Deco style. The Conway County Courthouse is the only known example of a Classical Revival–Art Deco transitional form. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.

Confederate brigadier general Joseph O. Shelby was one of the most active southern commanders in Arkansas during the Civil War. Troops under his command participated in numerous small skirmishes throughout much of Arkansas and also in larger battles such as Prairie Grove and the Red River Campaign. After the war, Shelby fled the United States, briefly living in Mexico before returning to Missouri.

The initial act passed by the first state legislature in 1836 was the establishment of the Real Estate Bank of the State of Arkansas. Capital was raised for the bank by the issuing of two million dollars’ worth of five-percent bonds. The 1839 stock certificate shown here represents twenty-five of those Real Estate Bank shares. The bank, which was a source 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.

The World War II–era Japanese American relocation site at Jerome in Drew and Chicot counties had barracks, schools, gymnasiums, canteens, and a hospital section. Shown here are the camp’s school-age children exercising on the elementary school grounds. The incarcerated youth at the Jerome camp had the most negative reaction to the army’s 1943 forced loyalty and military draft program. Several hundred young people peacefully marched to the camp director’s building and petitioned against the program.

Margarete Neel of Minturn (Lawrence County) served in the Pacific in World War II. A photo of her and a wounded soldier, taken at the 109th Station Hospital in New Caledonia, was chosen after the war to be reproduced on 1.4 million Red Cross fundraising posters that were distributed internationally.

The 225-foot milldam shown in the distance near the tall building is holding back the waters of Mammoth Spring, Arkansas’s largest spring and the seventh largest in the United States. At one time, the two stone buildings housed a flour mill and later a hydroelectric power plant, neither of which is now operational. The area was designated a state park in 1957, but no land was acquired until 1966. The modern building to the left of the former hydroelectric plant is the state’s tenth Arkansas Welcome Center, which opened in 1987.

The Museum of the Arkansas Grand Prairie in Stuttgart (Arkansas County)—also known as the Stuttgart Agricultural Museum and the Arkansas County Museum—was formed in 1974 by two lifelong Arkansas County residents, Bennie Burkett and Jack Crum, in order to preserve Arkansas County’s heritage as a center for rice production and duck hunting.