Photos of the Day - Starting with O

At least 376,693 of the stamps issued in honor of the Arkansas centennial in 1936 were attached to envelopes known as “first day covers” and were canceled by the U.S. Postal Service with the date of June 15, 1936, the state’s one-hundredth anniversary. The issuing of such a large number of these covers with a June 15 cancellation date makes them an easily obtainable Arkansas collectible even today.

Virginia native Andrew Scott, for whom Scott County is named, was one of the first Supreme Court justices of Arkansas Territory. In 1819, he was the first government official to arrive at the territorial capital, Arkansas Post (Arkansas County) and was instrumental in putting the new laws into operation. Scott held several offices in both the Missouri Territory and Arkansas, but his violent nature, which led to his killing two men, one in a duel and one in a fight, hampered his political advancement.

The crossing point on the North Fork River at Henderson (Baxter County) was used for many years even before this bridge was built in 1935. The reservoir created by the completion of Norfork Dam in the 1940s covered the bridge with water. The inundation in progress is shown in this 1944 photo. For approximately the next forty years, traffic was transported across the lake by ferry until completion of a new bridge in the late twentieth century. The old submerged bridge has become a popular scuba-diving spot.

Jim Ed Brown and his sisters, Bonnie and Maxine, better known as the popular 1950s and 1960s singing group the Browns, grew up near Pine Bluff (Jefferson County). The trio performed together until growing families and other factors led to their breakup in 1967. Jim Ed went on to a fairly successful career as a solo artist and in a duo with Helen Cornelius.

In 1980, Lencola Sullivan of Morrilton (Conway County) made both state and national beauty pageant history. In July, she became the first African American to win the title of Miss Arkansas. Just a few months later, she became the first African American to finish in the top five of the national Miss America pageant when she finished fourth runner-up. When her pageant career came to a close, Sullivan went on to become an entertainer and motivational speaker.

The Thirteenth Regiment Illinois Infantry was organized on April 21, 1861, and mustered into Union service on May 24. The regiment arrived in Arkansas shortly after the 1862 Battle of Pea Ridge. Assigned to General Samuel Curtis’s army, the regiment is shown here after arriving in Helena (Phillips County). The regiment participated in the Battle of Arkansas Post in early 1863 before moving east of the Mississippi River for the duration of the war.

Ida Jo Brooks, the daughter of Joseph Brooks of Brooks-Baxter War fame, was one of the first female doctors in the state and was the first woman faculty member of the University of Arkansas Medical School (now the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences). She graduated from Little Rock University (Pulaski County) but was denied admission to medical school. After studying at Boston University School of Medicine, she returned to the state and became a leader in the field of psychiatry.

A 645-acre spring-fed lake is the main attraction at Lake Charles State Park in Lawrence County. Development of the artificial lake began in 1964, and it was officially opened in 1967. The park, which also offers sixty campsites, attracts many fishermen and swimmers. This photograph shows the lake’s sandy beach on a sunny day.

Tamales are found on restaurant menus and at roadside stands throughout Arkansas and have been a vibrant foodways tradition in the state for generations. This ancient food with roots in Latin America has had a presence in Arkansas and other parts of the American South since at least the early twentieth century. The Bright Spot, located in Malvern (Hot Spring County), was a popular central Arkansas restaurant that served tamales.

On August 19, 1946, in Hope (Hempstead County), Virginia Cassidy Blythe gave birth to a son. She and her husband, William Jefferson Blythe III, who was killed in a car accident before the boy’s birth, named the child William Jefferson Blythe IV. A few years later, when his mother remarried, the boy, shown here at approximately age four, changed his name to reflect his new stepfather’s, becoming William Jefferson Clinton. Bill Clinton would grow up to be the forty-second president of the United States.

Virginia native Solon Borland moved to Arkansas in 1843 to take charge of the newly founded Democratic Party newspaper, Arkansas Banner. Borland’s star rose quickly as he saw service as a major in the Arkansas regiment during the Mexican War. Later, he took over Ambrose Sevier’s seat in the U.S. Senate. After resigning his Senate seat in 1853, he served as U.S. minister to Nicaragua and other Central American republics. Borland saw minor service as a Confederate officer during the Civil War and died of illness on January 1, 1864.

The turbulent 1957-58 school year at Central High School in Little Rock (Pulaski County) ended on May 27, when Ernest Green became the school’s first African-American graduate. This haunting photo of an empty hallway at Central High in September 1958 shows the effect of the decision to close the city’s high schools the following school year (known as the Lost Year) rather than integrate them.

In 1886, prominent Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) businessman and community leader Joseph William Bocage used lumber from his own mill to construct this impressive Greek Revival-style home. The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.

On June 6, 1864, Union and Confederate forces clashed along the southern shore of Lake Chicot near Lake Village (Chicot County). The engagement at Old River Lake (also known as Ditch Bayou) was the largest to occur in Chicot County and the last significant Civil War engagement in Arkansas. Union forces won the field but suffered higher casualties.

The eastern collared lizard (Crotaphytus collaris) is just one of thirteen species and subspecies of lizards that are known to inhabit Arkansas. It is the most colorful lizard native to Arkansas and can usually be found in exposed rock outcroppings in the Interior Highlands.

In 1941, Lonoke County native Maurice Lee “Footsie” Britt was drafted into the U.S. Army and assigned to the Third Infantry Division. He was engaged in extensive combat in the African, Sicilian, and Italian campaigns. For his heroism at Mignano, Italy, in 1943, he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. In later life, Britt became a prominent businessman and was elected lieutenant governor in 1966 and reelected in 1968. Britt died on November 26, 1995, and is buried in the National Cemetery in Little Rock (Pulaski County).

During World War II, in an attempt to alleviate the overcrowding of prisoner-of-war camps in Great Britain, more than 400,000 German and Italian prisoners were sent to 500 camps located in the southern and southwestern parts of the United States. Approximately 23,000 prisoners were sent to Arkansas, housed in three main camps located in Pulaski, Sebastian, and Chicot counties. An additional thirty branch camps, such as this one near Murfreesboro (Pike County), were operated in the state. By the summer of 1946, the camps were dismantled and the prisoners released and sent home.

Veterans of the War of 1812 were offered land grants or bounties for their service to their country. While many never occupied their grants, a number of veterans did journey to Arkansas Territory to stake their claims. One such veteran was Dexter Harding, who in the early part of 1850 moved to Pine Bluff (Jefferson County), having received his grant after his service as a drummer boy in a New York regiment. He became one of the leading businessmen in the Pine Bluff area, and his gravestone is shown here.

Dee Brown is the only contributor to Arkansas literature included in The New York Public Library’s Books of the Century (1996), a selection of the most significant works of the past 100 years. He lived more than half his life in Arkansas and, beginning as a teenager, wrote continuously for publication, often long into the night, as he did for his best-known work, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (1970), which changed the way the world thinks about America’s westward expansion.

Rockabilly Hall of Fame member Dale Hawkins, a resident of Arkansas since the 1970s and cousin of rocker Ronnie Hawkins, charted four hit songs in the 1950s. Considered one of the shapers of early rock and roll, Hawkins is perhaps best known for writing and recording the song “Susie Q.” In the 1960s, Hawkins entered into a successful career as a music producer. He still tours the world performing his unique style of rock and roll.

In 1829, President Andrew Jackson appointed prominent Kentucky politician John Pope the territorial governor of Arkansas. As governor, Pope promoted migration and economic development and worked to rid the area of its violent reputation. Pope was appointed to a second term, but in 1835, due to a disagreement with President Jackson, he was replaced by William Fulton, the last territorial governor. Pope returned to Kentucky, where he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. He died at age seventy-two in 1845.

Salt making was an enterprise existing in Arkansas since the time of prehistoric Native Americans, who produced salt for both personal use and trade. The best known frontier salt works were located in southwestern Arkansas. Local production was common until cheap, commercially produced salt from outside the state became readily available just before the Civil War. Local production once again briefly grew due to shortages caused by the war but virtually ceased after the war. The key to early salt production was a large iron kettle, such as the one shown here in Sevier County, used to boil the brine to extract the salt.

Wilbur Mills of Kensett (White County) was a member of the U.S. Congress for thirty-eight years (1939–1977), eighteen of which he served as the chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee. In 1972, he pursued a brief run for the presidency. Alcoholism and scandals brought an end to his long career in 1977.

The Museum of American History was founded by Cabot students and teachers in 1985. The award-winning museum, which houses an impressive collection of artifacts, originally was located on the Cabot High School campus. Today, it is housed in the former downtown U.S. post office in Cabot (Lonoke County).

The Rogers Historical Museum, located in Rogers (Benton County), is the largest and most comprehensive regional history museum in the county. Founded in 1974 and officially opened to the public in 1975, the museum is a department of the City of Rogers. Originally located in a Victorian home, the museum moved into a new 5,000-square-foot facility in 1987 and, in 1999, was accredited by the American Association of Museums. The museum is a popular attraction in the area.

In 1973, Act 49 of the Arkansas General Assembly designated the honeybee as the official state insect. Introduced by state Representative Albert “Tom” Collier of Jackson County, the legislation took note of the bee’s important role in crop pollination but primarily extolled the bee’s virtues of diligence, hard work, attention to home defense, and productivity.

William Woodruff, founder of the first newspaper in Arkansas, the Arkansas Gazette, was born on December 24, 1795, in Long Island, New York. Apprenticed to a printer as a young boy, he made his way west, eventually to Arkansas Post (Arkansas County) in 1819. He not only founded the Gazette but published the first book in the territory, Laws of the Territory of Arkansas, and established the first circulating library. In 1862, Woodruff County was named in his honor.

Of the seventy-five counties of Arkansas, ten have been named in honor of presidents of the United States. On November 30, 1844, the state legislature named the newest county then to be created in honor of James K. Polk, approximately three weeks after the popular vote had been cast in the general election and four months before he was inaugurated the eleventh U.S. president.

Paul Kazuo Kuroda, professor of chemistry at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County), brought international attention to scientific research in Arkansas by correctly predicting the presence of naturally occurring nuclear reactors nearly twenty years before the first discovery of a reactor of this kind in the Oklo Mines in the Republic of Gabon in west-central Africa. Kuroda retired from the University of Arkansas in 1987. He died on April 16, 2001.

The Know-Nothing Party, the anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant political party of the 1850s, saw some early success in the state, especially in Little Rock (Pulaski County), but with a small population of Catholics and immigrants in the state to rally against, the party quickly faded. Calls for repealing all naturalization laws, allowing none but those born in America to serve in governmental office, are clearly stated in planks one and two of its 1856 presidential party platform.

In 1941, Lonoke County native Maurice “Footsie” Britt was drafted into the U.S. Army and assigned to the Third Infantry Division. He was engaged in extensive combat in the African, Sicilian, and Italian campaigns. For his heroic gallantry at Mignano, Italy, in 1943, he was awarded the nation’s highest military honor, the Medal of Honor. Britt was presented the medal, shown in this photo, at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) commencement ceremony in 1944. In later life, Britt became a prominent businessman and was elected lieutenant governor in 1966 and reelected in 1968.

Shown here is “Broncho Billy” Anderson, the character developed and played by Max Aronson of Pine Bluff (Jefferson County), America’s first cowboy movie star. After reading a Saturday Evening Post story about Broncho Billy, Aronson developed the character into a franchise of Broncho Billy films. From 1908 to 1915, he made 375 westerns.

In 1918, more than 2,500 airmen trained for aerial warfare at the 960-acre Eberts Field near Lonoke (Lonoke County). The U.S. Army’s Aerial Photography Section No. 32 also trained at Eberts Field. World War I ended shortly before the first class graduated from Eberts Field. The training school was dismantled after the war, and the site today is nothing more than open fields and a golf course.

The Ozark Dam Contractors, a consortium of nine companies, began construction on Bull Shoals Dam in 1947. Two specially constructed projects, a railroad spur and a conveyor belt, were used to deliver materials to the site. Shown here is the thirty-inch-wide, 7.8-mile-long conveyor belt that carried aggregate from Lee’s Mountain near Flippin (Marion County). The belt broke down only once, due to a lightning strike, during its approximately four years of operation.

In 1971, the Ozark Folk Festival Board of Directors in Eureka Springs (Carroll County) purchased the historic Calif Building for the purpose of establishing a museum of local history. A museum advisory board accepted the task to collect, preserve, and exhibit artifacts in the building. The museum opened to the public in October of that year.

In 1914, Harvey Couch purchased the only electric transmission lines in the state, totaling twenty-two miles connecting Malvern (Hot Spring County) and Arkadelphia (Clark County). Sixteen years later, he increased his development, now known as Arkansas Power and Light (AP&L), to 3,000 miles of line serving citizens in sixty-three of the state’s seventy-five counties. Shown here is a 1938 advertisement for the groundbreaking company today known as Entergy, which serves 2.4 million consumers in a four-state area.

This building housing the Arkansas State Lunatic Asylum, later called the Arkansas State Hospital, was built in the 1880s. Land was purchased in 1873, but the building, which was financed by a property tax and state appropriation, did not open until 1883. Serving the state for approximately eighty years, the outdated building was demolished and replaced in the early 1960s.

This panoramic view of the Old Mill in North Little Rock (Pulaski County) shows sculptures by renowned Mexican artist Dionicio Rodriguez in the early 1930s. The Old Mill was featured in the opening credits of Gone with the Wind (1939). Rodriguez created “faux bois” (fake wood) sculptures using reinforced concrete to resemble petrified logs.

Bill Hansen, shown here in 2007, was the first director of the Arkansas Project of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a 1960s civil rights organization operating in the South. As a civil rights advocate in Arkansas for about four years, he participated in a number of protest activities. In 1965, he and black comedian Dick Gregory were arrested for attempting to integrate a Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) truck stop. Hansen was initially sentenced to six months in prison and fined $500, but an appeal overturned the conviction.

John Patrick Daly has been a golfer on the Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA) Tour since 1990, having stunned the golf world by winning the PGA Championship as a rookie. He did not win another PGA Tour round until the 2004 Buick Invitational–his first win after 189 tries. Daly spent much of his time during this drought earning a controversial reputation, entering into alcohol rehabilitation centers several times, and winning and losing millions of dollars gambling. Daly has parlayed his fame into success as an entrepreneur, owning a line of clothing and golf equipment, as well as line of wines. He also designs golf courses.

In 1877, long before ex-slave Scott Bond of St. Francis County became one of the wealthiest landowners in the state, he married Magnolia Nash. Maggie, as she was known, was an equal partner in the couple’s financial success. During the early days of their marriage, she did what she could to make their life of poverty more comfortable, such as making a mattress for their bed out of old coffee sacks and hay. She and Bond had eleven children, all sons.

Between 1940 and 1970, Greene County native Paul Douglas was one of the most decorated fighter pilots in U.S. military history. During World War II, he flew 136 missions and helped develop the P-47 Thunderbolt into one of the war’s most efficient fighter planes. He flew an additional 101 missions in the Vietnam War. By the time he retired at the rank of brigadier general in 1970, he had received more than sixty decorations. He is shown here in 1995 wearing the Third Order of the Sacred Treasure of Japan.

George Takei, the man known to the world as Star Trek’s Lieutenant Sulu, spent eight months as a young boy incarcerated at the War Relocation Camp at Rohwer (Desha County) during World War II. Rohwer was one of two camps in the state where Japanese Americans, judged a threat to national security, were imprisoned after being forced to leave their homes on the West Coast. Takei has returned to the state on several occasions and has written about the time he spent in Arkansas as a boy.

This photo of the wagon lot on a Saturday afternoon in 1930s Arkadelphia (Clark County) shows interesting contrasts between the old and the new. Wagons and mule teams interspersed with cars and an Adams Motor Grader clearly indicate the changes coming to the county seat, which had been incorporated in 1857. From 1930 to 1950, the population of the town more than doubled.

Quitman Male and Female College was a Methodist institution of higher education that operated in Quitman (Cleburne County) from 1870 until 1898. By 1891, this three-story brick building was constructed on a new, fifteen-acre campus. After the college closed in 1898, the building became part of the Quitman Public School and was used until it was destroyed by fire in 1932.

The alligator snapping turtle (Mascrochelys temminckii) is one of the largest freshwater turtles in North America. The snapper, which may grow to as much as thirty inches in length, is just one of nineteen species and subspecies of turtles that can be seen in Arkansas. The strictly aquatic and mostly nocturnal turtle is rarely seen basking in the sun like so many others of the species.

When Arkansas’s third territorial governor, John Pope, engaged architect Gideon Shryock to design a capitol building in 1833, he envisioned a structure that “would command the admiration and respect of the passing stranger, and have moral and political influence on the whole community.” The building, shown here in 1978, has served many purposes since the state government left it in 1911 to relocate to the new capitol. Today, it is the home of the widely respected Old State House Museum.

This photo shows a part of the barracks at Camp Pike, a military training camp built near North Little Rock (Pulaski County) in 1917. The installation, named in honor of military officer Zebulon Pike, consisted of more than 3,000 buildings and was large enough to house more than 50,000 recruits. The 87th Division was trained at the camp before being shipped to Europe. At the end of the war, the camp served as a demobilization center. Much of the camp was dismantled and sold after the war. However, during World War II, the acreage of the camp was increased, and the camp was renamed Camp Joseph T. Robinson in 1937.

The 1915 Morrilton (Conway County) depot, located within a few feet of the railroad tracks, once served as a passenger station for the railroad that prompted the town’s growth, the Little Rock and Fort Smith. With passenger service discontinued by the 1970s, many such depots were torn down to make room for other structures. The Morrilton depot, shown here not long after its construction, survived to serve as the Morrilton Depot Museum, a repository of local history.

Dale Evans was an actress, author, and songwriter who was raised in Osceola (Mississippi County), where she first attended school. She rose to fame as America’s “Queen of the West” (sometimes called “Queen of the Cowgirls”) alongside her fourth husband, Roy Rogers (“King of the Cowboys”). She starred in movies, television shows, and evangelical Christian programs. Evans wrote twenty-eight inspirational books and composed many songs, including the iconic American standard “Happy Trails.”