Photos of the Day - Starting with O

In May 1861, Mexican War veteran James F. Fagan assisted in raising the Confederate First Arkansas Infantry and was elected its colonel. The regiment was one of only two Arkansas Confederate regiments to serve in Virginia, though only briefly. Fagan served at the bloody Battle of Shiloh and, before the end of 1862, was promoted to brigadier general. He commanded troops in the last Arkansas campaigns and was one of the last to surrender in 1865. For a time during Reconstruction, he served as a U.S. marshal. He died in 1893 and is buried in Little Rock (Pulaski County).

Dorothy Shaver of Howard County became one of the most respected businesswomen of the twentieth century. In 1921, she went to work for the prestigious New York firm of Lord & Taylor. She quickly advanced up the corporate ladder. In 1945, when she was elected president of the company, she became the first woman in the United States to head a multi-million-dollar firm. In both 1946 and 1947, the Associated Press named her the nation’s outstanding businesswoman.

Causing roughly 1,800 deaths, the explosion of the Sultana on April 27, 1865, is America’s worst maritime disaster. This photo shows the boat leaving Memphis with approximately 2,400 passengers, mostly Union soldiers freed from Confederate prisons. Remnants of the steamboat sank on the Arkansas side of the river and are now buried under soybean fields in Crittenden County.

Virginia native Samuel Adams, a prominent politician of early Arkansas and Saline County, was elected to the Arkansas Senate in 1840, becoming president of that body in 1842. For approximately six months in 1844, after the resignation of Governor Archibald Yell, he served as the state’s acting governor. Elected as state treasurer in 1844, he held that office until 1849.

After the dedication of Bull Shoals Dam on July 2, 1952, President Harry Truman’s passenger train made a stop at Cotter (Baxter County). He is shown here greeting well wishers and supporters gathered along the train tracks during the brief stop.

Greers Ferry Dam, located on the Little Red River approximately three miles north of Heber Springs (Cleburne County), was constructed between 1959 and 1962. At a cost of almost $47 million, the dam was built mainly for flood control but also provides hydroelectric power. The structure is 1,704 feet long and stands 243 feet above the Little Red River stream bed. The dam, which created a highly popular 30,000- to 40,000-acre reservoir, was dedicated on October 3, 1963, by President John F. Kennedy.

The Cadron Blockhouse is a replica of a two-story eighteenth-century log building constructed for defensive purposes at the Cadron settlement on the Arkansas River, located near present-day Conway (Faulkner County). The first replica, which was dedicated in 1979, was destroyed by fire in 1992. The building shown here, which today is part of the Cadron Settlement Park, was completed in 1998.

In the days of segregated sports, the Claybrook Tigers from the town of Claybrook (Crittenden County), a black semi-professional team, gave African Americans an opportunity to play the game of baseball. The team—founded and owned by one of the most successful African-American businessmen in northeast Arkansas, John Claybrook—won the Negro Southern League championship in both 1935 and 1936. Despite their success on the field, the Claybrook Tigers folded after the 1937 season.

The location of Camden (Ouachita County) on the Ouachita River facilitated the town’s development as a trade center since its settlement in the early 1800s. By the 1850s, Camden was a major port for river traffic, with as many as 40,000 bales of cotton shipped by water every year. Such traffic continued until the early part of the twentieth century, when rail service began to reduce river trade. The steamboat City of Camden is shown here in 1894, docked at Camden and loaded with cotton.

In 1992, Governor Bill Clinton won the U.S. presidential election, and shortly before Clinton’s inauguration in 1993, Lieutenant Governor Jim Guy Tucker was sworn in as the state’s forty-third governor. A special election was called to fill the open lieutenant governor position. Michael Dale Huckabee ran and won the position. In 1994, he won a comfortable reelection with fifty-eight percent of the popular vote. Huckabee went on to serve three terms as governor.

Postcards, which once could be mailed for a penny, have been a part of the tourist experience since the early 1900s. A typical postcard serves as an advertisement for a local attraction as well as a keepsake for the tourist. Countless postcards, such as the one shown here promoting many sites in 1950s Arkansas, have been produced in the past century. Postcards remain as one of the most popular and least expensive tourist items.

In 1927, famed author Ernest Hemingway married Pauline Pfeiffer of Piggott (Clay County). About a year after their marriage, Pauline and her new husband traveled to Arkansas, their first of several trips, to visit her family at their home, shown here. Today, the house is part of the Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum.

T. H. Barton, philanthropist and El Dorado (Union County) oil pioneer, moved to Arkansas just after the first oil discovery in Union County. He soon became the major stockholder in the Lion Oil Refining Company and eventually served as its president. A childhood interest in livestock led to his role as a major contributor to the establishment of the Arkansas State Fair. T. H. Barton Coliseum, located on the fairgrounds, was dedicated in his honor in 1952.

Tennessee native Edward Cross embarked upon a distinguished career after moving to Arkansas in 1826. He served as a judge of the Superior Court of Arkansas (1832–1836), surveyor general of public lands (1836–1838), member of the U.S. House of Representatives (1839–1845), associate justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court (1845–1846), and state attorney general (1874). He was president of the Cairo and Fulton Railroad (1855–1862), the first railroad to connect Arkansas with Missouri and the eastern United States.

On October 3, 1963, President John F. Kennedy mounted the speaker’s stand overlooking the recently completed Greers Ferry Dam near Heber Springs (Cleburne County) to dedicate the dam officially. Kennedy complimented the Arkansas congressional delegation in attendance and spoke of the prosperity that the dam and lake would bring to the area.

In 1926, opera star and Garland County native Mary Lewis made a triumphant return to her home state. Lewis, who had appeared in vaudeville and silent movies, was one of the most popular and respected opera singers of the 1920s. On March 26, she traveled from Hot Springs (Garland County) to Little Rock (Pulaski County) to attend one of the largest welcome home gatherings in the state’s history. She is shown here (far right) at that gathering with Governor Thomas Jefferson Terral, his wife, and Anna Fitch, the woman who cared for her since Lewis was eight years old.

In 1957, when federal judge John E. Miller refused to decide a suit requesting that the desegregation of Little Rock (Pulaski County) schools be delayed, U.S. District Judge Ronald N. Davies of North Dakota was temporarily assigned to Arkansas. Davies, shown here circa 1971, ordered that integration must proceed as planned.

In the late 1920s, the citizens of Lonoke County learned that the Kraft Cheese Corporation was searching for a southern location for one of its factories. Seeing the potential of such a business, the citizens of Carlisle (Lonoke County) initiated a campaign to raise funds to construct a building to house the factory. In 1928, Kraft-Phenix Cheese Corporation opened a factory that employed many locals and played a major role in the local economy until it closed in 1949.

Almeda Riddle of Cleburne County was a prominent figure in the folk music revival of the 1960s. Discovered in 1952 by Professor John Quincy Wolf, who was searching the countryside for folk ballads, Riddle went on to record more than 200 songs. She emerged as one of the most popular performers at music festivals all over North America. For her efforts, she received the National Heritage Award from the National Endowment for the Arts. She is shown here in 1965 performing at the Ozark Folk Festival in Mountain View (Stone County).

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 since at least the early twentieth century. One restaurant that is well known for its tamales is Rhoda’s Famous Hot Tamales, located in Lake Village (Chicot County).

The Ferd Havis Building, located on 3rd and Main streets in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County), was a popular meeting place for the city’s African-American citizens in the late 1800s. The building, shown here in this 1893 photograph, was the property of Ferdinand Havis, a prominent black businessman and local Republican Party leader.

In 1975, Leo Ward and his wife opened a studio in Washington County and began to establish themselves as locally respected artists. At the 1982 War Eagle Fair, they marketed one of their creations, called the “bluebird of happiness.” The bluebird became very popular; millions have been sold worldwide, with thousands of gift shops selling them in the United States alone. All glass and handcrafted, the signed birds come in a variety of colors, but blue is the most popular.

Dermott (Chicot County) namesake Charles McDermott was a medical doctor, a minister, a plantation owner, a Greek scholar, and an inventor of a flying machine. McDermott was convinced that manned flight was possible after watching birds glide through the air. After thirty-nine years of work, he delivered a model of his flying machine to Washington DC in 1872 and was awarded a patent for “Improvement in Apparatus for Navigating the Air.” He exhibited his machine all over the United States. When the Wright brothers successfully launched their plane in 1903, some observers believed that they must have made use of information from McDermott’s patent.

In 2002, Arkansas first lady Janet Huckabee, wife of Governor Mike Huckabee, made a bid for the office of secretary of state. Many citizens expressed concern about the possibility of a husband and wife holding two of the state’s constitutional offices. Such concerns were alleviated when, as the Republican nominee, she was defeated in the general election. She is shown here delivering a campaign speech at a 2002 northwest Arkansas political rally attended by President George W. Bush.

One of the more unusual sights along U.S. Highway 63 is this large statue of a raven in Ravenden (Lawrence County). The statue draws attention to the claim that the area was once home to a den of ravens. The statue was originally constructed of fiberglass, but after having been set on fire by vandals, it was rebuilt using cement.

In 1893, Arch McKennon of Clarksville (Johnson County), shown in the middle, was appointed as an original member of the Commission to the Five Civilized Tribes. Later named the Dawes Commission, in honor of its first chairman Senator Henry Dawes of Massachusetts (far left), it became one of the most controversial government agencies dealing with Native Americans. The commission policies were designed to “Americanize” the natives using individual land allotments, virtually destroying centuries of communal ownership and their tribal way of life.

In 2000, readers of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette voted Clyde Scott of Smackover (Union County) as the state’s athlete of the century. Scott was a star at football and track and field at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County). In 1948, he won the silver medal in the 110-meter high hurdles at the London Olympic Games. He is shown here in the 1940s during his college football days.

In 1937, Esther Bindursky of Lepanto (Poinsett County) became the editor and only staff member of the Lepanto News Record, a position she held until her death in 1971. Her journalistic career began when, as a relief worker in the flood of 1927, she provided information to the Memphis Commercial Appeal. By 1930, she was a correspondent for the Memphis paper. Her 1955 photo of a stunned train wreck survivor was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

The 211.6-acre Lake Chicot State Park, which was established in 1957, rests on the banks of Lake Chicot. The twenty-mile-long oxbow lake, which Lake Village (Chicot County) borders, is the largest natural lake in the state and is the largest oxbow lake in the United States. The park and lake are major tourist attractions in the area.

While most baby boomers would not recognize the face of Polk County native Bob Dorough, most would recognize his voice. A composer, lyricist, and musician, Dorough was perhaps best known as the composer of the music for the popular 1970s kids’ television shorts Schoolhouse Rock!. Dorough wrote twenty-two of the fifty-two songs for the series, including the series theme song “Schoolhouse Rocky.” He served as musical director for the series, which ran on ABC’s Saturday morning lineup from 1973 to 1985. The network began re-running the series in 1993.

In 1957, the U.S. Congress, in anticipation of the 100th anniversary of the Civil War, created the United States Civil War Centennial Commission. Arkansas was among the states establishing its own commemorative commission. Many activities were held across the state as a part of the commemoration. Perhaps the most lasting was the placement of historical markers at Arkansas Civil War sites. Many of those markers, such as the one placed in Arkansas County to commemorate the 1863 Battle of Arkansas Post, can still be seen today.

In the days of segregated sports, the Claybrook Tigers from the town of Claybrook (Crittenden County), a black semi-professional team, gave African Americans an opportunity to play the game of baseball. The team, founded and owned by one of the most successful Black businessmen in northeast Arkansas, John Claybrook, won the Negro Southern League championship in both 1935 and 1936. The promotional ad shown here appeared about a year before the team folded after the 1937 season.

Izard County native Sarah Esther Case was the first Arkansas woman to be called as a foreign missionary by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. She spent much of her almost forty years of missionary work in Mexico. In 1922, she became the secretary of the General Board of Missions, the first woman to hold a full-time connectional appointment in the church hierarchy.

After World War II, the United States organized a relief operation for Europeans; Arkansas provided five boxcars of food. In 1948, France, in gratitude, organized a program known as the Merci Train. The next year, forty-nine boxcars, each holding 500 to 600 gifts, were delivered to the forty-eight states; the District of Columbia and the territory of Hawaii shared the last. After Arkansas’s boxcar was empty, it was donated to the Forty & Eight Society, a veterans’ organization, and put on display at the American Legion post in Helena (Phillips County).

The Dalton Period extends from 10,500 to 9,900 radiocarbon years ago (circa 8500 to 7900 BC), during which there existed a culture of ancient Native American hunter-gatherers (referred to as the Dalton people) who made a distinctive set of stone tools that are today found at sites across the middle of the United States. The name “Dalton” was first used in 1948 to refer to a style of chipped-stone projectile point/knife.

Shortly after graduating from Harvard University in 1964, future governor Jim Guy Tucker enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps. Just as the war in Vietnam was about to escalate, Tucker was discharged for health reasons. He appealed the discharge on two occasions without success. To date, he is the last Arkansas governor to have served in the military. Tucker still found himself in Vietnam in both 1965 and 1967 as a civilian correspondent. He chronicled his experiences in a book titled, Arkansas Men at War.

The Consolidated White River Academy was founded in Brinkley (Monroe County) in the late 1800s when a group of concerned citizens became determined to offer young African Americans an opportunity to obtain a full high-school education. When many of the same opportunities began to be offered in the public schools, the academy closed in 1950. Shown here are students apparently posing with three football players in 1939.

An unidentified man points to the spot near Murfreesboro (Pike County) where the first diamond in Arkansas had been found. In 1906, farmer John Huddleston’s find of the first diamond on the site led to a Pike County diamond rush. As of 2010, the largest diamond unearthed there, the “Uncle Sam” found in 1924, weighs in at an amazing 40.23 carats. While commercial mining has found little success, the Crater of Diamonds State Park, where the public is allowed to dig for diamonds, is one of Arkansas’s most popular state parks.

In 1936, in recognition of 100 years of statehood, the Arkansas Centennial Commission placed this large monument to commemorate the 1864 Civil War Engagement at Poison Spring. Today, part of the site of the Confederate victory is preserved by Poison Spring State Park, which, along with Marks’ Mills and Jenkins’ Ferry, makes up the Red River Campaign National Historic Landmark.

Cleveland, located in northern Conway County, was once a thriving center of area trade. Little remains of the farming town that once numbered over 300. The surrounding landscape that was previously planted in cotton is now dominated by sheep, beef cattle, and chicken houses. In 1888, a United States post office was established in the town; today, the post office is housed in this small building.

Settled on the banks of the White River about 1810, Des Arc (Prairie County) became a typical prosperous river town. With connection to the Butterfield Overland Mail route, the town was an important crossroads by the time of the outbreak of the Civil War. Steamboats, such as the ones shown here, brought soldiers and supplies to the town to be shipped to action in other parts of the state. The population, which numbered approximately 2,000 at the war’s beginning, had dropped to 400 by war’s end.

Congress authorized the construction of a dam on the White River to control flooding and provide electricity in 1941, but World War II delayed construction. Work on the 2,256-foot-long Bull Shoals Dam finally began in 1947 and was completed in 1951 at a cost of $100 million. In July 1952, President Harry S. Truman formally dedicated the facility. The name “Bull Shoals” is derived from the early French, who described the area of several springs as the “boills,” pronounced by the English as “bulls.”

Manila (Mississippi County), the main street of which is shown here approximately ten years after the town’s founding in 1901, was named in honor of Commodore George Dewey’s Spanish-American War victory at Manila Bay in the Philippines. The modern-day town has an additional military connection: it is home to the state’s smallest state park, honoring World War I soldier Herman Davis.

Trucks such as the one shown here were used to deliver the soft drink Grapette to customers throughout the United States. The drink, which was developed in 1939 in Camden (Ouachita County), became one of the bestselling non-cola drinks in the nation. It virtually disappeared by the 1990s and, as of 2011, can be purchased only at Wal-Mart stores.

In 1935, New York City millionaire gangster and underworld crime leader Owen V. Madden, born in England to Irish parents, retired to Hot Springs (Garland County) and married a local woman. He soon became involved in illegal gambling in his adopted city. By 1940, he held controlling interest in one of the town’s most lucrative gambling houses, the Southern Club. Madden testified in front of the Senate Committee on Organized Crime when, in 1961, Hot Springs was labeled the “largest gambling operation in the U.S.” Three years later, the state government took steps to shut down the operations. In 1965, Madden died at age seventy-three. He is buried in Greenwood Cemetery.

In 1966, John Paul Hammerschmidt became the first Republican elected to the U.S. Congress from Arkansas since Reconstruction. Representing the Third District for twenty-six years, Hammerschmidt has been praised for his work in the field of veteran’s affairs and his introduction of the bill that designated the Buffalo River as the first national river. The nearest he came to defeat during his twelve reelection campaigns was a narrow victory over a young Bill Clinton in 1974. Since retiring in 1993, he has remained active on many state and national boards.

Singer Johnny Cash, who was born in Kingsland (Cleveland County), returned to the area in May 1959 for a fishing trip with close friend and fellow singer Johnny Horton. Cash is shown here holding his fishing pole and a fish he had just caught.

Sid McMath, a decorated marine officer who participated in many of the combat actions of the Pacific Theater, returned to Arkansas after the war, settling in Hot Springs (Garland County). As part of the “GI Revolt,” he was elected as prosecuting attorney and rose to national attention by prosecuting Hot Springs mayor Leo McLaughlin. He used that exposure to launch a successful campaign for governor in 1948. He was a close political friend to President Harry Truman and a dedicated foe to the Dixiecrat movement that tried to take control of the Democratic Party in the South in the 1948 presidential campaign.

Construction of the World War II training installation Camp Chaffee (later Fort Chaffee) in Sebastian County began in September 1941. The purpose of the camp, beginning with the arrival of the first soldiers on December 7, 1941, was to train soldiers for combat and deployment overseas. A less recognized use of the camp was the imprisonment of some 3,000 German prisoners of war (POWs) from 1942 to 1946. One such POW is shown here working in the camp kitchen in 1943.