Photos of the Day - Starting with S

Dorothy Shaver of Howard County, shown here as a young girl, 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. With hard work and dedication, 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.

In 1946, Alan Dryden established Dryden Pottery in Ellsworth, Kansas. In December 1956, Dryden moved his operation to Arkansas and reopened the business in the tourist town of Hot Springs (Garland County), where it still operates. This three-generation business continues to produce pottery similar to the items shown in this 1960s photograph.

The Plum Bayou Project was part of a New Deal plan designed to help rural residents receive federal relief and assistance during the economic crisis of the 1930s. Located approximately seventeen miles north of Pine Bluff (Jefferson County), Plum Bayou was one of several similar communities built in the Arkansas Delta. Residents were able to purchase needed goods from the nearby Ferda Plantation store and were also able to receive their mail there.

The Governor Mike Huckabee Delta Rivers Nature Center, which opened in the summer of 2001, is located on a 130-acre tract of land near Pine Bluff (Jefferson County). Funded by the 1996 conservation sales tax, the center’s main building, the lobby of which is shown here, and exhibit area take up an impressive 13,000 square feet. The center is open year round with a mission of educating the residents of Arkansas and visitors about the outdoor opportunities in the area.

Long before the streams of Arkansas were spanned by bridges, the ferry was the most common way to cross deep water. Many early ferries were privately owned and generally were only large enough to carry one or two vehicles. Shown here in the early 1930s is the Smith Ferry on the North Fork River near Henderson (Baxter County). Though most Arkansas ferries have been replaced by bridges, there still remain some isolated locations that employ ferry service.

What started in 1986 as a friendly race with eight teams driving wagons has become the National Championship Chuckwagon Races. The races, held each Labor Day on Dan Eoff’s ranch just west of Clinton (Van Buren County), are a major event drawing more than 135 teams and 25,000 visitors.

Arkansas artist Roger Carlisle was commissioned by the U.S. Postal Service to paint an image for a commemorative stamp for the 1986 Sesquicentennial of Arkansas statehood. The stamp featured the Old State House façade and portions of its front grounds. Missing from the image was “Lady Baxter,” a Reconstruction-era cannon located on the grounds, because the Postal Service did not want to militarize the design. As shown here in this first day cover, the stamp was issued on January 3, 1986.

The J. V. Bell House stands at 303 West Cherry Street in Jonesboro (Craighead County). Built in 1895, the Bell House stands as an example of the typical Victorian-era residence, with its high, multiple roof suggesting a Queen Anne influence, and its cut-out stars and moons and sunburst ornamentation incorporating a distinct Oriental flavor. The Bell House was entered on the National Register of Historic Places on November 7, 1976.

Bentonville (Benton County) native Louise Thaden is shown here approximately one year after she earned her pilot’s license in 1928. During her approximate ten-year competitive aviation career, she set altitude, endurance, and speed records. In 1936, she became the first woman to win the Bendix Transcontinental Air Race. In 1951, the Bentonville municipal airport was named in her honor.

“Sleepy” LaBeef was born in Smackover (Union County) in 1935. Beginning a career in gospel music as a teenager, he soon turned to the rockabilly sound of the 1950s. During his long career in this music genre, he has released a number of albums and shared the stage with such legends as Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, and Roy Orbison.

Sheet music from the 1937 Warner Bros. film The Singing Marine. The film, starring Mountain View (Stone County) native Dick Powell, tells the story of a young marine from Arkansas who impresses his friends so much with his talent that they help send him to New York to compete in an amateur talent contest. Success sets him up for trouble in his career, in romance, and in the U.S. Marine Corps.

In 1976, the United States celebrated the bicentennial of American independence with scores of activities across the nation. All fifty states joined in with exhibits, fairs, musicals, parades, publications, and patriotic pageants. Even water hydrants were painted red, white, and blue. One unique activity in Little Rock (Pulaski County) was the painting of the national bicentennial seal on the pavement at the intersection of Fifth and Main streets.

During his thirty-one years as head of the Department of Entomology at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville (Washington County), William J. Baerg published a number of small books and seventy-five scientific papers. Much of his work on spiders, tarantulas, scorpions, and other arthropods shed new light on these largely ignored creatures. One of his most widely used publications was Introduction to Applied Entomology.

Ohio native Daniel H. Reynolds moved to Lake Village (Chicot County) in 1858 and established a law practice. When the Civil War broke out, he enlisted in the First Arkansas Mounted Rifles, in which he eventually rose to the rank of colonel. He fought in many of the battles in the western theater and was promoted to brigadier general in 1865. Just weeks before the end of the war, he received a wound at the Battle of Bentonville in North Carolina, which resulted in the amputation of his left leg. After the war, he returned to Lake Village, where he died in 1902.

After Cane Hill College in Washington County was closed in 1891, the Cumberland Presbyterian Church opened Arkansas Cumberland College in Clarksville (Johnson County) on September 8, 1891. The name was changed to College of the Ozarks in 1920, and, in 1987, the name changed once again to the University of the Ozarks. The college campus is shown here sometime in the 1920s.

Union Station in Little Rock (Pulaski County), constructed in 1873 on Markham Street, was the first of three buildings to occupy the site. The building was a hub for travel until its demolition in 1911 and replacement by a more modern structure, which was destroyed by fire in 1921. Today, the third station to occupy the site now serves as a multipurpose building and the city’s Amtrak passenger station.

On September 19, 1980, Titan II Launch Complex 374-7 located near Damascus (Van Buren County) exploded, sending the 740-ton launch duct closure door some 600 feet from the complex. The W-53 nuclear warhead, like the one shown here, landed approximately 100 feet from the front gate. This incident, in which one man was killed and the complex destroyed, became the most publicized disaster in the history of the Titan II missile program.

Guion, located on the east bank of the White River in Izard County, was home to some of the area’s first settlers and was once a center of area trade. Established as a river landing, the small town is home to the state’s largest underground industrial sand mines. The large trucks shown here on the town’s main street are a part of that sand-mining operation.

The constitution of the Agricultural Wheel stated that the organization was for “the improvement of its members in the theory and practice of agriculture and the dissemination of knowledge.” Founded in 1882 by a group of disgruntled farmers in Des Arc (Prairie County), the organization, originally named the Wattensas Farmers Club, developed into a national force with members in ten other states. Forays into politics and mergers with other groups ultimately led to the demise of the Wheel by the beginning of the twentieth century.

The McCollum-Chidester house, built in Camden (Ouachita County) in 1847 by Peter McCollum, is believed to be the first planned lumber house in Ouachita County. Building materials for the house were shipped to Arkansas from New Orleans. In 1862, John Chidester purchased the house for $10,000 in gold. During the Civil War, it was briefly used as the headquarters of Union general Frederick Steele. Placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971, it is now owned by the Ouachita County Historical Society and is open to the public.

In 1925, Jacob Hartz planted the state’s first soybean crop in Arkansas County. Shortly afterward, he and Alfred Thorell formed the Hartz-Thorell Supply Company. By 1927, they had built the state’s first seed cleaner. Shown here is a tractor from the Hartz-Thorell Supply Company in a parade in the 1930s.

Characters Mammy and Pappy Yokum pose for this 1973 photo at the Boone County amusement park known as Dogpatch USA. Dogpatch was the brainchild of Harrison (Boone County) real estate broker O. J. Snow, who convinced Al Capp to allow him to build a theme park around the town and characters that appeared in Capp’s comic strip “Li’l Abner.” Opening in 1968, the park in the Ozark hills operated until 1993. The park’s financial difficulties had many causes, including competition with the more extravagant Silver Dollar City, located about sixty miles away in Missouri.

Lifelong Carroll County resident Fred High, born in 1878, is best known for his work in the preservation of Ozark heritage through his recordings of folk songs. He was a devoted student and preserver of folk music, recording many songs that probably would have been lost without his efforts. Many of his recordings are archived at Lyon College in the John Quincy Wolf Folksong Collection. Also an author of three books on Ozark life, High died in 1962.

Adolphine Fletcher Terry was a civic-minded woman from a prominent Little Rock (Pulaski County) family who used her position to improve schools and libraries, start a juvenile court system, provide affordable housing, promote the education of women and women’s rights, and challenge the racism of the Old South. Terry pushed for social change in the early years of the civil rights movement and may best be known as the leader of the Women’s Emergency Committee to Open Our Schools (WEC) during the 1957 Central High Crisis.

The effects of the Great Depression were lessened in Union County when the Lion Oil Refining Company financed discovery wells in the late 1930s. The new wells provided many jobs for local citizens hit by the hard economic times. By 1955, approximately eight years after this photo was taken, the company employed 3,000 and sold its products in more than 2,000 service stations throughout the South. Since 1985, Lion has been an affiliate of Ergon, Inc.

College of the Ouachitas was founded in Malvern (Hot Spring County) in 1969 as the two-year Ouachita Vocational Technical School. The curriculum is focused on training skilled workers and preparing students for continuing their education at a four-year college. It is pictured here when the school operated under the name Ouachita Technical College.

During his brief run for the U.S. presidency in 1972, congressman Wilbur Mills stated, “When I’m president, I’ll be president of all the people.” Mills, a Kensett (White County) native, was a member of Congress for thirty-eight years, much of the time as chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee. He entered the Democratic primaries championing Social Security benefit increases. Going into the convention with little hope of victory, he did finish seventh out of the thirteen candidates receiving votes. Shown here is a Draft Wilbur Mills campaign brochure.

One of the attractions at the Prairie Grove Battlefield State Park is the historic hiking trail. The one-mile paved trail shown here covers some of the parts of the Civil War battlefield that saw the most fighting. Along the way are fourteen interpretative panels with photos and quotations that assist in the understanding of this bloody 1862 battle.

Catholic High School, located in Little Rock (Pulaski County), opened in this building in 1930 when St. John’s Seminary moved to another location. Catholic High remained here until moving to University Ave. in 1961. The school’s first principal and rector was Father John Healy, and his students that year numbered fifty-three. CHS has a nearly zero percent remediation rate, and every year, more than ninety-five percent of CHS graduating students continue their education at universities in Arkansas and across the United States.

Pocahontas became the seat of Randolph County government with the county’s creation in 1835. Before the end of the decade, a 40’x40′ two-story courthouse was constructed. When the building collapsed in 1870, a new courthouse, shown in this photograph, was constructed. Known as the “Old Courthouse” by today’s local citizens, it remained in use until 1940 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.

Powell Clayton was the first Republican elected as governor of Arkansas. Serving during Reconstruction, he was been referred to as “the most hated governor of Arkansas.” Clayton left the office of governor to serve as one of Arkansas’s U.S. senators in 1871. Far from his adopted state, he still exerted considerable power within state Republican politics. When he died in 1914, he was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, becoming the only Arkansas governor whose remains do not rest in the state. He is shown here in his official gubernatorial portrait.

In the early morning of February 17, 1930, many of the residents of Paragould (Greene County) were alarmed by a bright light in the sky, followed by a tremendous explosion. This turned out to be what is today known as the Paragould Meteorite, one of the largest meteorites ever recovered. Upon striking the earth, it broke into at least three large pieces. Once recovered by local farmers, the largest chunk, weighing over 800 pounds, was sold to a Kansas college professor who, in turn, sold it to the Chicago Field Museum of Natural Science. Today, the largest piece of the meteorite is on loan to the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County), where it is on display at the UA Library.

One of the monuments on the grounds of the Boone County Courthouse in Harrison is dedicated to the 140 people who were killed in Utah in the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre. Even more than 150 years later, controversy surrounds the killing of these Arkansas emigrants on their way to California. The monument was placed by the Richard Fancher Society in 1955. Members of the society are decedents of Alexander Fancher, the man who led the group out of Arkansas.

William Sebastian, a native of Tennessee, represented Arkansas in the U.S. Senate from 1848 until 1861. Also a farmer, lawyer, and judge, Sebastian served his state until the Civil War ended his career. At the beginning of the Civil War in 1861, he was one of two Southern senators who did not resign their seats. He and future president Andrew Johnson were instead expelled from the Senate on July 11, 1861, along with their fellow Southerners. In 1877, twelve years after his death, the U.S. Senate revoked its resolution of expulsion and paid compensation to his heirs.

By the turn of the twentieth century, the town of Paragould (Greene County) was a growing business center in northeast Arkansas. By 1910, the town was home to six banks, one of which, the Security Bank, is shown in this photograph. While the bank survived the bank runs of the early days of the Great Depression, it was reorganized in 1930.

Keller Breland is shown here working with one of the stars of the IQ Zoo in this circa 1960 photograph. The IQ Zoo was a popular tourist attraction in Hot Springs (Garland County) from 1954 to 1990. The trained animals demonstrated the principles of scientific research in animal behavior conducted by Breland and his wife. Breland-trained animals were the first to appear in television commercials.

Not long after enlisting in the Confederate army, future governor James P. Eagle was transferred to the Second Arkansas Mounted Rifles. He was wounded on at least two occasions and spent time in a Union prison camp. He is shown here proudly wearing a new major’s star on his uniform after being promoted in May 1863. Eagle fought in many of the major battles of the Army of Tennessee and was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel before the army’s surrender in 1865.

Shown in this photo are dignitaries arriving for the official activation of the Little Rock Air Force Base on October 9, 1955. Secretary of the Air Force Donald Quarles is shown in the dark suit in the middle. To his left is General Curtis LeMay, commander of the Strategic Air Command, and General Joe Preston, 825th Air Division commander. An open house attended by an estimated 85,000 followed the official ceremonies.

In 1891, the board of trustees of Hendrix College in Conway (Faulkner County) recommended a plan to build affiliated academies. The recommendation was adopted unanimously, and five academies were organized, the second being Sloan-Hendrix Academy in Imboden (Lawrence County). The school was established in 1899 and set to open a campus located southeast of town; however, the buildings were not completed. The 1900 session opened at a new two-story brick facility with a dormitory that could house as many as twenty students.

William Woodruff, usually known for founding the Arkansas Gazette, the territory’s first newspaper, also accomplished other notable feats. He also founded the Arkansas Democrat and, in 1821, published the territory’s first book, Laws of the Territory of Arkansas. In 1826, he started the first circulating library in the territory. While journalism is usually considered his livelihood, he is said to have gained greater wealth from a land agency he formed in 1823.

Camp Ouachita, a Girl Scout camp located twelve miles south of Perryville (Perry County), was constructed by the Works Progress Administration from 1936 to 1940 for the Little Rock Area Girl Scout Council. Until its closure in 1979, the camp hosted thousands of seasonal campers. Shown here in 1959 are Girl Scouts canoeing on the adjacent Lake Sylvia. The camp was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1992 and is currently under restoration.

On October 16, 1971, Little Rock (Pulaski County) native and Baltimore Orioles third baseman Brooks Robinson hit a sacrifice fly, driving in the winning run in the bottom of the tenth inning of Game 6 of the World Series. The game, played in front of 44,174 fans at Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium, forced the series into a deciding seventh game the next day. In that game, Robinson went hitless in a losing cause.

The USS Arkansas (M-7) was one of four monitor-class naval vessels built near the turn of the twentieth century. It was built by Virginia’s Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company. With a crew of 220 sailors, it launched on November 10, 1900. The ship is shown here in its 1902 armament installation. When a new ship named Arkansas was commissioned in 1909, the M-7 was renamed the USS Ozark. The ship was scrapped in 1922.

In 1985, Madison County native Joseph Floyd “Arky” Vaughan was posthumously inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. The nine-time All Star shortstop hit a lifetime average of .318 and hit .300 or better in ten of his fourteen years in the major leagues. Vaughan drowned in a boating accident in 1952.

Soon after purchasing a large collection of Native American artifacts in 1965, the City of Springdale (Washington and Benton counties) began to look for a location to display the impressive collection. The collection was moved to the 1927 public library, shown here in 1984, and was developed into the Shiloh Museum. Over the years, the museum, now called Shiloh Museum of Ozark History, moved to a new modern facility and has developed into one of the state’s finest museums of regional history. It was named the Arkansas Museum of the Year in 1982, 1991, and 2004.

Future Arkansas governor James Berry joined the Confederate Sixteenth Arkansas Infantry in 1861 and was quickly chosen as its lieutenant colonel. His initiation to combat came at the Battle of Pea Ridge. After his regiment was moved east of the Mississippi River, he fought in the 1862 battles at Iuka and Corinth, Mississippi. At Corinth, a severe wound resulted in the need for his right leg to be amputated above the knee. Captured and eventually paroled, he returned home. After the war, he was an active member of the United Confederate Veterans and was a frequent reunion speaker.

In 1868, an agent sent by Governor Powell Clayton to investigate Ku Klux Klan activity in White County was murdered. Former Confederate general Dandridge McRae (pictured here) was implicated and fled to Louisiana with a $500 reward on his head. In 1872, an apparent deal was struck by the Democratic Party. In exchange for the support of a certain candidate, McRae would be tried and guaranteed acquittal. He returned, was tried, and was duly acquitted. The general died in 1899 and is buried in Searcy (White County).

John Sorensen was a successful Little Rock (Pulaski County) advertising agency owner and a noted cartoonist. His work appeared in such publications as the New Yorker, the Saturday Evening Post, and Playboy. A native of Denmark, he lived in Arkansas from 1950 to his death in 1969.

McLeod’s Amusement Park, more commonly known as Happy Hollow, served as one of Hot Springs’ most popular tourist attractions from the late 1800s until the 1940s. It was located at the head of Fountain Street, just off Central Avenue, and north of Hot Springs Mountain. A portion of the attraction is shown here in 1901.