Photos of the Day - Starting with O

Civil War markers, such as the one shown here near Batesville (Independence County) commemorating the Skirmish at Buck Horn in Stone County, dot the Arkansas countryside. During the four years of war, most of the state of Arkansas was marched through and fought over by opposing armies.

Unlike most Civil War battlefields in the National Park System, only two monuments are located within the boundaries of Pea Ridge National Military Park in Benton County. The first was erected in 1887 in memory of the Confederate generals killed in the battle. The second, the Reunited Soldiery Monument, shown in this early 1900s photo, was placed by Union and Confederate veterans in 1889. It is one of the first monuments placed on any Civil War battlefield dedicated to soldiers of both the North and South.

In June 1914, noted decorative painter Paul Heerwagen, who worked from his studio near Fayetteville (Washington County), received the design contract for the new Arkansas State Capitol. Shown here is his mural titled Religion, one of the four he designed for the building.

In April 1925, the socialist Commonwealth College, founded at Leesville, Louisiana, moved to the Mena area (Polk County). Director William Zeuch supported labor education and communal living rather than radical movements. In June 1931, Lucien Koch, second from left in this circa 1930 class, seized control, ousted Zeuch, and led Commonwealth into aggressive Labor Party activity.

In 1902, the state purchased a site about twenty-eight miles south of Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) and opened a prison unit there known as Cummins State Farm. Over the past 100-plus years, the facility, today known as the Cummins Unit of the Arkansas Department of Correction, has grown to approximately 16,000 acres and can house up to 1,700 inmates. This growth has required the addition of many new buildings. Governor Benjamin Laney is shown here in a 1948 photograph breaking ground for one of those new buildings.

As the Civil War military governor of Arkansas and a longtime Missouri congressman, John Smith Phelps began his involvement with Arkansas before the Civil War. A stalwart Democrat, he raised a Union regiment and fought at the Battle of Pea Ridge prior to his appointment as military governor. Cotton politics and personal illness doomed his attempt to establish a Union government in 1862 and led to his removal in 1863.