Photos of the Day - Starting with J

Mike Beebe was born in rural Jackson County in 1946. After earning a law degree, he practiced law in Searcy (White County). In 1982, he was elected to the state Senate, where for twenty-one years he was known as one of its most effective legislators. In 2002, he was elected the state’s attorney general. Interestingly, he had no opposition in any of these races. In 2006, he was elected the state’s forty-fifth governor, defeating his first opponent, Republican Asa Hutchinson. He remained popular with Arkansas’s electorate across his entire eight-year term of service, with support that crossed party lines. The steadiness of the Arkansas economy and state finances during the Great Recession, the near total elimination of the state’s sales tax on groceries, and the culmination of the Lake View public school lawsuit were the hallmarks of the Beebe governorship, which was often characterized as “pragmatic.” However, Beebe also served as the leader of the state Democratic Party during its historic fall from power.

Critically acclaimed artist Les Christensen uses everyday objects in the creation of her works of art, as shown here in a 2005 piece titled Flight From Servitude. The piece consists of spoons, wood and paint, and screws. Christensen is married to fellow artist John Salvest, who, since 1989, has taught sculpture and three-dimensional design at Arkansas State University (ASU) in Jonesboro (Craighead County), where the couple lives.

In 1832, Congress made the Hot Springs area in Garland County a federal reservation. When the springs were enclosed in 1901, the National Park Service diverted water to form a thermal water cascade, shown here, to create the appearance of a natural thermal spring. A blue-green alga (Phormidium treleasei) grows where the spring water is exposed to light and air.

Niloak pottery is one of the most sought-after varieties of art pottery produced by the Eagle Pottery Company in Benton (Saline County) from approximately 1910 to 1942. The most popular style is known as “mission swirl” and can be found in a variety of sizes and shapes. The name Niloak actually comes from the backward spelling of kaolin, the high-grade clay from which the pottery was thrown.

James Harold Merryman, a Garland County native, was a pilot and three-star general in the U.S. Army who aided in the restoration of aviation as an army branch of service for the first time since the Army Air Corps ceased to exist in 1948. General Merryman’s military decorations include the Distinguished Service Medal, two awards of the Legion of Merit, three Distinguished Flying Crosses, the Bronze Star, the Meritorious Service Medal, twenty-five Air Medals, and three Army Commendation Medals. Merryman died on June 24, 2003.

James Wesley Pruden was a Southern Baptist minister and the first chaplain, and later president, of the Capital Citizens’ Council, a white supremacist organization based in Little Rock (Pulaski County) that opposed the desegregation of Central High School. He verbally encouraged the mobs that showed up in front of Central High during the 1957–58 school year and raised money to bail out those arrested. An unsuccessful preacher whose personal agenda centered upon race, he fell back into obscurity after the school crisis.

In 1928, Arkansas senator Joseph Taylor Robinson was the Democratic nominee for vice president of the United States. He was the first Arkansan to be nominated by a major party for either of the two highest offices. He and his running mate, New York governor Al Smith were easily defeated in the general election by Republican Herbert Hoover.

In 1964, El Dorado (Union County) native Donna Axum became the first Miss Arkansas to win the title of Miss America. Axum won her first title, Miss Union County, in 1958 and, as a senior at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) in 1963, entered the Miss Arkansas pageant. After her reign as Miss America, she returned to UA, finishing her education in 1969 with a master’s degree in speech and drama. In 1988, she was named UA Distinguished Alumni and, in 2004, became the first Miss America named to that organization’s board of directors.

Primitivist artist Essie Ward was born in 1902 in Nubbin Hill (Searcy County). After a diagnosis of cancer in 1959, she took a more serious interest in her lifelong hobby of painting and began to market her work. Her subject matter usually centered on Arkansas rural lifestyles. A series of paintings featuring a pioneer couple known as Miranda and Hezzakiah helped give her the title of “Grandma Moses of the Ozarks.” Many private collections and galleries hold pieces of her work. She died on July 23, 1981.

In 1925, Jacob Hartz became a pioneer in soybean production when he arranged for the planting of the state’s first crop. Shortly afterward, he and business partner Alfred Thorell formed the Hartz-Thorell Supply Co. in Arkansas County, and, by 1927, they had built the state’s first seed cleaner. In 1936, they owned the state’s first seed-processing plant, located in Stuttgart (Arkansas County). That plant is shown in this 1940s photo.

During the Civil War, the Confederate navy’s ironclad vessel bearing the state’s name was the ram CSS Arkansas. It was in use only twenty-three days, yet earned the rage of the Union and the respect of the Confederacy. In an effort to defend the rivers, the Confederate navy ordered the construction of two ironclads; one was christened the CSS Arkansas. Its keel was laid in October 1861. The vessel participated in the Vicksburg Campaign but was later scuttled on August 6, 1862, near Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

David C. Cross arrived in northeast Arkansas sometime in the 1840s. He quickly became a prominent community leader and landowner. Before his death, he owned the most land in the area with approximately 85,000 acres under his ownership. He served in the Confederate army during the Civil War, and when Cross County was created in 1862, it was named in his honor. He died in 1874 and is buried in the Wilkins Family Cemetery near Wynne (Cross County).

Toad Suck Daze, a three-day annual spring festival now held in downtown Conway (Faulkner County), began in 1982 and was originally held on the banks of the Arkansas River at Toad Suck Ferry. The festival includes many activities, including the well-known toad races. The mural shown here, located in downtown Conway, provides a year-round promotion for the well-attended festival.

Fayetteville (Washington County) native Virginia Maud Duncan was the second woman in Arkansas to secure registration as a pharmacist. She was also publisher and editorial writer for her own newspaper, the Winslow American. In 1925, she made national news when she was elected mayor of Winslow (Washington County) with an all-women city council. This successful “petticoat” government was reelected to a second term but declined to run for a third. After the end of her political career, she continued as a pharmacist and newspaper publisher.

Mountain Valley Spring Water company based in Hot Springs (Garland County) was first known as Lockett’s Spring Water; the name was changed in 1871. Many famous personalities have enjoyed the water, including Elvis Presley and thirteen U.S. presidents. In the twenty-first century, company sales each year exceed 50 million gallons of water worldwide. The postcard shown here, featuring Marilyn Morgan (Miss Arkansas at the time), commemorates the company’s centennial year in 1971.

The Garland County Historical Society (GCHS) was organized on April 19, 1960, to preserve and encourage interest in the history of Garland County. For many years, the society was headquartered in a succession of rooms in private homes and in public buildings. In 1999, the society purchased this building at 328 Quapaw following a fundraising drive. Here the society, which is staffed by volunteers, archives more than 20,000 photographs, paper ephemera, newspapers, maps, books, manuscript collections, and memorabilia.

Albert King, one of the most influential blues guitarists of the twentieth century, moved to Osceola (Mississippi County) in 1931. King, known as one of the three “Kings of the Blues,” was left-handed; thus, he played his guitar upside down and backwards. King was so popular in 1968 that he was booked as the opening act for the soon-to-be famous rock and roll venue Fillmore West. Upon his death in 1992, he was laid to rest with a jazz-style funeral procession down Memphis’s famous Beale Street.

The 227-foot milldam shown here is holding back the waters of Mammoth Spring, Arkansas’s largest spring and the seventh largest in the United States. The area was designated a state park in 1957, but no land was acquired until 1966. Among the park’s attractions is a visitor center, which opened in 1987.

Named in honor of Union general Samuel R. Curtis, Fort Curtis was an earthen and timber redoubt constructed in 1862 to guard the western approach to Helena (Phillips County). Its armament of two thirty-two-pound and five twenty-four-pound guns was instrumental in the repulse of the Confederate forces in the July 4, 1863, Battle of Helena.

The turkey vulture, more commonly known as the turkey buzzard, is found in most parts of the Americas and is the most common of the three species of vulture that inhabit the New World. Sometimes reaching a wing span of six feet, the almost exclusively carrion-eating bird lives year round in the Natural State.

Red imported fire ants were first reported in Arkansas in 1958 in Union County. More than thirty counties are under the federal fire ant quarantine with eighteen additional counties being home to isolated populations of the ants. Some of these isolated populations have been reported as far as the state’s northern border. The pesky insects are known for an aggressive nature and painful stings.

Walnut Ridge (Lawrence County), which was incorporated in 1880, was home to approximately 500 citizens when this photo was taken in the early 1890s. As a county seat located on a major railroad, the town has long been a center of economic activity in the area, as can been seen in this photo.

In the 1934 major league baseball season, Logan County natives Paul “Daffy” Dean and his brother, Jay Hanna “Dizzy” Dean, combined to win forty-nine games for the St. Louis Cardinals. In the World Series that same year, they pitched two winning games each, leading the Cardinals to the championship.

Shown here is the funeral procession leading to the burial of World War I hero Herman Davis of Manila (Mississippi County). Upon the conclusion of the war, Davis was named to General John Pershing’s list of the top 100 soldiers. 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 site is the smallest state park in the system.

The American Legion, a national patriotic, mutual-help organization of wartime veterans, was founded in 1919 at the conclusion of World War I. Organized by departments and posts, it has grown to roughly 2.4 million members, with approximately 14,000 posts worldwide. Post 171 of the Department of Arkansas, located in downtown Lincoln (Washington County), is shown here in 2008.

Albert Lewis Fletcher was the fourth bishop of the Diocese of Little Rock, the only Catholic diocese for the state of Arkansas. On December 11, 1946, Fletcher was informed that Pope Pius XII had named him Arkansas’s next bishop; he was consecrated at St. Andrew’s Cathedral on February 11, 1947. He was the first native Arkansan ever to be raised to the rank of bishop within the American Catholic episcopacy, and he oversaw Arkansas Catholicism during an era of unprecedented growth and upheaval.

Walmart Inc. is the world’s most profitable retail outlet and the largest employer in the United States. On July 2, 1962, the retail giant’s founder, Sam Walton, opened his first Wal-Mart in the northwest Arkansas town of Rogers (Benton County). Shown in this photograph are many of those citizens who lined up outside the store on opening day, hoping to be one of the first to get a look at this new innovative shopping experience.

The so-called Headquarters House in Fayetteville (Washington County) was built in 1853 by Judge Jonas Tebbetts. A staunch Unionist during the Civil War, Tebbetts fled the house with his family in late 1862, never to return. It saw extensive damage during the 1863 Action at Fayetteville and was used as a headquarters by opposing sides at various times. The house was turned over to the Washington County Historical Society in 1967, which now operates it as a museum of history.

Born Myra Maybelle Shirley in Carthage, Missouri, in 1848, this “Bandit Queen” of the West is better known in history as Belle Starr. She numbered among her friends the likes of Cole Younger, Jesse and Frank James, and other outlaws of the time. In 1883, she and her outlaw husband, Sam Starr, were sentenced by Judge Isaac Parker to one year in prison for horse theft. She was shot and killed in 1889, but her murderer was never discovered.

Fishing is just one of the many activities available at Village Creek State Park, located near Wynne (Cross County). Dedicated in 1976, the park encompasses almost 7,000 acres, with most left in a natural state. Fishing, as shown in this photo, can be enjoyed in either Lake Dunn, which was the first lake constructed at the park, or Lake Austell.

The Powhatan Male and Female Academy, first located in a log cabin built by Andrew Imboden in 1854, was the first school in the settlement of Powhatan (Lawrence County). The school remained open for just over 100 years, closing due to consolidation in 1955. The vernacular Queen Anne–style building that once housed the academy was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.

John Branner was appointed state geologist in 1887. Under his direction, the state’s first post-Reconstruction geological survey was conducted. The report, which eventually spanned fourteen volumes, created some controversy with its exposure of fraudulent gold strikes in southwest Arkansas. Though many called for his dismissal, he did not leave the office until it was abolished in 1893. He left the state to become the president of present-day Stanford University.

Of the seventy-five counties of the state of Arkansas, many have been named in honor of prominent politicians of the United States. On September 30, 1836, the state legislature named the newest county at the time in honor of the U.S. senator from Missouri, Thomas Hart Benton. A senator for thirty years, and the first to be elected five times, Benton was a strong advocate of westward expansion, supporting the settlement of Arkansas.

One of the most spectacular and popular sites in the state is Cedar Falls, located in Arkansas’s first state park, Petit Jean State Park (Conway County). The beautiful falls cascade approximately ninety-five feet to the floor of Cedar Creek Canyon. The canyon was added to the register of Arkansas Natural Areas in 1977.

Arkansas City (Desha County) native John Johnson built a publishing empire that became the largest company in the world owned and operated by an African American. In 1942, using his mother’s furniture as loan collateral, he published his first magazine, Negro Digest. This early success led to the creation of Johnson Publishing Company and the publication of Ebony and Jet, two of the most significant magazines targeted toward a Black audience. At the time of his death in 2005, he was listed as one of the 400 richest Americans.

Since 1928, the Joe Hogan State Fish Hatchery near Lonoke (Lonoke County) has produced fish for stocking Arkansas lakes and streams. It is the oldest and largest of the four warm-water hatcheries run by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission (AGFC) and is the largest and one of the oldest state-owned warm-water pond hatcheries in the United States.

In September 1958, Vivion Brewer and Adolphine Terry co-founded the Women’s Emergency Committee to Open Our Schools (WEC), which sought to reopen Little Rock (Pulaski County) high schools following their closure by voters in order to prevent desegregation. Brewer served as chairperson of the committee, which focused solely on reopening the schools. Due in part to the committee’s efforts, the schools opened again in 1959, and Brewer resigned as chairperson the next year.

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 there. 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.

Batesville (Independence County) native and champion NASCAR driver Mark Martin began his career on a dirt track near Batesville in 1974 at the age of fifteen. With forty wins, he is eighteenth on the all-time NASCAR win list and has finished in the top ten 410 times in his career. In 2006, he opened a car dealership in his hometown, complete with a museum exhibiting his racing cars and memorabilia.

In the 1830s, North Carolina native Leonidas Polk became the first Episcopal bishop in Arkansas. Approximately eight years after his ordination in 1830, Polk was appointed missionary bishop of the southwest, an area that included Arkansas. He visited Little Rock (Pulaski County) and southwestern Arkansas in 1839. Though he spent little time in the state, he was instrumental in establishing the Episcopal Church in Arkansas. Polk joined the Confederate cause in the Civil War and was killed in action in Georgia in 1864.

John James Audubon, a frontier naturalist and artist, is famous for illustrating and writing The Birds of America. He visited Arkansas Territory in 1820 and 1822 and documented Arkansas’s birds, including the Traill’s flycatcher, also known as the willow flycatcher, which is the only bird originally discovered in Arkansas.

For over three decades, Earl Bell of Jonesboro (Craighead County) was the premier pole vaulter in the United States. As a member of the Arkansas State University (ASU) track team in 1976, he set the world record at 18 feet 7.25 inches. Bell achieved many honors, including twelve NCAA championships, five NCAA records, and many national titles. A three-time Olympian, he won the Bronze Medal at the 1984 Los Angeles games. He opened his own training facility near Jonesboro, Bell Athletics, which in 2004 produced one-half of the U.S. Olympic pole-vaulting team.

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 over sixty decorations.

Stephen Wallace Dorsey, an Ohio veteran of the Civil War, arrived in Arkansas as a railroad executive in 1871. Dorsey soon became deeply involved in state politics and, during the tempestuous era of Reconstruction, served a single term beginning in 1872 as a U.S. senator. After failing to be reelected, he left the state, becoming involved in national politics and business scandals. Present-day Cleveland County was originally named Dorsey County in his honor in 1873 but was renamed in 1885 in honor of President Grover Cleveland.

Yarnell Ice Cream Company in Searcy (White County), which opened for business in 1932. By 1970, it had reached $1 million in sales. Yarnell’s had sales in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Tennessee and was the only remaining ice cream company in Arkansas until the company ceased operations for a time in 2011, citing a poor economy combined with its inability to obtain financing or find a buyer. In November 2011, Schulze and Burch Biscuit Company of Chicago, Illinois, acquired the Yarnell’s plant and most of the recipes at auction for a reported sum of $1.3 million. The company relaunched the Yarnell’s brand in April 2012, with a new mascot, “Scoop,” and a fifty-six-ounce “sqround” box, which was square with rounded edge.

The Arlington Hotel in Hot Springs (Garland County) has been one of the city’s most recognizable landmarks since the first building was completed in 1875. At the time of its construction, it was the largest hotel in the state. Three structures have housed the famous hotel, with the current one built in 1924 across the street from the site of the first two. The photo shown here is most likely of the second Arlington, located on Fountain Street.

Among the many award-winning exhibits created by the staff of the Museum of American History at Cabot (Lonoke County) is one displaying an extensive collection of artifacts from presidential campaigns. Artifacts dating from the 1820s to the twenty-first century are included in the colorful exhibit.

The Garrott House, which is the oldest surviving structure in Batesville (Independence County), was constructed in 1842. The one-and-a-half story, braced-frame, Georgian structure consists of six rooms and a central hallway. The house was modernized in the 1880s, giving it its present appearance. The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971.

The Crawford County Bank building in Van Buren was constructed in 1889 on the corner of 7th and Main streets. Designed in a combination of Italianate and Queen Anne Revival style architecture, the structure was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976 as a part of the Van Buren Historic District. At the time of this 2008 photograph, a portion of the building was used as a small hotel/restaurant.

Mount Holly Cemetery in Little Rock (Pulaski County) is known as the Westminster Abbey of Arkansas due to the many important figures in the fields of art, literature, religion, and politics who are buried there. Since 1843, governors, generals, artists, religious leaders, and other citizens of note have been laid to rest within the confines of the cemetery. In 1970, the cemetery became one of the earliest cemeteries to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places.