April 16, 2010

In 1923, Dentler Rowland of Jonesboro (Craighead County) sold part of a collection of approximately eighty stone objects, the largest of which was a statue dubbed King Crowley, which he claimed to have discovered on Crowley’s Ridge. Though he presented them as Native American in origin, and though many prominent Arkansans (including Bernie Babcock) accepted them as legitimate, representatives of the Smithsonian Institution doubted their authenticity. Today, the “fakes” are identified by most modern researchers as folk art. King Crowley is in a private collection, but the Arkansas State University Museum in Jonesboro owns the collection shown here.