Time Period: Early Twentieth Century (1901 - 1940) - Starting with C

CCC Company 741 Powder Magazine Historic District

The CCC Company 741 Powder Magazine Historic District, located near Norman (Montgomery County), consists of two small stone and concrete structures originally constructed to store powder and blasting caps for use by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) while working on projects in the Ouachita National Forest. The CCC was established in 1933 as part of a New Deal effort to provide jobs while accomplishing important natural resource conservation projects during the Great Depression. There were 106 CCC camps established in Arkansas. Civilian Conservation Corps Company 741, the oldest CCC company in the Arkansas District, was formed on May 1, 1933, at Camp Pike and moved to Crystal Springs Camp on May 17, 1933. Four side camps were established from the …

CCC Company 749 Powder Magazine

The CCC Company 749 Powder Magazine is located north of Forest Service Road 4128 and south of Briggsville in Yell County. Company 749 of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) built the structure around 1933 to store explosives (powder or blasting caps) for its work in the rugged forests of the area. The CCC Company 749 Powder Magazine is a small stone and concrete structure originally constructed for use by the Civilian Conservation Corps working in the Ouachita National Forest. The square building measures six feet on each side. It is five feet high with a four-inch-thick concrete top and a concrete floor. The cut-stone and concrete walls vary from six to eleven inches in thickness. Civilian Conservation Corps Company 749 …

Cedar Creek Bridge

aka: Goodie Creek Bridge
The Cedar Creek Bridge, located on Independence County Road 235 where it crosses Cedar Creek about one and a half miles south of its intersection with Arkansas Highway 14 near Rosie (Independence County), is a stone, closed-spandrel deck arch bridge. It was constructed in 1941 by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a Depression-era public relief agency. The road to the site of the Cedar Creek Bridge did not appear on Arkansas maps until 1936, five years before the structure was erected, indicating it was likely the location of a ford. Independence County leaders turned to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal for funding to improve this and other roads throughout the county during the Great Depression. On January 29, 1940, …

Cedar Grove School No. 81

Located five miles north of Pocahontas (Randolph County) in the Brockett community is the Cedar Grove School No. 81. The school opened after a redistricting of Randolph County school districts in 1890 and offered classes through the eighth grade. The original school building served the local community until it was destroyed by a tornado on March 30, 1938. The building that replaced it held classes until the school district consolidated with the Pocahontas School District in 1949. After consolidation, the building served for a time as a meeting place for the Brockett Home Extension Club and as a community building. Cedar Grove School No. 81 is a Greek Revival–style building with the original well house and outhouse. The well house …

Centennial Baptist Church

The 1905 Gothic Revival Centennial Baptist Church, located at York and Columbia streets in Helena-West Helena (Phillips County), was listed as a National Historic Landmark on July 31, 2003. The building serves as a physical symbol of the work of the Reverend Elias Camp Morris. Morris dedicated his life to furthering the religious, political, and societal achievements of African Americans locally and nationally through his work as president and founder of the National Baptist Convention. Centennial Baptist is the only remaining structure associated with the productive life of Morris, who was pastor of the congregation in an earlier building on the site in 1879 and continued serving at the 1905 Centennial Baptist Church until his death in 1922. Morris’s outreach …

Centennial Celebration

Arkansas’s centennial preparations launched early, expanded rapidly to a galaxy committee, descended into financial uncertainties, burst into various celebrations crisscrossing the state, and finally rested on the laurels of an improved, culturally positive image. Officially held on June 15, 1936, the celebration commemorated the date President Andrew Jackson signed legislation making Arkansas the twenty-fifth state in the Union. Observances before and after the formal day included the composition of an official song and poem, the designation of a centennial flower, the issuance of a stamp, the crowning of a centennial queen, and the minting of two coins. There were also plays, parades, pageants, floats, contests, and exhibits, as well as a football championship, a visit by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, …

Centennial History of Arkansas

Dallas Tabor Herndon’s three-volume Centennial History of Arkansas (1922) was created in the early days of the Arkansas History Commission (AHC), now the Arkansas State Archives. Herndon, the AHC’s first director, wrote that “the state had no history that could be relied upon as authentic,” and he saw a need for a more “comprehensive state history” to aid him in his work with researchers at the AHC. Herndon believed that his history would be more reliable and accessible than any other before it, such as Little Rock (Pulaski County) native Fay Hempstead’s multi-volume Historical Review of Arkansas, published in 1911, when Herndon first began work at the AHC. Unlike Hempstead, Herndon was not from Arkansas, and thus he believed his …

Central College for Women

Founded in 1892, Central College operated in Conway (Faulkner County) until 1950, educating female students and supported by the Arkansas Southern Baptist Association. Efforts by Arkansas Baptists to open a college to educate women date to the 1880s. In 1890, the state convention authorized Colonel G. W. Bruce of Conway to chair a committee to select a location and open the institution. Bids for the college were received from Bentonville (Benton County), Conway, Ozark (Franklin County), and Rogers (Benton County). Reporting back to the convention the following year, Bruce and the committee stated that Conway delivered the best offer. Conway offered the committee more than $27,000 in pledges, ten acres of land, and a completed building by January 1, 1893, …

Central High School Neighborhood Historic District

Made nationally famous during the 1957 desegregation crisis, Central High School in Little Rock (Pulaski County) is surrounded by a historic neighborhood district that also bears its name. Central High is both an active high school and a museum protected under the National Park Service as a National Historic Landmark. The surrounding historical district is primarily made up of residential structures and is divided by Wright Avenue, a road historically used by trolleys. Residences in this neighborhood display primarily the Craftsman Bungalow, Tudor Revival, and Colonial Revival styles. The original district—roughly bounded by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive on the east, Thayer Avenue on the west, West 12th Street on the north, and Roosevelt Road on the south—was added …

Central Theater

Built in the 1930s, the historic Central Theater is located at 1008 Central Avenue in downtown Hot Springs (Garland County). It is said to be the oldest stage and motion picture theater in Hot Springs. Chris Rix acquired the property in 2020 and set about restoring it, upgrading HVAC, safety mechanisms, and technical systems to modern standards. Many of the original Art Deco design elements from the 1930s can still be seen in the auditorium, which seats more than 300 people. The 10,000-square-foot Central Theater building was constructed in the 1930s as a garage; pillars remain where the garage doors once were. The building was converted to a theater in 1937. It presented first-run movies through the post–World War II …

Chambers, Erle Rutherford

Erle Rutherford Chambers was a pioneering woman in Arkansas in the early part of the twentieth century. In addition to being the first woman to graduate from the Law Department of the University of Arkansas, she was also the first to be elected to the Arkansas General Assembly. Erle Rutherford Chambers was born in 1875 in Tennessee to Thomas Chambers and Henrietta Davidson Chambers. She had one younger sister. Little is known about her youth or when she came to Arkansas, but she worked as a teacher before moving into law. Chambers had become interested in the law as a secretary in the Little Rock (Pulaski County) firm of Moore, Smith and Trieber. She began her legal studies while still …

Charity Games of Football (1931)

By 1931, the Great Depression had produced hardship and suffering in all areas of Arkansas. Unemployment, grinding poverty, and the devastating Drought of 1930–1931 had produced myriad challenges for the state and its residents. Still, Arkansans loved their sports, in particular football. Harvey C. Couch, founder of Arkansas Power and Light (AP&L) and member of the Arkansas Advisory Committee of the President’s Organization on Unemployment Relief, saw an opportunity to raise funds with charity football games. On November 9, 1931, Couch met with representatives from six Arkansas colleges at the Marion Hotel in Little Rock (Pulaski County). The meeting produced a plan that called for a series of college football games to be played during the first week of December …

Charles “Bullet” Dean Hyten House

The house at 211 South Main Street in Benton (Saline County) was the home of Niloak Pottery creator Charles Dean “Bullet” Hyten. Now owned by former Arkansas state senator Doyle L. Webb II, the house is home to a small business. Because of its connection with Hyten and construction at the height of his popularity, the house was added to the National Register of Historic Places on September 24, 2012. Charles Dean Hyten was born in Benton to John Franklin Hyten and Hattie Brown Hyten on March 14, 1877. He was one of four children. After the death of her husband in 1881, Hattie married a man named Frank Woosley. Hyten and his brothers, Paul and Lee, took control of the family …

Charlotte Street Historic District

Located in Fordyce (Dallas County), the Charlotte Street Historic District includes the core of a historic subdivision located on the north side of the city. Constructed from 1906 to 1930 on part of the estate of A. B. Banks, the district includes a number of Craftsman-style homes and associated structures. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on September 14, 1987. Aloysius Burton (A. B.) Banks was born in Little Rock (Pulaski County) on April 2, 1868. He moved to Fordyce in 1885, shortly after the town incorporated. He worked in the insurance business and opened his own fire insurance company in 1891. He expanded the company to cover accidents and grew the business, becoming wealthy in …