Time Period: Divergent Prosperity and the Arc of Reform (1968 - 2022) - Starting with C

C-130 Crash of 1970

A C-130 cargo plane flying from Little Rock Air Force Base (LRAFB) in Jacksonville (Pulaski County) caught fire in mid-air and crashed near Piggott (Clay County) on July 30, 1970, killing all six men aboard. The Air Force C-130 Hercules took off at 3:46 p.m. on July 30, 1970, carrying two men based at LRAFB and four from Dyess Air Force Base in Texas who were deployed to Jacksonville for training. Something went wrong during the routine training flight, and the aircraft crashed about a mile west of Piggott. A witness said the Hercules was on fire and one wing fell off before it hit the ground. One of the plane’s engines landed in the driveway of a home near …

C-130 Crash of 1971

Ten U.S. Air Force personnel were killed in a disastrous takeoff crash at Little Rock Air Force Base in Jacksonville (Pulaski County) on the morning of November 12, 1971, in the worst accident ever to occur at the base. With Captain James B. Raycraft, age twenty-six, as the pilot, the C-130E Hercules taxied down the runway carrying four instructors and seven trainees on a planned flight to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, where they would “drop a 6,000 pound load module in a simulated combat drop” as the air force personnel prepared for duty in Southeast Asia. The C-130 had traveled about 8,000 feet down the 12,000-foot runway and had reached an altitude of about 200 feet when it abruptly veered to …

Cabe, Gloria Buford

Gloria Cabe was a major political figure in Arkansas from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s. She was a member of the Arkansas General Assembly, and her close ties to Governor Bill Clinton would lead her to move to Washington DC following Clinton’s election to the presidency in 1992. Gloria Burford was born in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) on September 15, 1941. She graduated from Pine Bluff High School in 1959. She went on to Hendrix College, where she earned a BA in French in 1963. Burford married Robert Cabe, a Hendrix classmate who would become a prominent attorney, and the couple had a daughter and a son. While raising her young children, Cabe became involved in the local community, …

Cabotfest

Cabotfest, an annual celebration hosted by the city of Cabot (Lonoke County), was first held in 1978 to commemorate the city’s recovery from a devastating tornado that struck in the spring of 1976. Since its founding, the festival has become Lonoke County’s largest, attracting thousands of visitors each year. On March 29, 1976, five citizens of Cabot died in an early afternoon tornado that also destroyed a large portion of the business sector. As the town neared complete recovery, local officials decided to organize a celebration for the fall of 1978. Committees, under the direction of local banker James M. Park, organized the event and chose the phrase “Cabot, We’re Back” as the festival theme. It was decided that the …

Cache River National Wildlife Refuge

The 62,000-acre Cache River National Wildlife Refuge is the most important wintering area for ducks and the largest remaining tract of contiguous bottomland hardwood forest in North America. It runs along the floodplain of the Cache River and Bayou DeView for seventy air miles from the mouth of the Cache River at Clarendon (Monroe County) to Grubbs (Jackson County), encompassing Jackson, Monroe, Prairie, and Woodruff counties. In February 2004, the ivory-billed woodpecker, once thought extinct, was rediscovered on the refuge. The refuge was established in 1986 as one of 540 national wildlife refuges administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The refuge’s primary objective is to provide habitat for migratory waterfowl and other birds, to protect and restore the …