The Civil War (Almost) Started Here

                

                On April 12, 1861, the South Carolina Militia fired shots upon Fort Sumter, which marked the beginning of the Civil War. For the next five years, America experienced its great challenges as a nation, with more than 600,000 lives lost and millions of dollars in property damaged or destroyed. But what many people don’t know is that the Civil War almost began in Arkansas.

                Arkansas became the 25th state on June 15, 1836. Later that year, the federal government decided to build a new federal arsenal in Arkansas’ capital city, Little Rock. Gov. James Conway and U.S. Army Major Robert B. Lee chose a site on the outskirts of the city that was the former home to a racetrack once used by a local jockey club. Congress appropriated $14,000 for the arsenal, but the final cost of the building was nearly $30,000. 

                The arsenal was built using timbers from Pine Bluff and rock from the Big Rock Quarry on the north side of the Arkansas River. At the arsenal’s completion, the Arkansas Gazette declared it to be “a splendid specimen of masonry.” Its signature feature: a three-story tower building. Over the next several years, 30 buildings were added to the installation.

                In November 1860, U.S. Army Capt. James Totten was transferred from his previous post in Kansas to become the commander of the federal arsenal in Little Rock. Totten brought 65 troops with him, a move that caused much unrest across the state. On Jan. 28, 1861, Totten was informed by then-Gov. Henry Rector that neither reinforcements nor the removal of any weapons from the arsenal would be tolerated. Totten politely responded that he reported to the federal government and not the state of Arkansas. In the meantime, militias from all over the state began to arrive in Little Rock, prepared to halt any potential reinforcement of the arsenal. 

                The Little Rock City Council demanded that Rector immediately assume control of the militia groups to prevent a potential assault on the arsenal. Rector responded that he didn’t have authority over such groups. The city council then called upon the Capital Guards, a militia group headquartered in Little Rock. By Feb. 6, Rector persuaded Totten to surrender the arsenal to the Arkansas militia troops. In order to prevent a serious military conflict between southern militias and the federal government, Totten agreed. 

                A few days later, the Capitol Guards escorted Totten and his troops from the arsenal. Totten and his men boarded a ship to St. Louis four days later. While he waited to leave the city, Totten received a sword from the ladies of Little Rock in honor of his heroic conduct during the arsenal crisis. By avoiding conflict, Totten had earned the respect of many Little Rock citizens and his U.S. Army superiors — and possibly avoided starting a war. 

                In 1863, federal troops entered Little Rock and occupied the arsenal for the remainder of the war. From 1863 to its decommissioning in 1890, the arsenal became a housing complex, with weapons stores being replaced with rooms for soldiers and families. And it was under that circumstance that the arsenal became famous as the birthplace of an iconic American World War II general, Douglas MacArthur. MacArthur's father, Gen. Arthur MacArthur, was stationed in Little Rock in 1880 when Douglas was born. 

                Ultimately, the federal government gave the arsenal to the city of Little Rock. Its grounds were converted to a public park and all its buildings, except for the tower building, were demolished or sold.

                The tower building stood vacant until the late 1930s, when Little Rock began to renovate the historic building. In 1942, the Museum of Natural History and Antiquities opened in the tower building. The museum’s name changed in 1964, to the Museum of Science and Natural History, and again in 1983, to the Arkansas Museum of Science and History. In 1997, the museum moved to a new location in the River Market, where it is now called the Museum of Discovery.

                The arsenal was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in July 1970, and named a National Historic Landmark in April 1994. Today, it is the home of the MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History.

                If you get the opportunity, visit the tower building and take the self-guided tour around the old arsenal grounds. It's a beautiful park that, had one federal general not kept his cool, could have been ground zero for America’s bloodiest conflict.

A Pilgrim-age to Mayflower

 

                Years ago, when I commuted to college from Sherwood (Pulaski County) to Conway (Faulkner County), I would often times take Highway 365 which took me through the town of Mayflower. Being a history buff, I always wondered about the town’s unusual name and if it had a connection to the pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620.

                The beginning of what today is Mayflower can be traced back to the white settlers, known then as Tories, who moved west to flee the Revolutionary War. Such Tory families as the Flannagins and Massengills arrived in the Mayflower area about 1778, and settled near the mouth of Palarm Creek. 

                So, how did Mayflower get its name? Well, in 1871, the railroad used the settlement as a telegraph station from the construction superintendent’s car. According to legend, the superintendent used “Mayflower” as his telegraph call sign, thus the name became associated with the then-unnamed area. Why the name of Mayflower was used is not known.

                Like much of Arkansas, the land in and around Mayflower was mostly forested and logged until the end of the twentieth century. Several plantations were also built in the area to farm cotton. Cotton grew well there due to the area’s fertile soil. 

                The first post office in Mayflower opened on November 9, 1880. Worley E. Vanlandingham as served as the office’s first postmaster. The town of Mayflower was officially incorporated on March 6, 1928. Dr. J.R. Kitley was elected as its first mayor.

                During the Great Depression of the 1930s, a canning kitchen was set up in Mayflower to help farmers preserve food grown on their farms. Mrs. Gena Hathaway was the kitchen’s operator. A magnolia tree, which is approximately 100-years-old, stands at the corner of Center and Miller streets where the canning kitchen once stood.

                One of the most popular draws to Mayflower is Lake Conway. At 6,700-acres, Lake Conway is the largest lake created by a state agency and the first to be created by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission (AG&FC). Lake Conway was created in 1948 by damning Palarm Creek. The reservoir has been a habitat to several major sportfish such as bass, bluegill, crappie, and both blue and flathead catfish. The AG&FC began draining Lake Conway in Nov. 2023 for silt remediation and modification of its aging spillway gates. The lake is currently on track to be empty for approximately five years.

                On March 29, 2013, a massive oil spill took place near Mayflower when an Exxon/Mobil pipeline carrying heavy crude oil burst near the town causing thousands of barrels of oil to spill. This incident resulted in the evacuation of 22 homes and substantial damage to the area’s ecosystem.

                Another catastrophic event happened in Mayflower on April 27, 2014, as the town was hit by an EF4 tornado around 8 p.m. The tornado stayed on the ground for over an hour and traveled along a 40-mile path. Sixteen Arkansans lost their lives due to the tornado, while 193 others were seriously injured. The fatalities made this the deadliest severe weather event in Arkansas history since the F4 tornado that killed 35 in May 1968. 

                The Mayflower tornado was part of a widespread and deadly tornado outbreak, which terrorized the central and southern portions of the United States in April 2014. The massive severe weather event was responsible for producing several multiple long-track tornadoes. Seven of these tornadoes were deadly, causing known 36 fatalities and billions of dollars in damage to property.

                On May 13, 2014, then-president Barack Obama toured nearby Vilonia to survey the damage caused by the tornado and visited with the town’s residents (including a good friend whose house was destroyed by the tornado and was given a challenge coin by the president). Obama later flew over Mayflower for a look at the destruction from the sky. 

                As of the 2020 census, Mayflower has 1,984 residents, none of whom identify as pilgrims.

Find Romance in Arkansas

                

                This week, we celebrate Valentine’s Day, a day to express your love to that special someone in your life. And while people across the country commemorate this romantic holiday, here in “The Natural State,” we have romance all year long in a small community in northern Arkansas.

                With about 1,800 residents, Romance is an unincorporated community located about halfway between Rose Bud and El Paso in White County. As a child traveling with my family, I passed through Romance countless times on the way to spend weekends at Greers Ferry Lake. And I was always intrigued by the area’s unusual name.

                While there is no evidence, legend claims that a local teacher named the town, believing that the view from the bluffs on the community's eastern side was very romantic.

                And although we don’t know who exactly gave the community its name, there is no doubt that the name proved to be of the utmost importance in maintaining Romance's most visible business — a small U.S. Post Office branch. The local post office is one of several post offices across America that has gained significant attention because of its "love-themed" names. Others include Cupid, Iowa, Heart, Montana, and Lovers Leap, California. 

                In 1990, Romance was chosen as the first location to issue that year's stamp in the postal service’s Love Stamp series. The stamp changes each year, although the love theme is present in all its variations. Romance has been chosen again as the location for first-day issuance of the 2024 “Love” stamp.

                The Romance post office is especially busy for its special postmarks of cards for Valentine’s Day, as well as for wedding invitations. According to the U.S. Postal Service, the office receives, postmarks and mails about 7,500 valentines and wedding invitations yearly. It takes a lot to hand cancel — so much that one former postmaster got carpal tunnel syndrome from the repetition! 

                In the past few years, a small number of couples have held their weddings on the post office’s grounds. But this practice is not affiliated with the post office.

                If you wish to mail your own valentines or wedding invitations with the special Romance postmark, send your pre-addressed valentines or invitations in a USPS Priority Mail or Express Mail envelope or box to: Postmaster, Valentine Remailing, Romance, AR 72136-9998.

                While it does have a post office, Romance is not an incorporated city or town in Arkansas. As such, its local government is part of the jurisdiction of the White County judge, who serves as the county's chief executive. Residents of Romance are represented legislatively by the county's quorum court. Local law enforcement is provided by the White County Sheriff's Department, as well as constables for Kentucky and Marshall townships.

                There are few businesses in Romance, so most residents find themselves commuting to jobs in the surrounding area — places like Rose Bud, Searcy and Jacksonville. Many Romance residents farm grass and hay, raise livestock and operate meat processing businesses. Romance is also home to a couple of antique shops/homemade craft stores. The land in and around Romance is part of the Fayetteville Shale Play, an area for natural gas exploration in north Arkansas that started around 2005.

                A small southern portion of the Romance area is controlled by the U.S. Air Force for use as a parachute drop zone for Little Rock Air Force Base in Jacksonville, which is about 33 miles south of Romance. The drop zone was first established in 1982 and has been in constant use since.

                Let me close on this interesting tidbit about Romance. If for some reason you find yourself watching the 1988 movie “Homeboy,” starring Mickey Rourke, look closely at Rourke’s character, Johnny Walker. Walker, for some unexplained reason, wears a Romance, Arkansas, belt buckle throughout the film.

                Happy Valentine’s Day, Arkansas! 

Much Ado About Marshall

                

                On a recent weekend trip to Branson, my wife and I passed through Marshall, Arkansas. As many travelers along US Highway 65 do, we stopped at the beautiful overlook to take in the majestic view of the Ozark Mountains. And while those amazing views are arguably what Marshall is best known for, there’s much more to this charming city.

                Marshall is the Searcy County seat and its largest city, with a population of about 1,300. The city lies at the foot of the Boston Mountain range and is about 11 miles south of America's first national river, the Buffalo National River. As such, Marshall serves as a center for area tourism. Camping, floating and hiking are just a few of the recreational opportunities that the national river offers.

                The history of Marshall dates to the earliest known settlers in the region, the Paleo Indians. The Paleo lived in what is now Marshall around 15,000 years ago. Numerous Paleo artifacts have been found in the area, including pottery shards and spear points.

                 In 1804, after the Louisiana Purchase, the federal government began relocating Native Americans in the southeast U.S. to Indian Territory, now Oklahoma. The Cherokees who were brought through Arkansas on the Trail of Tears clashed with the Osage. The Osage were one of the three main tribes of what became our state. In 1817, the Treaty of the Cherokee Agency set aside land in northwest Arkansas. This land became the first Cherokee reservation west of the Mississippi River. And to help with the conflict between the two tribes, the Cherokees extended an invitation to the Shawnee to settle in the Buffalo River area.

                The Shawnee established a village southwest of present-day Marshall. The chief of the village is believed to be Chief Peter Cornstalk, the grandson and namesake of the great chief of the Shawnee during the Revolutionary War. 

                Chief Cornstalk married Mary Adams in the mid-1930s. She was the granddaughter of Robert Adams, who was one of the original white settlers in the area. By the late 1840s, all tribes had been moved to Indian Territory.

                The first white settlement was located at the foot of Devil’s Backbone Mountain in a community called Raccoon Springs. The county seat was moved from Lebanon to Raccoon Springs in 1856, and it was renamed Burrowville (spelled Burrowsville in some early records) after Napoleon Bonaparte Burrow, a Crawford County planter and Democratic politician.

                The Civil War era was a significant time of change for Marshall. The name of the town was changed, population declined for years, and after the war’s end, Arkansas became a two-party political system in what for many years was a one-party (Democratic) state. And sadly, much of the town had been burned, including the county courthouse and county records. Union-supporting residents pushed to change the town's name from Burrowville to Marshall after U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall. The name change was approved by the state Legislature on March 18, 1867.

                By the 1950s Marshall had become an agricultural town and strawberries were its major crop. In fact, during this time, the town promoted itself as the “Strawberry Capital of the World.” Of course, this didn’t sit too well with Bald Knob (White County), who promoted itself as the same.

                But all good things must end, and by the late 1960s, the strawberry industry was moving to states out west such as California and Texas. General stores and mercantiles were closing and being replaced with national companies like Sears and Walmart. These conditions and several others caused the beginning of a major change in the economy of the small Searcy County town. 

                Today, Marshall’s economy is a mix of retail, general services and limited manufacturing, but tourism is its driving force.