Arkansas County recently celebrated its bicentennial. It seems only yesterday when we celebrated the U.S. bicentennial, but that was almost four decades ago in 1976. On Dec. 13, 1813, the Missouri territorial legislature voted to create Arkansas County-which comprised much of modern Arkansas and a part of what is today Oklahoma. Six years later, when Arkansas Territory was created by Congress, the old town of Arkansas Post became the territorial capital.
No area of the state is more historic than Arkansas County. The recently-published second edition of Arkansas, A Narrative History (UA Press) contains an excellent introduction to the creation of Arkansas Post by the French: “In the summer of 1686, almost 80 years before there was a St. Louis, more than 30 years before New Orleans was laid out, and 13 years before the French founded the colony of Louisiana, French Canadians established a post on the Arkansas River about 20 miles by water from its confluence with the Mississippi.” The post has been relocated several times through the centuries; today it is a national historical memorial near Gillett.
Modern Arkansas County was settled because of its strategic location near the important Mississippi River and its nearness to the resident Quapaw Indians, but today it is known as one of the richest agricultural areas in the state. This is due to much of the county being located on the geologic feature known as the Grand Prairie.
This great natural prairie stretching across five southeast Arkansas counties is underlain with a pan of clay. This dense clay formation discouraged trees but was excellent for growing native grasses. Long before rice cultivation, Arkansas County was known for its vast hay harvests.
Arkansas Post lost its prominence over time, and in July 1855 the county seat was relocated to DeWitt. The town was named for DeWitt Clinton, a New Yorker who served as both a U.S. senator and governor. The town suffered economically until the 1890s, when residents raised enough money to build a spur to the railroad in the new town of Stuttgart.
Stuttgart was established by German-speaking immigrants from Ohio who began arriving in the area in 1878. George Adam Buerkle, a Lutheran minister born in Plattenhardt, Germany, was the leader of the colony, and he became its first postmaster in 1880. The town was incorporated in 1889, with Col. Robert Crockett as the first mayor. Crockett was the grandson of the famed Davy Crockett. Stuttgart would eventually become the center of the rice industry in Arkansas. And, it eventually became a second county seat, serving the population of northern Arkansas County.
Rice cultivation in Arkansas seems to have begun in Lonoke County, then soon spread across the Grand Prairie. Business interests in Stuttgart built Arkansas’ first rice mill in 1907, with more following quickly. By 1909 Arkansas farmers produced an incredible 1.25 million bushels of rice.
A cooperative of farmers established Riceland Foods in 1921; it’s recognized today as the largest rice miller and marketer in the world. While rice is still king, today Stuttgart is probably best known in popular culture as the home of the national duck-calling contest.
Other towns in Arkansas County are Crockett’s Bluff, Gillett, Almyra, Humphrey, and St. Charles. The latter was the location of a battle during the Civil War, with the shot that disabled the Union battleship Mound City being a contender for the deadliest shot fired during the war. The largest battle in the county was on Jan. 9, 1863, at Fort Hindman at Arkansas Post. It was a resounding victory for Union generals John Mc-Clernand and William T. Sherman, with 5,000 rebel soldiers surrendering.
The town of St. Charles was rocked by a horrible race war in 1904. Over four days, white mobs terrorized the black community and murdered 13 black men. Vincent Vinikas, who wrote the entry on the event in the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture, concluded: “If the killings at St. Charles are viewed as a single episode, with a body count of 13, then the incident is the single deadliest mass lynching in American history.”
Today Arkansas County has about 19,000 residents, almost half of whom live in Stuttgart. In 1989 the county was the setting for the movie Rosalie Goes Shopping. The film contains some beautiful night scenes in which the towering rice storage bins look for all the world like gleaming cathedrals.
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Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist living in Pulaski County. Email him at Arktopia. td@gmail.com.
Editorial, Pages 74 on 12/29/2013