It's quiet on this late summer day as I sit with several fellow members of the Arkansas Humanities Council on the front porch of the general store at Dalton. Yes, there are still places where you can eat lunch in rural Arkansas on the front porch of a general store. And this is not just any lunch. The Mennonites who operate the store have a vast selection of cured meats, cheeses and fresh-baked breads. What a find in a tiny community just a few miles south of the Missouri border in Randolph County.
The flat Delta quickly gives way to the rolling foothills of the Ozark Mountains after you cross the Black River at Black Rock, headed northwest toward Imboden, Ravenden and Ravenden Springs. While most Arkansans likely think of places farther to the west when they think of the Ozarks, this area of Lawrence, Randolph, Sharp and Fulton counties is among the state's most beautiful regions. It's filled with rivers, which are fed by springs in Missouri and then flow south into Arkansas. Just outside of Dalton, you cross the Eleven Point River. The deep blue water looks inviting, making you wish you had time for a swim or even a float trip.
The Eleven Point flows into the Spring River. To the west, Myatt Creek and the South Fork also empty into the Spring. The Spring River, which flows through Arkansas for almost 75 miles, empties into the Black River near Black Rock. Meanwhile, the Little Black River flows into the Current River just northwest of Datto, and the Current merges with the Black River near Pocahontas. The Fourche River (not to be confused with the Fourche La Fave River in west-central Arkansas) comes out of Missouri and flows through Randolph County for about 20 miles before emptying in the Black. The Strawberry River flows for 90 miles to the southeast before also emptying into the Black River in Independence County.
These streams have long defined this part of Arkansas. While the battle to save the Buffalo River has received the bulk of the media attention through the years, there were pitched battles to keep the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from building dams on northeast Arkansas streams.
"In the 1930s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began considering damming the Current River in order to provide flood control for southeast Missouri and northeast Arkansas," Guy Lancaster writes for the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture. "The plan was very popular in Arkansas but was met with a mixed reception in Missouri, where the town of Eminence would have been put under water by the two proposed reservoirs. Conflict between the pro-development forces and those who wanted to keep the river free-flowing continued through the 1940s. Finally, President Harry S. Truman established the Arkansas-Red-White River Basin Interagency Committee to undertake a flood-control survey for the larger region."
The report released by the committee in 1954 recommended that the Current and the Eleven Point be preserved. When President Lyndon Johnson signed the act that established the Ozark National Scenic Riverways (which protected the Current River) in 1964, it marked the first time that an American river had been protected by federal law. There are two dams on the Spring River near Mammoth Spring, but they are small and old. Because they are near the headwaters, the Spring flows south in a natural state, and its supporters have headed off all efforts through the decades to build larger dams.
"In 1959, the Missouri House of Representatives passed a resolution asking Congress to establish a national recreation area along the banks of both the Eleven Point and Current rivers," Lancaster writes. "A subsequent study recommended turning part of the watershed into a national monument. Many landowners opposed the move, and when the federal government established the Ozark National Scenic Riverways in 1964, it excluded the Eleven Point River from protection. However, a 44-mile stretch of the river in southern Missouri was set aside for preservation by Congress in 1968, becoming the Eleven Point National Wild and Scenic River."
A dam on the Strawberry River was authorized by the Flood Control Act of 1938. A 1953 federal review concluded that the dam was not justified, but proponents of a dam received new life in 1968 when the White River Basin Comprehensive Study authorized construction of the Bell Foley Dam just northeast of Poughkeepsie in Sharp County. The resulting reservoir would have covered almost 12,000 acres. The Corps of Engineers began preliminary work, which stopped in 1970 when President Richard Nixon froze public works projects. Though the project had support from a number of local officials and the majority of the state's congressional delegation, then-Gov. David Pryor led the fight against the dam beginning in 1975.
In his book Defining Moments: Historic Decisions by Arkansas Governors from McMath Through Huckabee, former Arkansas Supreme Court Justice Robert L. Brown lists Pryor's opposition to the Bell Foley Dam as the defining moment of his four years as governor. Brown said that an environmental tradition among Arkansas governors began with Orval Faubus, who wrote the Corps of Engineers to oppose damming the Buffalo. That support of the state's rivers continued with later governors. Now, north Arkansas residents can enjoy the Eleven Point, Spring, Little Black, Current, Fourche and Strawberry rivers along with other free-flowing Ozark streams.
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Freelance columnist Rex Nelson is the president of Arkansas' Independent Colleges and Universities. He's also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.
Editorial on 08/27/2014