BENTON -- With a magenta marker in hand, Marsha Guffey began writing on a poster board words and phrases -- ideas that more than a dozen Saline County residents shouted aloud.
Re-enactments.
A museum day.
A bicycle ride.
The group of residents -- which included representatives from the Benton Chamber of Commerce, the Bryant Historical Society and Haskell Mayor Jeff Arey -- met for the first time Tuesday to dream up ways to advertise and celebrate the county's bicentennial anniversary in May 2015.
Some 200 years earlier, North Carolinian William Lockhart and his family became the first pioneers to settle near the Saline River. The river's high water stopped the family from crossing, forcing them to camp there.
"Saline County is one of the oldest communities in Arkansas, and the Saline Crossing was the gateway to the Southwest," said Guffey, a member of Saline Crossing Regional Park & Recreation Area Inc., a nonprofit group seeking to rehabilitate the area of the county where Lockhart first settled.
In 1815, the land acquired in the Louisiana Purchase opened up westward migration for pioneers looking to homestead. To head southwest, pioneers used the Southwest Trail, the only "road" to Texas.
Saline Crossing was a "day's journey" from the Arkansas River on the Southwest Trail, said former Benton Mayor Lynn Moore, who helped found the Saline Crossing group. Lockhart's family was the only one to settle on the banks of the river for a while. With a tavernlike home, Lockhart began providing overnight lodging and a ferry service for those traveling along the Southwest Trail.
By 1820, Saline Crossing had as many as 83 homesteaders.
"A pioneer's life and existence in this area was tough," Moore said. "However, the availability of game animals, fish and fertile land made a livable homestead possible."
Today, no traces of that community exist.
In February, nearly a dozen people from the Saline Crossing group, Arkansas Archeological Society and Henderson State University went down to the site to do shovel tests -- a quick, low-impact excavation. Screening the dirt over about an acre, the group -- which included HSU students -- searched for any traces of the early Saline Crossing.
"This is a location near the river, near the old bridge," said Mary Beth Trubitt, a station archaeologist at the Arkansas Archeological Survey Research Station at HSU. "There's been a lot of natural disturbance -- flooding and river action, quarrying and gravel operations. There's not actually a lot of undisturbed ground out there."
The "main thing that's left" is the Old River Bridge, Trubitt said. Built in 1891, officials closed the county-owned bridge on Old Military Road to vehicular traffic after a truck accident in 1974.
For Guffey, attracting attention to the historic bridge and "hopefully" enlisting some financial assistance in restoring the bridge for bicycle and pedestrian use have spurred her personal interest in the county's birthday celebration.
The Saline Crossing site is now what Moore calls "a jungle." The Saline Crossing group, made up of 33 lifetime members, has been working to clear a forest of weeds "so thick you can't see through them," Moore said.
The efforts are part of the group's intention to create a family-oriented outdoor recreational park at the historical site.
The nonprofit owns about 10 acres on both sides of the river and has recently installed a picnic table.
Last week, Guffey told the group of residents that the best way to get the park efforts going was to celebrate the county's heritage, which started at the same site.
Residents screamed out ideas at the meeting ranging from calling up actor Billy Bob Thornton -- who starred in the 1996 movie Sling Blade, which features the Old River Bridge -- to contacting descendants of early settlers, to establishing a covered-wagon train that would travel across the county.
Planning the bicentennial celebration is just beginning, Guffey said, encouraging others to get involved in the county's birthday. She hopes to form an organizing committee to help move the planning along.
"This is an open call to anybody who has a vision for that area or for a big 200th birthday celebration," she said.
Guffey is to meet with Saline County Judge Lanny Fite and Arey this week to discuss the county's role in the planning process, Fite said.
Moore said he hopes to encourage people in the county to be aware of its history and legacy and to come together to celebrate that.
"You don't want it to become a Benton thing," Moore said. "You don't want it to be a Saline Crossing thing. You want it to be a recognition of the bicentennial."
Metro on 07/20/2014