CALICO ROCK — The history of Calico Rock has been as up and down as the White River, which spawned the land where the town now sits. Many events in the town’s history have been shaped by the river, and the Calico Rock Historical Museum tells the story of these events and more.
But the museum doesn’t just present a series of facts, names and dates tied together by artifacts locked away in cases. Each era in Calico Rock’s development is presented using hands-on exhibits and re-creations that bring to life the river and the changes it brought.
“It’s fitting that the first exhibit that people visit when they come into the museum is about Native Americans. They were the first visitors,” said Gloria Gushue, executive director of the museum and one of its founders.
“Our exhibit allows visitors to immerse themselves in [the] culture and food-gathering [habits] of the Indians who came here.”
As Gushue explained, the Osage, Quapaw, Cherokee and many other tribes came to the area to hunt bison, deer and small game, and to fish in the slow-moving, rocky river. Canoes were their main method of travel, and the river was their highway. Evidence around Calico Creek and in several other local sites indicates that the hunters returned regularly to semipermanent camps to process their game and dry the meat.
The Native American exhibit begins with the entrance to a camp house. According to information provided at the exhibit, the camp house is covered in switch cane and grasses — materials that were used to build temporary structures in meat camps. The tribesmen based their hunting and processing operations from temporary villages and stayed several months in these hunting camps each year. The exhibit includes common foods such as acorns, bark and corn. Clothing, equipment, trade goods and a bluff shelter with pictographs are also part of the display.
Upstairs, each section chronicles an important part of Calico Rock’s history. According to information at the museum, steamboats were the first semidependable contact with the outside world. One side of the museum’s balcony is set up as the Ozark Queen, which was one of the most important sternwheelers that made the journey upriver from Batesville. Visitors can dress up in period costumes and steer from a re-created wheelhouse of the Queen.
An exhibit on freshwater pearls reveals that around 1900, the pearls were discovered in the Ozarks and were soon sold for substantial profit. Local entrepreneurs became tongers or hard-hat divers to collect the thousands of mussel shells it took to find a good pearl. The best pearls sold for hundreds of dollars — a king’s ransom in the cash-poor Ozarks, according to information in the exhibit. An original diving helmet and many of the tools that were used to harvest and process the mussels and clams are part of the exhibit.
There are also exhibits featuring trapping, hunting and fishing, the coming of the railroad, a typical general store and a one-room schoolhouse. Outlaws Jessie and Frank James often escaped to the Arkansas Ozarks when the law was after them in Missouri, according to the museum, and an exhibit on the brothers contains guns, letters and artifacts from their visits.
How it happened
“Originally, we planned to have a small museum in a railcar on some abandoned track near old Main Street in Calico Rock,” Gushue said. “Unfortunately, buying an old railroad passenger coach is very costly, and any car we purchased would need extensive remodeling.”
Meanwhile, according to museum records, the word went out asking for donations of photographs and other items relevant to the town’s history. Historic objects started to pile up. The museum opened in 2008 in a small room behind the Calico Rock Visitors Center next to the building that would become the first structure in the museum complex.
“The Crosser collection of Union Pacific Railroad artifacts from the last Calico Rock Depot began the museum,” said Steven Mitchell, chairman of the museum board. “Station agent Jesse Crosser’s daughter, Susan Crosser Stumbaugh, felt it was important to preserve the significance of passenger trains to the town’s growth. She donated a working telegraph key, maps, furniture, signaling lamps and many other items that were used in the depot.”
But the huge step of committing to a real Calico Rock museum started with the purchase of the E.N. Rand building next door in summer 2010.
“Jim Murphy owned the old Rand building and offered it to the museum at a substantial discount,” Gushue said. “It was time to take a big challenge or let the idea of a historical museum die.”
According to information from the museum, three residents, all from the Calico Rock Organization for Revitalization Efforts (CORE) — Dean Hudson, Wayne Wood and Steven Mitchell — decided to take the chance and secure a loan. There would be a historical museum.
The First National Bank of Calico Rock loaned the museum funds to purchase and remodel the building, the information states.
In January of this year, the original visitor center in the Bluff City Bank building became the heart of the Artisans Co-op, which not only sells handmade items and gifts, but provides a permanent home for the Gwen Murphy Art Gallery. The gallery displays a collection of the finest work of Arkansas artists, past and present.
Another exhibit features the old city coal building re-created as The Coal House Homestead, a turn-of-the century home furnished by the Calico Rock Questors group. A few doors down, the Calico Rock Progress newspaper office is being remodeled into the Printing Press Café, which will officially open in spring 2015, according to information from the museum.
“The museum has been built in the best tradition of a town coming together for the mutual benefit of all,” Gushue said. “People are constantly donating pictures, clothing, antique items and furniture for the exhibits, as well as providing financial support. The generosity of the community is what keeps the museum going and growing so rapidly.”
The museum buildings and the Artisans Co-op encompass more than 10,000 feet of exhibit space, and the growth continues. The museum, at 120 Main St. in Calico Rock, is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. There is no charge to visit the museum, and all of its events are free. For more information, call (870) 287-6100.