We're walking through the thick Crowley's Ridge hardwoods to Chalk Bluff on the St. Francis River, swatting bugs and wondering how long it will be before we see the river's brown water. We're just outside the Clay County community of St. Francis, the most northeastern spot listed on the official Arkansas highway map.
It has been a long day in northeast Arkansas. We've seen the statue of a big raven beside the highway at Ravenden, walked to the spring at Ravenden Springs and even seen the road to Success (Success being a community in Clay County).
Now, we're hearing from Mark Christ of the Department of Arkansas Heritage, one of the state's experts on the Civil War, about the battle fought here. A town developed at Chalk Bluff in the 1820s, its name derived from the white clay bluff along the St. Francis River. In May 1863, Union Gen. William Vandever failed to prevent troops commanded by Confederate Gen. John Marmaduke from crossing the river. Marmaduke, after suffering heavy casualties in the Missouri Bootheel, had abandoned his expedition into the border state and was just trying to get back to Arkansas.
Marmaduke and 5,000 men had headed for the Bootheel in the spring of 1863. He was defeated near Cape Girardeau and began withdrawing to Arkansas, with the crossing of the St. Francis planned for Chalk Bluff. Fighting began here on May 1 and lasted until the next day. Marmaduke's rear guard was able to hold off Union forces long enough for his engineers to complete a bridge. Minor skirmishes would occur at Chalk Bluff for the remainder of the war.
This day is supposed to be about the Civil War, but my thoughts turn to the rivers of northeast Arkansas and the attempts through the decades to control them. The St. Francis originates in Missouri and is a mountain stream until it slows down near Poplar Bluff. It forms the boundary between Missouri and Arkansas before continuing through east Arkansas between Crowley's Ridge and the Mississippi River. The St. Francis empties into the Mississippi north of Helena in the St. Francis National Forest. During the massive New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-12, parts of northeast Arkansas fell by several feet, creating a swampy area that slowed development for decades.
"The St. Francis River was not navigable in its natural state, having numerous snags and rafts," Jodi Morris writes for the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture. "In 1836-37, W. Bowling Buion surveyed the river under the auspices of the federal government with an eye toward improving navigation, but nothing came of it. Only after the Civil War did Congress begin funding the clearing of the river. Numerous clearing and dredging operations made the St. Francis navigable from its mouth up to Wappapello, Mo. Because the swampy Sunken Lands impeded progress on railroad construction until the land began to be drained in the late 1890s and early 1900s, steamboats continued to operate on the river until well into the early 20th century. The St. Francis Levee District was created in 1893 and began constructing levees and drainage canals to control flooding. These measures were strengthened and increased after the catastrophic flood of 1927 and the passage of the Flood Control Act of 1928."
Act 19 of 1893 addressed flood control in Craighead, Crittenden, Cross, Lee, Mississippi, Phillips, Poinsett and St. Francis counties. Gov. W.N. Fishback made the first appointments to the levee board. During the four years I worked for the Delta Regional Authority, I learned that the real measure of political influence in the Arkansas Delta and the Missouri Bootheel is to serve on a levee board. Previous efforts at flood control along the St. Francis through the federal Swamp Land Grant of 1850 and state organizations had been ineffective.
The district ended up draining a large portion of east Arkansas. Take the fate of the Little River of northeast Arkansas, which isn't to be confused with the Little River of southwest Arkansas. The Little River starts west of Cape Girardeau and flows into Arkansas, entering what's now the Big Lake National Wildlife Refuge and the state's Big Lake Wildlife Management Area near Manila. It joins the St. Francis at Marked Tree. Before the New Madrid earthquakes, the Little River was a clear, swift stream. It's now described by the state encyclopedia as "not much more than a series of stagnant mud holes due to channeling and ditching."
After leaving the Big Lake area, the Little River is part of a floodway almost a mile wide and enclosed by levees. The floodway includes Ditch No. 1, Ditch No. 9, Left Hand Chute, Right Hand Chute and what's left of the Little River. The waterways run together, separate and join again before entering the St. Francis.
Other important northeast Arkansas streams are the White, Black, L'Anguille and Cache rivers. The L'Anguille and the Cache were major obstacles to construction of the Memphis & Little Rock Railroad. An east Arkansas gap in the line existed until 1871. Like the St. Francis and Little Rivers, the L'Anguille and Cache have been dredged and channelized through the decades, often resulting in contentious legal battles. The end result is that what once were hundreds of thousands of acres of bottomland hardwoods in northeast Arkansas are now fields of soybeans, rice, cotton, corn, milo and other crops.
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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 09/03/2014