Between Batesville and Melbourne, there is a small town called Cushman. The volunteer fire department and a colorful playground are visible from Arkansas 69, and a few buildings just off the main road house small businesses and family homes that have been staples in the community for years.
Off of Martin Street across from Cushman United Methodist Church sits a stone building with various antiques and artifacts on the porch. The building is home to the Cushman Heritage Museum, run by local history and genealogy enthusiast Becky Wood.
On a tour of the museum, Wood pointed out several historical items that make her proud to be a Cushman resident. The front room contains mining supplies from the town’s manganese-ore mines that helped put Cushman on the map decades ago. Throughout the building, there are artifacts from Cushman High School, which was closed in 2009; folders of information about Cushman’s influential families; tributes to area veterans; and even a section on Whataburger, a regional fast-food restaurant chain, whose founder was from Cushman.
Wood grew up a mile from town and has stayed in Cushman her whole life. Her mother’s family can trace its roots to the early 1800s in Cushman, and Wood said she enjoyed her time growing up in the small town.
“We lived out of town about a mile, and a lot of times we walked to Cushman to my dad’s shop. My grandpa lived with us, and we came [to town] with him a lot,” she said. “Everybody was friendly. I remember playing with the kids in town and going to lots of the elderly people’s houses. … One lady would let us take her trash out, and she’d give us a nickel or a dime. It was so much like a big family.”
When Wood was a junior in high school, she started taking classes at Arkansas College — now Lyon College — in Batesville and started teaching English in Cushman schools just two years after she graduated from high school.
“I was hired as an English teacher, but I had to be the librarian for one period,” she said. “I started going to [Arkansas State University in] Jonesboro during the summers to get my library accreditation, and that’s where my heart lies. I love it.”
In 1980, the school started a gifted-and-talented program at Cushman High School. Wood was selected to run the program, and she decided to have her GT students gather information about the town for the first Cushman History Project.
“We did interviews,” she said. “I would take them out to houses, and they would go individually — especially to their ancestors — and collect information. Then we would research that information, and [we] put together the first Cushman history booklet.”
The students involved in making that first booklet were Rodney Claxton, Tammy Dale, David Johnson, Hayley Kelley, Belinda Manley, Roger Melton, Patty Neal, Anna Richardson, Juanice Swaim and Kris Martin.
That project launched Wood’s special interest in history and genealogy. She continued the Cushman History Project and organized yearly booklets, and the project ballooned into a museum’s worth of information.
In 1992, Cushman started an annual Miners’ Day celebration, and Wood began setting up displays of local history in the school library or the community center. After the school district was consolidated with the Melbourne Public School District in 2009, Wood purchased the house on Martin Street to set up a permanent display of Cushman history.
“Now people will look me up because they want me to have the history,” Wood said.
Wood lit up when she took visitors on a tour of the museum. The building is small, but a lot of information is packed into a tight space. The history of Cushman hinges on the mines, which were started in the mid-1800s. Because of the valuable ore that was mined, a train went daily to the town, and Cushman was a popular destination for salesmen.
“They had salesmen who were called drummers who would come in on the train, stay at the hotel, rent a wagon, buggy or horse, and then they would go to different places to make sales,” she said, pointing to photos of the train. “The manganese ore was the reason for the train, though. Before the train, [the ore] had to be taken to the river by buggy. The ore really caused the population of Cushman to soar.”
The mines closed in 1959, and a lot of the business scene dried up. Wood said the town is working now to reinvent itself to stay together, and the museum is just one part of that reinvention.
Wood worked in the Cushman School District for 35 years, and when it was consolidated, she started working at Mount Pleasant Elementary School in the Melbourne Public School District. She is now the part-time librarian at the school, which gives her time to gather information and run the Cushman Heritage Museum.
“I think it’s important to keep this history in order to give us a sense of community, a sense of family,” she said. “Our native families feel that, even the ones who have moved away. They come back for Miner’s Day. They come back, and they feel that sense of community. That is so important, especially now that the school has closed.”
Wood said the best way to visit the Cushman Heritage Museum is to first contact her on Facebook at the Cushman Heritage Museum’s page at www.facebook.com/cushmanheritagemuseum and arrange a time to visit. She also posts photos regularly to Facebook in order to find and share information about Cushman history.
Staff writer Angela Spencer can be reached at (501) 244-4307 or aspencer@arkansasonline.com.