The South Arkansas Arts Center at El Dorado is featuring an exhibition titled "Delta Landscapes by Norwood Creech." In a feature story by Ellis Widner in this newspaper, Creech described her location as "10 miles from Dyess, Tyronza, Marked Tree and the Sunken Lands, about 20 miles from Wilson."
She was talking about Lepanto. The story of Lepanto in eastern Poinsett County is like that of many Delta towns. A settlement grew thanks to the timber industry as entrepreneurs from other states flocked to east Arkansas in the late 1880s and early 1900s, anxious to harvest the virgin bottomland hardwoods and send the timber north to build growing cities such as St. Louis and Chicago. Once the timber was gone, the land was drained, stumps were cleared and cotton became king. With the rapid mechanization of agriculture in the years after World War II, the population declined as sharecroppers and tenant farmers headed north to work in factories. Poinsett County, for example, had 39,311 residents in the 1950 census. The population had fallen to 24,583 by 2010.
"During the first 20 years of the 20th Century, the timber industry flourished in northeast Arkansas, bringing workers and their families into the area," Steven Teske writes for the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture. "In 1902, Steve Ralph and Henry S. Portis built a cotton gin in Lepanto so that harvested cotton would not have to be shipped downriver to Memphis. The next year, Charles Bryan Greenwood, who had moved into the area from Harrisburg, commissioned four engineers to plat the city. The five main streets were named for Greenwood and the engineers. William C. Dawson built the city's first sawmill in 1905, and a new logging camp was built between Lepanto and Marked Tree."
A Memphis company built another large lumber mill, the Grismore-Hyman Mill, in 1911. A railroad known as the Tyronza Central was constructed by the Chapman & Dewey Lumber Co. to haul out logs in 1905. It later became part of the St. Louis San Francisco Railroad Co., commonly known as the Frisco line. The Frisco depot at Lepanto was constructed in 1912 and razed in 1965. Lepanto grew from 154 residents in 1910 to 986 by 1920.
The Portis family name has been important for more than a century in Lepanto. Dan F. Portis Sr. opened the Portis Mercantile Co. with J.E. Murphy Sr. in 1911. The partnership ended in 1915, and Portis built the Portis Mercantile building, long a landmark in downtown Lepanto. Portis died in 1931, and Dan Portis Jr. took over the business. By the end of World War II, the family was operating five cotton gins.
Dan Portis Jr. became president of the Little River Bank in 1939, established as the Bank of Keiser in Mississippi County in 1919 and owned by the R.E.L. Wilson family, which controlled much of the southern part of that county. The Bank of Lepanto closed during the Great Depression, leaving the city without a financial institution. In 1934, the stockholders of the Bank of Keiser changed the named to the Little River Bank and moved it into the former Bank of Lepanto building.
Dan Portis Jr. died in 1990. The family still farms thousands of acres in the area and runs other businesses. The company is managed by H.G. "Tri" Watkins III, the grandson of Dan Portis Jr.
Creech, who was raised in Memphis, is married to Watkins. She has fallen in love with the Arkansas Delta and its history. Her mother, Millicent Creech, was a painter and well-known antiques dealer in Memphis. Norwood Creech's work inspires people to see the levees and soybean fields of east Arkansas in a different light. "I think the flatlands deserve the attention," she says. "People drive through, and they see flat. But there is so much more. I've been painting here in the fields since 2000."
The Sunken Lands give Creech inspiration. These portions of Poinsett, Mississippi and Craighead counties shifted and sank during the massive New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-12. Much of the land was under water. Claims to property in the area led to a decades-long legal dispute that ultimately made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Some tracts sank as much as 50 feet in 1811-12.
"Those surveying the damage in canoes recorded their shock at seeing forests of tall trees submerged in the murky water with only the tallest branches visible," Nancy Hendricks of Arkansas State University writes. "Lakes replaced hills, and huge fissures filled with stagnant pools. For miles, the quakes caused land to sink beneath the level of the surrounding countryside. The once-bountiful land--filled with verdant forests, abundant game and fertile ground--became a swamp. The remoteness of the region, scarcity of settlers and lack of communication made accurate damage reports impossible for years. Survivors of the quakes took stock of what remained and often abandoned what was left of their homes."
The St. Francis Levee District was created by the state in 1893. Other drainage districts were created in the area in the early 1900s, and large drainage projects began in earnest. In 1939, the Memphis District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers constructed what were known as the Marked Tree Siphons. The siphons were designed to lift the flow of the St. Francis River over a levee and return the water to the river channel on the other side. That feat led to the further agricultural development of the Sunken Lands, an area Creech now lovingly interprets on her canvases.
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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 02/25/2015