There was no easy way to reach DeSoto Bluff in Arkadelphia when I would take visitors there a few years ago. I would park along U.S. 67, risk tearing my pants while crossing a fence and then walk through woods filled with ticks and chiggers to take in the view of the Ouachita River and the surrounding countryside.
It's a relaxing walk now, thanks in part to grants from the Arkansas Humanities Council, the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission and others. There's a paved parking lot adjacent to the highway and a paved trail to the top.
Most historians will say that the Spanish explorer Hernando DeSoto never came near this spot. In 2013, then-Arkadelphia City Manager Jimmy Bolt told this newspaper: "It has been a story that has been told around here for a long time. So the name's stuck, and I won't be the one who says it's impossible." We do know that the expedition of George Hunter and William Dunbar made its way by the bluff in 1804 as the explorers headed up the Ouachita River.
"The Hunter-Dunbar expedition was one of only four ventures into the Louisiana Purchase commissioned by Thomas Jefferson," Southern Arkansas University President Trey Berry writes for the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture. "While the Ouachita River expedition was not as vast and did not provide the expanse of geographic and environmental information collected by Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery, the exploration of Dunbar and Hunter remains significant for several reasons. It provided Americans with the first scientific study of the varied landscapes as well as the animal and plant life of southern Arkansas and northern Louisiana. In fact, the expedition resulted in arguably the most purely scientific collection of date among all of the Louisiana Purchase explorations."
When Ouachita Baptist University decided to build a new road to its campus from U.S. 67, it needed part of Arkadelphia's Central Park for the project. The city gave Ouachita that land in exchange for 26 acres of forest along the bluff. Dedication ceremonies for the paved trail were held in July 2013. Interpretive panels along the route provide information on the Caddo Indians and the Hunter-Dunbar expedition. After leaving the bluff, our party stayed on 67 to Gurdon, passing the site at Gum Springs that Sun Paper of China plans to transform into a paper mill. It will be among the largest private investments in state history at $1.3 billion. This is the heart of the timber country of the Gulf Coastal Plain, and log trucks crowded the highway. We passed the Georgia-Pacific lumber mill near Gurdon, where $37 million recently was invested to expand production capacity by 60 percent.
Gurdon has a colorful history. Meriwether Lewis Randolph, a grandson of Thomas Jefferson, bought several thousand acres in the area before he died of malaria in 1837. During Reconstruction, growth occurred once the Cairo & Fulton Railroad was completed in 1874. Gurdon was incorporated in 1880 and soon became an important railroad and timber town. Due to the number of transients passing through on the railroad and the toughness of workers in the timber industry, Gurdon earned the reputation of being a rough-and-tumble town. A minister reported finding a community of 500 people with three saloons and no churches in 1881.
Six men with ties to the timber industry formed the Concatenated Order of the Hoo-Hoo on Jan. 21, 1892, during a meeting in the Hotel Hall at Gurdon. The lumbermen's society is the oldest industrial fraternal organization in the country. It once had more than 13,000 members. That number is now down to about 2,000. The founders decided that the organization's motto would be Health, Happiness and Long Life. The board of directors would be called the Supreme Nine, the president would be the Snark of the Universe, the chaplain would be the Bojum, the secretary would be the Scrivenoter, the sergeant at arms would be the Gurdon and the other board members would be the Senior Hoo-Hoo, Junior Hoo-Hoo, Custocacian, Arcanoper and Jabberwock. The mascot would be a black cat with its tail curved into the number nine.
Hoo-Hoo membership originally was limited to 9,999 people. That number later was changed to 99,999. Meetings were to be held on the ninth day of the ninth month at nine minutes after the ninth hour with annual dues of $9.99 and an initiation fee of 99 cents. The first chapter outside the U.S. was in Canada in 1924. Soon there were chapters all over the world. President Theodore Roosevelt was given reserved membership number 999 for his work promoting forestry. President Warren G. Harding became member number 14,945.
Along the railroad tracks in downtown Gurdon is a Hoo-Hoo monument with a granite base and bronze plaque. The plaque was affixed in 1909 to a building that was located where the Hotel Hall once stood. When that building was torn down in 1927, the plaque was affixed to the granite base at its present location. The monument was added to the National Register of Historic Places on Sept. 2, 1999.
Like many other towns in the south half of the state, Gurdon has struggled in recent decades. Its population fell from 2,707 in the 1980 census to 2,212 in the 2010 census. The huge investment being made by Sun Paper in Clark County should help reverse that trend.
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Freelance columnist Rex Nelson is the director of corporate community relations for Simmons First National Corp. He's also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.
Editorial on 08/17/2016