The invitation to speak during a dinner meeting of high school athletic boosters at Nashville in Howard County proved irresistible. High school football is important in many parts of Arkansas, but I can think of few others who embrace their team quite like the people of Nashville. To top it off, the Scrappers won the Class 4A state football championship in December at Little Rock's War Memorial Stadium.
My condition was that I would speak if noted Arkansas historian Tom DeBlack of Arkansas Tech University would accompany me. DeBlack is a former Nashville quarterback and later taught, coached and served as a school administrator at Nashville. I knew the drive from Little Rock to Nashville would be interesting with DeBlack in the car. "Let's take the back way," he announced. He meant that we would exit Interstate 30 at Arkadelphia and wind our way on Arkansas 26 through Hollywood, Antoine, Delight and Murfreesboro. When people write about scenic, interesting drives in Arkansas, they usually focus on the Ozarks, the Ouachitas and even the Delta and Crowley's Ridge. Southwest Arkansas becomes the forgotten corner of the state. Yet this drive through the woods of the Gulf Coastal Plain is among Arkansas' best rural road trips.
The first few miles of Highway 26 provided a glimpse of two of the region's most historic homes, Magnolia Manor and the Boze-man House. Both have been carefully restored and would be at home among the spring pilgrimage houses in Natchez, Miss. Construction of Magnolia Manor was completed in 1857. In the early 1850s, John McDaniel sold his plantation in South Carolina and moved to Arkansas, purchasing land west of Arkadelphia. He hired a master carpenter and bricklayer named Madison Griffin to build a two-story home that mixed Greek Revival and Italianate design. McDaniel traveled by boat to New Orleans on business and returned with two magnolia seedlings. As the trees matured, they provided the home with its name. State Sen. Fletcher McElhannon renovated the home in 1932 after it had fallen into disrepair. Another state senator, Olen Hendrix of Antoine, later owned Magnolia Manor. Arkadelphia philanthropist Jane Ross purchased the home and did further renovations. It's now owned by Ouachita Baptist University administrator Bill Phelps, who has continued to preserve the house, on the National Register of Historic Places since 1972.
The Bozeman House is even older than Magnolia Manor, having been built in the late 1840s by Michael Boze-man, who came to Clark County in 1835. Bozeman contracted with local carpenter John Swink. He also bought a portable sawmill powered by eight mules and set it up on his plantation to saw lumber for the Greek Revival home. Planters such as McDaniel and Bozeman were attracted to the area because the blackland prairies proved suitable for growing cotton.
There once were almost 12 million acres of blackland prairies in Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. There now are only about 10,000 acres remaining in scattered patches. The prairies have been transformed into pine plantations, pastures, agricultural fields and housing suburbs. Beginning in the 1980s, the Nature Conservancy partnered with the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission to identify the least disturbed blackland sites. In 1991, the conservancy teamed up with the commission to acquire the Terre Noire Natural Area just a few miles from the Bozeman House. That preserve covers 490 acres.
There's not much left in Hollywood as we continue our trip to the southwest. Hollywood, then called Greenville, was the county seat of Clark County until 1842 and attracted notable Arkansans such as Chester Ashley, Robert Crittenden and Albert Pike. Farmers had begun settling along Terre Noire Creek as early as 1811 to take advantage of the fertile soil. There was a lot of activity in the area late in the Civil War. On April 1, 1864, Confederate Gen. Joseph Shelby's troops attacked the rear guard of Union Gen. Frederick Steele's army on the Military Road near the Bozeman House. A day later, Shelby's troops attacked the Union troops in what became known as the Skirmish at Terre Noire Creek. The Confederate detachment attacked a Union supply train of more than 200 wagons traveling toward Camden as part of Steele's attempt to push south in what became known as the Camden Expedition.
The Antoine River, which begins in the Ouachita Mountains, flows 35 miles to the southeast before emptying into the Little Missouri River near Okolona. French trappers gave the river its name. In 1907, the Arkadelphia Lumber Co. moved its operations to a site near the river. The company town of Graysonia, now a ghost town, was home to one of the largest lumber mills in the South. Antoine in Pike County had been a stopping place for those traveling the Military Road to Texas. Antoine began to decline when the railroad bypassed the town in the late 1800s. The south side of town burned in 1911. The school burned in 1947, leading to a full consolidation with nearby Delight.
In the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture, Guy Lancaster writes of the Antoine River: "Unlike other waterways in this region of Arkansas, the Antoine River has not been dammed. This is likely because impounding the short river would not provide much flood control. Though the river is not as popular among canoeists as others in the region, it is well known for bluegill, catfish, crappie and bass fishing." The river is like the area around it: Little known by Arkansans, but beautiful, peaceful and historic.
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Freelance columnist Rex Nelson is the director of corporate communications for Simmons First National Corp. He's also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.
Editorial on 02/10/2016