GARFIELD -- Just off a narrow, winding stretch of county road stand three buildings, silent testimonials to the once bustling farming community of Glade.
Now, the original sites of the farms, houses and former post office are mostly hidden beneath the waters of Beaver Lake. Leading away from the buildings into a wooded area and down to Beaver Lake is a path, recalled by former residents of the area as the Jennings Road, which led to the Jennings Ferry, a way across the White River.
"Back in the old days, we all walked to school," recalled Pat Heck, who grew up in the area and now serves as a member of the board of directors of the Glade Community Historical Society. "The path to the school was right across here where this building is now planted -- that was the road."
Farther down the road, for more than half a century, the Glade post office was the meeting place for residents of the Glade and Coal Gap communities along the White River in northeast Benton County. In 1945, when the post office began rural mail delivery, residents of the rural area along the White River no longer had to go to the post office to pick up their mail.
"Yes, the Star Route came through in '47 or '48," said Larry Hanner, another board member, of rural mail delivery.
The Glade post office served as both post office and mercantile store from about 1890 to 1945, Heck said, adding that after 1945, there was neither store nor post office in Glade.
The post office building was moved to higher ground when the lake was being formed, according to Stanley Williams, Heck's brother. Their father, Liss Williams, moved the building to a farm off Shrader Road east of Pea Ridge. There, it was used as a storage shed for another half a century. Old store and office supplies, a black manual typewriter, milk cans and other antiques -- once the necessities of life in rural Arkansas -- sat inside gathering dust.
The foundation stones of the early post office were covered by the lake, but in 2013, when the lake was low enough to reveal the historic stones, they were collected and moved to higher ground. The group salvaged 52 foundation stones.
"I was surprised to find it still existed," said another board member, Sam Reynolds. He and his family moved from Kansas City, Mo., in 2000. "I found the foundation in the lake first -- it was under water some of the time. We wondered what it was ... then found out the building still existed. That's when we decided to move it back."
Then, two years ago, in July 2014, the post office building was moved back to the former Glade area. Now, the building is renovated and ready to display the treasures of the past. It stands across a drive from the Coal Gap school and teacher's cottage, on land donated by Doris Briley.
The Glade Historical Society -- formed in 2011 to preserve the history of the Glade community -- raised money and received a grant from the Benton County Historical Preservation Commission to move and restore the post office. Moving the building cost about $400 to move the first time and nearly $8,000 to return it in 2014.
The old gray, weathered, wooden building traveled along the curvy Ozark roads back to a spot along Slate Gap Road west of Arkansas 127.
"The top had to come off the building to move it. It looked awful ... I remember it rolling in and wondering, 'Oh, my goodness, what have we done?'" Hanner said.
Hanner moved to the area in the late 1940s and attended the Coal Gap school for the seventh and eighth grades. He said the family moved from Iowa because his grandfather, a railroad engineer, began having heart problems and needed the more southern climate.
"I was the only one in my class," he noted.
Ruth and Bob Billingsley moved to Northwest Arkansas 12 years ago from Norman, Okla. The old school building and teacher's cottage both stood on their land.
"My family said to tear it down," Ruth said, recalling her determination to save the old cottage. "We jokingly refer to it as 'the money pit.'"
The restored cottage -- which, with the school, stands on its original site -- is now a guest cottage, with an additional room on the back. Billingsley said visiting missionaries have used it as a peaceful place for respite.
"According to history -- we're not exactly sure -- but there were supposedly three post offices here," Heck said, explaining the post office moved back and forth across the White River from Glade to LaRue. "So, the actual history is uncertain from 1858 to 1866 ... There were several name changes and location changes until 1903, then it settled near where I grew up."
She said historical accounts indicate the first post office was operated by Able Jennings, who also had property in the area.
The Coal Gap school originally sat about a half mile from the Glade post office, providing education from first through eighth grades.
"No one had enough money to move to town and go to high school," Heck recalled.
One of those early students, Cleva Williams Douglas, who was born in the Glade Community in 1907, remembered attending Coal Gap school, where she said she acquired the love of reading. Douglas contributed much to the history of the school before her death in 2014, just 13 weeks before her 107th birthday.
All board members agreed, they have been and will continue to collect oral history and welcome anyone from the area to tell them their stories.
"We believe in history and the preservation of it and want to save it for future generations so they will have some idea of what life was like before Beaver Lake ... so young people can know everything wasn't air conditioned, and it was a real treat to get a piece of candy," Heck said.
"I remember candy being there in a glass counter," Heck continued, reminiscing about the mercantile in the 1940s. "Life before screens did exist."
"I'd like to see the post office look as near as it can to when it was functioning -- add feed bags, put letters in there and label those of some of the people who lived around here," Reynolds said. "I don't think young people have any idea. This building didn't ever have electricity."
NAN Our Town on 07/28/2016