Goodbye, city life: See the past at Scott Settlement

Forget cellphones and fast food. For the early settlers of Arkansas, communication was spotty and dinner meant trapping, cleaning and cooking the food yourself.

It was not an easy way of life, but modern-day people can have fun experiencing it at the Scott Settlement Historical Rendezvous on Friday and Saturday in Scott.

Ed Williams, board president for settlement overseer Scott Connections, says the rendezvous is "a way for the 21st-century person to experience what life was like in Arkansas 200 years ago and the trials and tribulations the early settlers of Arkansas experienced."

While the Scott Settlement's 20 or so buildings represent agricultural life from the late 1800s through the early 1900s, the rendezvous covers an earlier period, primarily before 1840.

There are other rendezvous around the state with participation from the Early Arkansaw Reenactors Association -- for instance at Petit Jean Mountain State Park and at Woolly Hollow State Park -- but this is only the second year for the one in Scott.

For the first time, they'll have a speaker and program on the Trail of Tears. But, otherwise, it will be much like last year's event. That means re-enactors setting up camp in the crude tents and lean-tos common in early Arkansas, demonstrating a variety of skills such as shooting, cooking, trapping and just "everyday living."

Guests can get hands-on with period-related games including a skillet toss, tug of war and horse races.

"Not with real horses -- hobby horses," Williams says.

People also can tour the settlement buildings and watch a blacksmith at work in his shop.

Money raised at the rendezvous goes to the settlement for building and grounds upkeep, tour guide salaries and utilities.

Williams describes the settlement as "a way to commemorate that time period in Arkansas history." It is home to carefully restored and decorated buildings such as an 1840-era dogtrot cabin, a train depot, a doctor's office and a sharecropper's cabin.

Between the Scott Settlement buildings, the games, demonstrations and encampments, rendezvous visitors can get a look at roughly 100 years of Arkansas history.

That, Williams says, is the goal: "Keep alive Arkansas history."

Weekend on 04/26/2018