OPINION

Summer on the Saline

Summer trips to Peeler Bend on the Saline River near Benton were always a thrill. My grandfather would load me into his old Chevrolet (which he had nicknamed the Quick Clutch), and we would head to the river to picnic, swim, fish for bream from the bank and gather mussels. Meat from the mussels was used to bait trotlines, and my grandmother washed the shells for me to keep.

When I worked for the Delta Regional Authority from 2005-09, I often attended meetings in the Tunica, Miss., area. That's because the casinos there had the nicest meeting rooms in the Delta. As a history buff, I would sneak off between meetings to visit the Mississippi River Museum at the Tunica RiverPark. One of the displays was what's known as the Peeler Bend Canoe. I wondered why it was in Mississippi rather than Arkansas. I also wondered if I had once unknowingly waded atop that canoe, which was discovered in 1999.

Radiocarbon dating tells us that the dugout canoe, believed to have been made by Caddo Indians, dates back to a period between 1160 and 1300. Benton resident Charles Greene stopped his boat one day on a sandbar at Peeler Bend for a lunch break during a fishing float down the Saline. It was summer, and the river was low. Greene saw what he thought was a petrified log. It turned out to be a canoe that was 24 feet long.

"After Greene contacted the Gann Museum in Benton for help, the museum sent amateur archaeologists Guy Moore and Ruben Rankin to examine the canoe," Cody Lynn Berry writes for the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture. "After their inspection, a group of volunteers--including the former mayor of Benton, Rick Holland--went to dig out the canoe and walk it downriver to the Lyle Park access. It was then loaded onto a trailer bound for Moore's home in Benton. The canoe was preserved in a small pond at the recommendation of Dr. Ann Early of the Arkansas Archeological Survey. Early contacted the commissioner of state lands, who determined that the canoe was state property. Early arranged for the canoe to be placed in the pond of Dr. Quinn Baber, as keeping it in water prevented it from drying out and falling apart in the hot sun."

The Historic Arkansas Museum at Little Rock received funds to conserve the canoe, which then became part of the museum's permanent collection.

"Andrew Zawacki, an expert in wood conservation at HAM, stabilized the canoe by having it submerged in a large holding tank containing water and polyethylene glycol," Berry writes. "The solution conserved the canoe by migrating into its cellular structure to replace any water within it, strengthening the canoe's physical structure to stop it from collapsing. The canoe was determined to be a prehistoric dugout because charring was found in the canoe's interior cavity, providing evidence of burning and scraping rather than the use of metal tools."

As someone who grew up visiting Peeler Bend, you can imagine how excited I was last month when I walked into the recreation complex known as the River Center, operated by the Benton Parks & Recreation Department, and saw that the Peeler Bend Canoe had come home. It's on loan from the state to the city of Benton and now rests in a glass case in the lobby.

The canoe is a piece of history in a county that has changed dramatically since those days when I would swim in the Saline River. I cover the Benton part of that transformation in a story on the cover of today's Perspective section.

It was the 1960s when I started making those trips to Peeler Bend. In the 1960 census, Saline County had 28,956 residents. It now has almost 120,000 residents. Many of them aren't natives of the county. Living in suburban housing developments and driving crowded roads to strip shopping centers, most don't even know where Peeler Bend is. They also don't know that Saline County is among the state's oldest counties, formed in 1835 when Arkansas was still a territory. They're probably unaware that mines in Saline County once produced more than 90 percent of the aluminum ore in this country.

Allen Oakley began a salt works in 1827 in what's now Saline County. Similar operations later were started by Arkansas Gazette founder William Woodruff and others as the area supplied most of the salt used in the Arkansas Territory. Benton was established in 1833 on the east bank of the Saline River and named after U.S. Sen. Thomas Hart Benton of the Missouri Territory. Benton had the advantage of being on the Southwest Trail, a former Indian trail leading from Missouri through Little Rock to the Red River that was heavily utilized by settlers during the country's westward expansion. The county's first courthouse and jail were constructed at Benton in 1838. The town soon even had a horse track.

Road construction southwest of Little Rock in 1887 uncovered a large number of soft gray rocks. John C. Branner, the state geologist, later would confirm that the rocks contained bauxite ore.

Bauxite ore had been discovered in this country in Georgia in 1883. The Southern Bauxite & Mining Co. soon was purchasing land in Saline County. That company was bought out by the General Bauxite Co., which was mining and shipping ore by 1896. The Pittsburgh Reduction Co., in turn, purchased General Bauxite in 1905 and changed its name to the Aluminum Company of America in 1907. That name was later shortened to Alcoa. The community of Perrysmith changed its name to Bauxite in 1903. For decades, Bauxite was a company town.

After World War II, Alcoa found it more profitable to mine bauxite ore in foreign countries.

"Those who remained in Bauxite were notified in 1967 that the company-owned town would be abolished as of July 1, 1969," Laura Harrington writes for the Encyclopedia of Arkansas. "The facilities were abandoned or sold. The remaining buildings were either left to rot or moved to Benton. Although production was slowed, mining operations didn't cease. The company simply stopped supporting the town. Since the town had been run by the company, it never incorporated. There was no need. After all, the company built all the buildings, paid everyone's salary and performed all maintenance. After the company stopped doing this, the town nearly disappeared. However, it was able to incorporate on Jan. 16, 1973, with West Bauxite."

Then came white flight out of Pulaski County and explosive growth. Saline County would never be the same.

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Rex Nelson is a senior editor at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Editorial on 08/05/2018

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