Jacob DeVall and his son Chappel found a place along the lower White River in the 1840s and established a mercantile store there. What would become DeValls Bluff in Prairie County has had fewer than 1,000 residents since the Civil War. It reached its post-war high-water mark with 924 residents in the 1910 census and was down to 619 people in the most recent census.
But Bill Sayger writes for the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture: "Excluding Helena, no other town in eastern Arkansas held such strategic importance to the Union Army during the Civil War as did DeValls Bluff."
DeValls Bluff has always punched above its weight, as they say over in the sports department. Of the towns listed in my U.S. 70 essay on the cover of today's Perspective section, it's the one I've found myself drawn to time after time through the decades. I like history, and I like food. DeValls Bluff has plenty of both.
Some of my best days as a boy were those spent at my grandparents' big house in Des Arc. Those visits often meant road trips south to DeValls Bluff for barbecue at Craig's or fried catfish at Murry's. Fortunately for Arkansas diners, both restaurants are still going strong even though Olden Murry and Lawrence Craig are no longer with us. Craig's remains in DeValls Bluff, while Murry's has moved west to a spot on U.S. 70 between Hazen and Carlisle.
Mike Trimble--a gifted storyteller who once wrote for the Arkansas Gazette, the Arkansas Times and this newspaper--described the original Murry's as a place that "appears at first glance to be a minor train derailment."
Trailers were strung together as dining rooms. It was a brown-bag establishment in the tradition of a lot of the old restaurants in Delta areas of Arkansas and Mississippi. People in Little Rock would rent buses to take them to DeValls Bluff for feasts of fried catfish (Olden Murry might throw in fried crappie for special friends), turnip greens and black-eyed peas. Murry had opened the restaurant in the 1960s after an injury forced him to end his career on a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers snagboat.
In his 1987 book Southern Food: At Home, on the Road, in History, John Egerton described the restaurant as "a rambling catacomb of interconnected coaches, trailers and prefabricated rooms" and said that Murry was a "Rembrandt of the kitchen." I happen to think that his son-in-law, Stanley Young, is turning out even better food at the current location.
Lawrence Craig opened his restaurant in 1947. He had once cooked on boats on area rivers. In an interview with Trimble, Craig said that even though he was known for barbecue, he could fry fish better than Murry. In a separate interview, Murry told Trimble that even though he was known for fish, his barbecue was better than what Craig served. I've been known to have a pork sandwich at Craig's (medium sauce for me) as an appetizer and then head over to Murry's for fish. Why waste a trip east on just one stop?
On its Southern Barbecue Trail website, Southern Foodways Alliance says of Craig's: "Three generations have supplied many satisfied customers with a variety of smoked meats, most notably smoked and sliced pork sandwiches slathered with a sauce made with hints of apple and bell pepper. Their signature sauce was developed over the kitchen table of the Craig family home."
Robert Craig, Lawrence's son, said when asked about the sauce: "My mom was just in the kitchen one day, putting a little bit of this and putting a little bit of that together. And my dad said, 'Well yeah, it tastes all right.' And so he obviously introduced it to the public, and it has been skyrocketing ever since."
DeValls Bluff also was the home of Mary Thomas' Pie Shop. Thomas, who's no longer alive, sold pies across the highway from Craig's for more than 30 years. In the 1990s, Lena Rice began selling her own pies in DeValls Bluff. She died in 2005, but Ms. Lena's Pies is still in business, providing yet another reason for a trip to DeValls Bluff.
As far as history, the town is filled with historical markers, most of which outline the role it played during the Civil War. Union forces occupied DeValls Bluff in 1863. Sayger writes that when the water was low on the Arkansas River, "many boats couldn't reach the capital city. But they could navigate up the White River to DeValls Bluff. Men and material could be transferred to the Memphis & Little Rock Railroad's trains to be transported to Little Rock. For that reason, DeValls Bluff's port area was heavily fortified for the remainder of the war and was home to many solders--black and white--and refugees. . . . The troops stationed at DeValls Bluff patronized stores and saloons that rapidly sprang up, many operated by Northern men such as Daniel P. Upham of New York, who came to town in the closing days of the war to open a saloon in partnership with a man named Whitty."
River towns can be tough places, and DeValls Bluff is no different. Bars have long been a fixture in the city's small downtown. These days it's a place called Grasshopper's with bright green paint on the building and this motto on its sign: "Come grumpy, leave happy."
DeValls Bluff has attracted duck hunters and fishermen since the 1800s. In the days before the Corps of Engineers built large impoundments across the state, the White River at DeValls Bluff attracted wealthy families from as far away as Little Rock and Memphis on weekends. They had fancy houseboats on the river and built expensive cabins along its banks. They hunted ducks in the winter while fishing on the White River and its oxbow lakes the rest of the year. A sporting goods store called The Bottoms operates in downtown DeValls Bluff to serve those who still visit.
Like other small towns in east Arkansas, DeValls Bluff has been losing population for years. Its school district consolidated with Hazen in 2006. Yet it still lures those who love history, love to hunt and fish and love to consume pork barbecue and homemade pie.
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Rex Nelson is a senior editor at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Editorial on 05/06/2018