I'm sharing lunch with Charley Sandage and looking out the window of his home. I consider it the best view in Arkansas.
Take Arkansas 9 north out of Mountain View, cross the White River at Sylamore into Izard County ,and turn down a gravel road. That's where Sandage--songwriter, performer, historian, folklorist, expert on the Ozarks--lives and works.
I look north at the blue waters of the upper White River and the hardwood forests of the Ozarks. I listen to his stories about the countless attempts through the years to interpret the culture of these mountains while attracting well-heeled tourists who are interested in that culture.
"Mountain View is still here; it has just been in a kind of hibernation," Sandage says when I ask him about the cancellation of so many events since the March 2020 onset of the pandemic. "Bears don't crawl up in a den and literally sleep all winter. They venture out as they can on short tentative runs and then pull back into the dark safe place to sleep a lot. It has kind of been like that here.
"The venues, performers and crafters have been poking their heads out as they can, looking for sunshine. When that happens, it's all still here. I just hope enough of our neighbors see the light and help the sun come out up here."
In 1968, U.S. Rep. Wilbur D. Mills, the congressional powerhouse from Arkansas, obtained $2.5 million in grants and loans to build a facility at Mountain View focusing on Ozarks heritage. Advanced Projects Corp. of New York won the contract to build and operate the center. Construction began in 1971. By the spring of the following year, the company was bankrupt.
Then-Gov. Dale Bumpers was persuaded to take it on as a state project. What's now the Ozark Folk Center cost $3.4 million and opened in 1973. Sandage was working at the time for Bill Henderson, who oversaw state parks. Sandage was sent by Henderson to Mountain View as one of the first two employees on the grounds.
"In 2023, Stone County will have its sesquicentennial, the landmark courthouse will have its centennial, and the Ozark Folk Center and Blanchard Springs Caverns will both celebrate 50 years," Sandage says. "I vividly remember everyone scrambling to get the center up and running in April 1973 and the caverns open to visitors a few months later.
"The guides they brought in for the caverns right after school was out that year included a big chunk of recent college graduates who discovered square dances and what we call 'pickin's' to be the closest thing available as party venues. They really got into it. Some stayed."
Stone County had been created by the Legislature in April 1873 out of parts of Independence, Izard, Searcy and Van Buren counties.
"In the county's early days, the economy was based on small-acreage cash crops such as grain
and cotton along with timber, trapping and livestock," Edie Nicholson writes for the Central Arkansas Library System's Encyclopedia of Arkansas. "The residents of Stone County, like the rest of the country, suffered from the effects of the Great Depression. The self-sustaining lifestyle they were used to in this isolated area helped them survive.
"Due to poor road conditions, livestock and timber were shipped by rail or water. People survived by growing their own food, trapping, harvesting herbs, making corn whiskey and bartering with those who had what they needed. During World War II, Stone County was affected by rationing. Women began to work outside the home, and people collected items such as scrap rubber to help with the war effort."
With job opportunities limited, a number of families in Stone and surrounding counties moved after the war to the industrial Midwest so men could take factory jobs in places such as Chicago and Detroit. Stone County's population fell from 8,603 in 1940 to 6,294 in 1960. Tax revenues also fell. Roads leading in and out of Mountain View--with the exception of Arkansas 14 toward Batesville-- weren't paved until the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Since the 1960 census, however, Stone County's population has almost doubled. What happened? Give credit to the Ozark Folk Center, Blanchard Springs Caverns, the Rackensack Folklore Society, the Arkansas Craft Guild and the Arkansas Folk Festival.
The festival, which draws thousands of people to Mountain View each April, has its roots in the Stone County Folkways Festival, held in 1941 soon before the onset of American involvement in World War II.
"World War II prevented subsequent gatherings, but the festival was revived in 1963 during the birth of a regional tourism effort," writes Lori Freeze of the Stone County Leader. "The Ozark Foothills Handicraft Guild (now the Arkansas Craft Guild), which represented a seven-county area, had held its first show the year before in Batesville. A local tourist and recreation committee had also sponsored a regional dogwood drive the previous few years.
"It was decided to combine the various events into one big spring festival. Attendance peaked in the 1970s with the height of popularity of folk music and the free-spirited audiences that followed it. The festival was extended over two weekends in its most popular phase."
The Ozark Foothills Handicraft Guild was incorporated in 1962. The aim was to provide supplemental income for people in this part of the Ozarks. The University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service was at the time exploring ways to bring small businesses and cottage industries to the mountains. While soliciting crafters to exhibit at craft fairs, members were recruited for the guild.
"Focusing first on Stone County, they soon extended the area to include surrounding counties," Erlene Carter writes for the Encyclopedia of Arkansas. "The guild decided to include all of Arkansas in 1967. The name was changed to the Arkansas Craft Guild in 1990 to indicate a statewide organization."
A $15,600 loan from the federal Small Business Administration in 1963 allowed the guild to construct log cabins at Salem, Hardy, Clinton, Heber Springs and Mountain View. Stores were being operated out of those cabins by 1964.
"These were the guild's first retail outlets," Carter writes. "Jim Warren, a woodcarver and carpenter, almost single-handedly built all five. Manned exclusively by volunteers, the outlets offered merchandise placed there on consignment by members. The guild prospered. By 1975, it was able to purchase land near Mountain View and build a craft shop and office complex, including the space necessary to hold its annual spring craft show."
The first major craft show at Mountain View was held in April 1962. A fall show began in October 1966 at Heber Springs. The Heber Springs show ended in 1989, and the Mountain View show ended in 1993. The guild's Arkansas Craft Gallery at Mountain View continues to be a popular stop, cementing the city's reputation as a place for Ozark crafts in addition to music.
The Arkansas Craft School began as the guild's educational arm. The school was designed to support practicing artisans and also encourage young people to be artisans. The school was incorporated in 2007.
The Arkansas Craft School is on the Mountain View square and offers classes in wood, metal, glass, clay, photos, jewelry, fiber and studio arts. The school is supported by the Arkansas Arts Council, the Windgate Foundation, Stone Bank and other donors.
The stone building housing the school was the Lackey Chevrolet dealership for many years.
Another key player in the rebirth of Stone County was the Rackensack Folklore Society. The society was begun by Dr. Lloyd Hollister and his wife Martha, who moved to Stone County from central Arkansas in 1962. Hollister set up his medical practice at Mountain View and drove to town each day from his home at Fox.
In February 1963, Hollister met with six other people to form an organization that would allow mountain musicians to share their music with the public. Jimmy Driftwood suggested the Rackensack name, and the folk festival was scheduled for the third weekend in April. The group's Friday night sessions at the courthouse soon became a regional draw.
Rackensack operated the festivals until the early 1970s, at which time the city of Mountain View and its chamber of commerce took over. Famed editorial cartoonist George Fisher created a branch Rackensack organization in Little Rock in the late 1960s.
The success of the Arkansas Folk Festival and Rackensack Folklore Society convinced business and civic leaders in the area that a permanent home was needed to celebrate Ozarks heritage.
According to a history of the Ozark Folk Center from the state Department of Parks, Heritage and Tourism: "Proponents believed that it would not only preserve traditional music and folkways but that it could also provide much-needed jobs for one of the most economically depressed regions of the state. The impetus for a folk center grew out of plan to secure federal dollars for construction of a much-needed water and sewage system in Mountain View. The city would apply for federal funds to be used for construction of a music auditorium. That would, of course, necessitate the water and sewer infrastructure."
Driftwood helped lead the lobbying effort and found a champion in Washington. That champion was Mills, the legendary chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. The facility was to be built on a hilly 80-acre tract at the north end of town. There are now more than 600 acres in Ozark Folk Center State Park.
A year after the folk center opened, well-known educator Bessie Moore created a support group known as the Committee of 100. Moore, a Kentucky native, moved with her father to Arkansas and attended school at Mountain View. She took the teacher's exam at age 14 and was hired at St. James in Stone County.
In 1926, at age 24, Moore was hired as supervisor for rural schools in Jefferson County, where fiance Merlin Moore lived. The couple married in 1928.
When Merlin Moore bought a cafeteria in Little Rock in 1937, Bessie became the elementary schools supervisor in North Little Rock. She earned her bachelor's degree in education from what's now the University of Central Arkansas in 1942.
Following her husband's death in 1958, Moore joined the state Department of Education as supervisor of elementary education. In 1961, she became coordinator of economic education and served in that role until 1979. She was on the board of the state library from 1941-79 and in 1980 received the highest honor the American Library Association can give.
Moore worked closely with the state's first lady Betty Bumpers to raise funds for the new Ozark Folk Center. One woman from each of the state's 75 counties and 25 at-large members made up the Committee of 100. The committee established a music program for young people, an herb garden, apprenticeship programs and the Ozark Cultural Research Center, which eventually would archive more than 100,000 items.
Stone County began gaining rather than losing population.
"A lot of the people who carry on the type of traditional culture the folk center celebrates came from somewhere else, settled here, learned, adapted and created," Sandage says. "Some of these folks the locals consider 'from off' became more Ozarkers in music, lore and attitude than descendants of local families. The back-to-the-land outsiders emerged as what I consider the quintessential Ozarkers."
