With a sister who once worked as an administrator for the El Dorado School District, I'm well aware of the steps the district has taken to advance education here in far south Arkansas. From adding Advanced Placement courses to hiring experts in certain subjects, the district has attempted to be the shining beacon on the educational landscape in these pine woods.
In January 2007, Murphy Oil Corp. unveiled the El Dorado Promise. Since that announcement, more than 3,000 El Dorado High School graduates have taken their scholarships to 153 colleges and universities in 35 states. The program guarantees a scholarship for every student who graduates from the district and attended school there from at least the ninth through 12th grades. There's no high school GPA requirement, income limit or competitive application process.
Students who attended the district from kindergarten through high school graduation get the most money for scholarships at the accredited two- or four-year institutions of their choice. The schools can be inside or outside the state, public or private, up to the costs of tuition and mandatory fees at the most expensive public university in Arkansas.
Students are allowed to add other sources of financial aid. To renew the scholarship, they must earn at least 24 college hours and maintain a cumulative college GPA of 2.0. The scholarship is available for renewal for up to five years or when students receive bachelor's degrees.
One of the biggest days each year in El Dorado is what's known as academic signing day. Speakers at the annual event have included two former U.S. presidents, Miss America, a network anchor and NBA stars.
Through the years, I've written extensively about the Murphy Arts District, the audacious effort to make El Dorado the cultural and entertainment center for a large swath of south Arkansas, north Louisiana and east Texas. Downtown's chic boutique hotel, The Haywood, is to Arkansas what the Alluvian in Greenwood is to Mississippi--a place with a big-city feel in a small town.
Wednesday's column, meanwhile, focused on Mystic Creek Golf Club, which was rated last year at No. 34 on Golfweek magazine's list of the best public courses in the country. El Dorado is a genteel oasis in a sea of pine trees. Yet for all the efforts of its business and civic leaders, its population declined from 18,884 in the 2010 census to 17,756 in 2020. That's a 6 percent drop.
Those numbers show how hard it is to overcome broad demographic trends in an era when almost every Arkansas county in the south half of the state is losing population.
I'm scheduled to speak on this day at the annual meeting of the El Dorado-Union County Chamber of Commerce. The rainy morning before the meeting is spent driving around town with Bill Luther, the chamber's CEO. Luther, who obtained a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Arkansas, is also a licensed pilot and an advanced emergency medical technician. He understands what it takes to build a city.
Luther retired from Entergy Arkansas in February 2018 and began campaigning for mayor. He lost by 87 votes that November, but was approached about the chamber job a day after the election. He knows what he's up against, but is optimistic that El Dorado's many investments will pay off.
We drive by the Charles Hays Advanced Manufacturing Training Center, which was dedicated in June 2020 as part of South Arkansas Community College. The two-year college has steadily expanded its offerings to serve businesses in this former oil boomtown. The school opened in 1992 when Gov. Bill Clinton signed legislation merging the El Dorado branch of Southern Arkansas University with Oil Belt Technical College.
Oil Belt opened in 1967 just east of El Dorado. The SAU extension was started in 1975. A library was completed in 1996, a computer technology building was added in 2000, and a workforce development building debuted in 2002. The Hays Center covers more than 14,000 square feet with training space for advanced welding, industrial safety initiatives, rail car and tanker loading, and other programs.
The dream these days is that Standard Lithium, the Canadian company that's hoping to use south Arkansas brine to make lithium products for the battery market, will take off. Company officials recently said they're considering construction of a 35-mile pipeline from pilot plants in El Dorado to brine lands in Columbia County.
Standard Lithium has been testing its lithium extraction process for almost two years at the Lanxess chemical plant in El Dorado. A Koch Industries subsidiary has invested $100 million in Standard Lithium's project.
At dinner the previous evening in the Mystic Creek clubhouse, I asked a longtime leader in the oil and gas industry if he thought Standard Lithium's gamble would pay off.
"It has a better than even chance," he answered. "I don't think the Koch folks would be investing that kind of money unless they thought it was going to work."
Life in El Dorado changed in January 1921 when physician and oil speculator Samuel Busey completed drilling an oil well southwest of town. The so-called discovery well brought speculators from across the country. By 1923, El Dorado had 59 oil contracting companies, 12 oil distributors and refiners, and 21 oil production firms. The city grew from 3,887 residents in the 1920 census to 16,421 in 1930.
Wouldn't it be something if lithium needed for the new breed of electric vehicle batteries were to spark another boom just more than a century later?
Senior Editor Rex Nelson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He's also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.