Hidden Creek Nature Sanctuary & Constitution Trail

Posted on May 6, 2024 by admin

Late yesterday afternoon, while Ann was saying goodbye to friends, we had a few hours to spend in Normal. Before long we were walking the short trails of Hidden Creek Nature Sanctuary, which is part of the local park district.

At about five and a half acres, the park isn’t large, but it is lush here in rising spring. Some of it is a standard park setting.

With the sort of small memorials you sometimes find in parks.

“Squirrel whisperer”? That’s a new one on me, but of course the idea’s been kicking around a while. Such as a mention in this 2014 report about tame squirrels at Penn State and the student that interacted with them, who was called “a squirrel whisperer” and who posted their pictures.

Update: Dozens of squirrels were arrested a protests at Penn State last week. Tame, my foot.

Elsewhere undergrowth luxuriates on ether side of unpaved paths — and a bridge.

A crick runs through the spring greens.

The hand of man is never very far away. Young man, I suspect.

Constitution Trail runs next to the sanctuary, pointing both north and south. Go south, and you come to Illinois State’s campus. Go north, and you walk behind Bloomington residences, some single-family with large yards, some townhouses clearly built to take advantage of the trail as an amenity.

We went north about a half-mile, then back. We could have gone on past I-55 via an underpass, and on to the edge of town, but we didn’t go nearly that far. It’s part of a network of trails in Bloomington-Normal, and beyond, and not especially new. The dedication of the trail was on the 200th anniversary of the adoption of the U.S. Constitution in 1987.

Another branch follows the former U.S. 66 as it traverses McLean County. I’ve trodden the trail at Tawanda (a little).

The branch we walked was obviously a former railroad line, or so I thought. I was right: an Illinois Central Gulf RR line, abandoned about 40 years ago. One railroad that merged to create that company was the famed Illinois Central, the line represented in the mid-1800s in some cases by a certain well-known railroad lawyer for Springfield.

Standard Oil Gas Station, Odell

Posted on May 5, 2024 by admin

One place to stop between greater Chicago and Normal, Illinois, is the town of Odell. I bet not too many people do, but those that do come for a look at the former Standard Oil gas station that once served motorists on the former U.S. 66.

That’s what we did today. The main purpose of the drive was to fetch Ann and some of her belongings from Normal, where she has completed her junior year. I figured a few minutes in Odell (pop. 1,000) — which is between Dwight and Pontiac — wouldn’t be wasted. The gas station counts as a link in the tourist chain that is Route 66, though still fairly obscure even in the grand scheme of that creation. So much the better.

“In 1932, a contractor, Patrick O’Donnell, purchased a small parcel of land along Route 66 in Odell, Illinois,” the NPS says. “There he built a gas station based on a 1916 Standard Oil of Ohio design, commonly known as a domestic style gas station. This ‘house with canopy’ style of gas station gave customers a comfortable feeling they could associate with home.” (And not Big Oil.)

Later other brands of gas were sold there, and eventually – after U.S. 66 was no more – the building became an auto repair shop and then abandoned. A typical arc for such businesses, in other words. The village of Odell acquired the station around the turn of the 21st century to make it into a tourist attraction. We were duly attracted.

More of a stabilization than a restoration, looks like, at least inside the former garage space, with odds and ends here and there, and souvenirs for sale.

The gas station is one thing, but I couldn’t leave town without taking a look at the Odell water tower.

Started as a town along a railroad, as so many others did, and named after a shadowy figure named William Odell, one of the original owners of the land in the 1850s. Apparently he didn’t stay long, selling his interest but leaving his name.

Arkansas 7, Up To & Including the Hidden Ruins of Dogpatch USA

Posted on May 2, 2024 by admin

We bought some roses to plant the other day and they turned out to be produced in Tyler, Texas. They were found at a major retailer here in Illinois, so that means the Tyler rose industry isn’t completely gone. I already knew that from reading about it, but it was good to see the fact confirmed in the form of stems and thorns.

My idea of a good driving road.

Everything you need – hills, greenery, occasional small towns and roadside views, a winding aspect – and nothing you don’t – much traffic, especially large trucks.

I created the images when I wasn’t driving, of course, but at a wayside stop along Arkansas 7, a mostly two-lane highway crossing north-south through the state that’s scenic most of the way, and in fact an Arkansas Scenic Byway. We picked up the road where it meets I-30 at Caddo Valley on April 14, and took it into Hot Springs. The next day, we headed north along the road, through the Ouachitas and the Ozarks, parts of which are designated Ouachita National Forest and Ozark-St. Francis National Forest.

North of Russellville, which was the only place with much traffic, the lush scenery kicks into an expansive high gear. The old saw is that you can’t eat scenery, and while that’s literally true, the underlying notion that scenery is a worthless frill strikes me as an affront to one of life’s better pleasures. At least for those of us fortunate enough to live above subsistence poverty.

South of the small town of Jasper is a feature called the “Arkansas Grand Canyon.” Called that by the scattering of businesses along the way who would like you to stop, anyway. Geographically, it’s the Buffalo River Canyon. Grand, maybe not, but impressive. Met my periodical quota for vistas.

Passersby left their mark. Maybe in some future time, it’ll be considered historic and thus protected.

Another roadside perch. I wasn’t sure if this counted as the “Grand Canyon,” but it hardly mattered. Scenery to flavor the drive.

Arkansas in the breeze.

We stopped at the Ozark Cafe in Jasper (pop. 547) for a latish lunch. Decent grub and idiosyncratic decor, including mountain musicians outside and a wall nearly full with characters from Li’l Abner inside. That comic never did much for me, but it’s always good to see local color.

The cafe is across the street (still Arkansas 7) from the Newton County Courthouse. Another solid legacy of the WPA.

Up the road a piece from Jasper is a site that Google Maps calls Dogpatch to this day. Intrigued, I looked into it, finding that Dogpatch USA, a Li’l Abner theme park, used to be there. It operated longer than I would have thought, from 1968 to 1993. This is all you can see of it now, from Arkansas 7.

“Dogpatch USA is a classic American roadside attraction,” wrote one Rodger Brown, who visited during the park’s last summer in ’93.

“It’s a basket of cornpone and hillbilly hokum in a beautiful Ozark mountain setting. Nearby is a waterfall, limestone caverns, and a spring that flows clear and steadily into a creek that has powered a gristmill for more than 150 years. There are rides and gift shops, and at the heart of the park is a trout farm where visitors can catch and cook rainbow trout, ‘the gamest of all inland fish.’ The decor is bumpkin kitsch. The faux-illiterate signs along Dogpatch’s macadam footpaths read like a Po’ Folks menu: ‘Onbelievablee delishus Fish Vittles Kooked fo’ Sail.’

“Dogpatch opened in 1968, but its history, in a generous sense, begins about a hundred years earlier…. in 1900, the word ‘hillbilly’ first appeared in print, toting on its wiry back a croker sack full of iconography — squirrel rifles, corn cob pipes, floppy felt hats, feuds, a degraded language, and depraved life… Out of this crashing surf where industry and the marketplace met the mountains, Li’l Abner was born.

“Li’l Abner was the first comic strip to star mountaineers as main characters, but [creator Al] Capp’s hillbilly compote was certainly not unique. His versions of hillbillies were consolidated forms drawn from a widespread tradition of mountaineer caricatures: there’s the voluptuous rag-clad ‘tater sack sexkitten; the grizzled corn-cob pipe smoking visionary crone matriarch; the lay-about ineffectual pappy; and the clodhopping oblivious proto-Jethro Li’l Abner, the all-American country boy — part Alvin York and Abe Lincoln, a little Sambo in whiteface, and Paul Bunyan with a drawl.

“Li’l Abner first appeared in 1934, two years after the publication of Erskine Caldwell’s Tobacco Road, and within a few years the cartoon was a contender with Dick Tracy, Blondie and Little Orphan Annie as America’s number-one comic strip.”

Dogpatch USA isn’t a welcoming place these days, and it’s impossible to see the ruins without trespassing.

Those signs say construction, but there was no visible evidence of any such thing. The place needs to be stabilized for some ruin tourism, I reckon. I’d pay (a little) to see what’s left of the bumpkin kitsch and faux-illiterate signs.

Hollywood Cemetery, Hot Springs

Posted on May 1, 2024 by admin

This morning, about 30 minutes into May, I was in bed but not asleep yet, with the bedroom window open a bit, since it was warm enough to make that comfortable. I remembered that I hadn’t checked any weather forecast for May 1, and wondered whether it was going to rain overnight or during the day.

Almost immediately – really, within seconds – I heard rain falling. Light, but definitely rain. It lasted a few minutes. The only reasonable conclusion from such an event is that I’ve learned how to make it rain with my mind. I hope I use my power wisely.

Fairly early on the morning of April 15, I made a doughnut run in Hot Springs, Arkansas, seeking out a Shipley Do-Nuts store. I associate that chain and its wonderful doughnuts (cream filled, especially) with Texas, but Shipley is in other, mostly Southern states. There happen to be two locations in Hot Springs.

It couldn’t just be a doughnut run, though. On the way I stopped at Hollywood Cemetery, said to the Hot Spring’s oldest cemetery, though a precise founding date seems to be lost to time. The oldest stone is reportedly from 1856.

The cemetery is on a large, wooded hill.

Many – most – of its stones are aged and unkempt. It’s that kind of cemetery. Aesthetic decay. Not only do the dead return to the earth, but so do their memorials.

Hollywood is quite large for a small town cemetery, and since important doughnut matters called, I didn’t explore that much of it, such as the Confederate section that’s on the National Register of Historic Places. Still, one large memorial stood out, at least in the part of the cemetery I visited. Davies, it said. Cornelia A. Davies, who died at 28 in 1884.

Looks like that statue has a bit of a lean. Was it that way originally, or does it have a tumble to take in the near future? Otherwise the memorial is in good shape.

A young mother, I assume. Jesus comforts her children, perhaps.

If this isn’t a Victorian sentiment, I don’t what would be.

The entirety of such a cemetery is a momento mori. You’d think any cemetery would be that, but not always.

It isn’t written anywhere, as famously it is in Rome, but feeling is in the air at such a place as Hot Springs’ Hollywood: “What you are now, we once were; what we are now, you shall be.”

Hot Springs National Park ’24

Posted on April 30, 2024 by admin

We arrived at Quapaw Baths in Hot Springs National Park on April 14 in time for a late-afternoon soak.

Or rather, a series of soaks in its indoor pools, which are heated at various temperatures. I might have skipped it, but Yuriko is keen on hot soaks, having come of age in Japan, where they take their hot springs seriously. The bathhouse has been well well restored, considering its former decrepitude.

Good to see Bathhouse Row again after so many years. All together, eight bathhouse structures line Central Avenue in the town of Hot Springs, and are part of the national park; two offer baths. In 2007, because the Quapaw was still unrestored, only one did, so we took the waters at the Buckstaff, which was a more formalized experience than at the Quapaw.

The Lamar.

“[The Lamar] opened on April 16, 1923 replacing a wooden Victorian structure named in honor of the former U. S. Supreme Court Justice Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar,” says the NPS, a fact that amuses me greatly, for idiosyncratic reasons. Mostly it’s NPS offices and other space these days, but I bought some postcards and a refrigerator magnet in its NP gift shop.

The Maurice.

And of course, The Fordyce, now the park’s visitors center and a free museum highlighting its bathhouse amenities. Named for its founder, Samuel Fordyce, one of those roaringly successful business men that the late 19th century unleashed.

“He was a major force behind the transformation of Hot Springs (Garland County) from a small village to major health resort,” the Encyclopedia of Arkansas says. “The town of Fordyce (Dallas County) is named for him, as is the Fordyce Bath House in Hot Springs.

“He enjoyed friendships with Presidents Rutherford B. Hayes, Benjamin Harrison, and William McKinley, all of whom asked his advice on matters concerning appointments and regional issues.” Ah, there’s the trip’s presidential site, however tenuous.

As for the building, it was “designed by Little Rock architects Mann and Stern and constructed under the supervision of owner Sam Fordyce’s son John, [and] the building eventually cost over $212,000 to build, equip, and furnish.” That’s 212 grand in fat 1910s dollars, or $6.5 million in present value.

I believe I took somewhat better pictures this time around. Maybe.

Directly over Hernando de Soto and the maiden is the Fordyce’s famed stained glass aquatic-fantasy skylight.

Not the only stained glass around.

The Fordyce is an expansive place, and in fact, the largest of the bathhouses, according to the NPS.

Mustn’t forget the spring that made it all possible, whose presence is noted in the basement.

Bathhouse Row is at the base of a steep slope. Climb some outdoor stairs and soon you’re at the Hot Springs Grand Promenade behind and above the row. Not many people were out promenading. True, by the time we got there, it was the morning of April 15, a Monday. Still, people were missing out on one pleasant walk.

The bricked trail was an early project (1933) of the lesser-known but no less remarkable Public Works Administration.

“Unlike the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration, the PWA was not devoted to the direct hiring of the unemployed,” the Living New Deal says. “Instead, it administered loans and grants to state and local governments, which then hired private contractors to do the work.

“Some prominent PWA-funded projects are New York’s Triborough Bridge, Grand Coulee Dam, the San Francisco Mint, Reagan National Airport (formerly Washington National), and Key West’s Overseas Highway.”

Further up the hill is the abandoned Army Navy Hospital, whose therapeutic heyday was WWII.

The promenade passes by some of Hot Springs’ hot springs.

The path also offers views of the back of some of the bathhouses, including the wonderful Quapaw dome.

The crowning bit (literally) on a marvelous piece of work.

Shreveport Stopover

Posted on April 29, 2024 by admin

Back when I collected Texas highway maps, the presence of Shreveport – not in Texas, but close enough that it was depicted on those maps – made me wonder, why is there a city there? How could it be a port so far inland? Why don’t you ever hear much about it?

Those answers weren’t easy to look up in those days. Years passed, and I passed through Shreveport on I-20 a number of times, but never stopped. This time, approaching from the south on U.S. 171, I decided that we would, even if only for a short visit. Some things considered, short might be best.

I looked into the origin of the city. The generally forgotten but incredibly remarkable Henry Miller Shreve, though not the founder himself, made the town possible. “A giant among America’s rivermen,” says the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium in Dubuque.

“In 1826 Shreve accepted the post of Superintendent of Western River Improvements. He began by designing a double-hulled boat with steam power operating a windlass to yank snags from the river. The first snag boat, the Heliopolis, was an immediate success, and in 1832, Shreve was ordered by the Secretary of War to clear the ‘Great Raft’ of rotten logs, trees, and debris estimated to be 150 miles long, out of the Red River. Shreve had to battle short funds but by 1839 the Red was clear and Shreve’s fame was insured.”

As it happened, the future site of Shreveport was where the the Texas Trail, a route into Texas, met the now-navigable Red River. The Shreve Town Co. founded Shreve Town in 1836.

Sunday, April 14, proved to be quite warm in Shreveport. Downtown was almost empty, and I have to wonder whether there’s much more activity on a weekday. At some point in the city’s recent history, Shreveport and Bossier City decided that casinos would be just the thing to juice up the downtown economy, or at least draw Texans to its gaming destinations.

Besides Sam’s, nearby casinos include Bally’s, Margaritaville Resort Casino, Horseshoe Bossier City (Caesars) and Boomtown Casino Hotel. There’s also a spot of adult entertainment in the neighborhood.

I didn’t know Mr. Flynt was still around. He isn’t, having died a few years ago. But the brand clearly lives on.

One of the bridges crossing the Red at Shreveport carries Texas Street.

The underpass, near the riverfront, is a pleasant place to stroll. Not a bad example of placemaking. A number of restaurants and bars line the way, which is part of what the city calls the Red River District. Artwork graces the district, such as this mosaic. Shreveport does have an extensive musical history, including Elvis singing about doughnuts.

The bridge columns aren’t unadorned either.

Formally the underpass is called Louisiana Purchase Plaza, though I wonder whether anyone calls it that. In any case, Downtown Shreveport says that the work on the columns “focuses on the distinct cultures that helped to define Northwest Louisiana — African American, Indian, French, Spanish and Cajun; the three contributing artists for the columns came from Baton Rouge, New Orleans and Shreveport.”

Footprints also mark the walkway. I assume these are impressions made by famed – Sheveportians? Shreveportoids? Shreveporters, Wiki asserts.

I didn’t recognize any of them. Jim McCullough Jr. (d. 2012) must be this fellow. Kix Brooks is still with us.

We had lunch – leftover pizza that had been warming in its box in the back seat that morning – at the riverfront, within sight of the Red and Bossier City across the way, and a railroad bridge.

And near bronze pelicans.

Of course there are pelicans. Shreveport might be close to Texas, but it’s certainly Louisiana.

Center, Texas & Logansport, Louisiana

Posted on April 28, 2024 by admin

The town of Center, Texas is in East Texas, while the town of West, Texas is in Central Texas. Just a mild example of Texas naming oddities. This is the state with Cut and Shoot, Dime Box and Jot-Em-Down, after all.

We spent the night in Center (pop. 5,200) and the next morning, April 14, took a look around the Shelby County Courthouse, which also happens to the focus of downtown Center.

It’s a less common style for courthouses, Romanesque Revival, at least in my experience. Impressive brickwork. The story of one John Joseph Emmett Gibson is given in a Texas Historical Commission sign on the site. Originally a brickmaker from Ireland, Gibson ultimately made his way to Texas, in time to design and oversee construction of the courthouse in the 1880s, showing off his skill with bricks.

Older than the courthouse is the nearby former jail. These days home to the local C-of-C.

An assortment of buildings line the square. Mostly occupied. That includes the art deco Rio, open since 1926 as a movie theater, without having been closed or put to any other use since then, which is remarkable in itself.

Not a retro theater, either, but one showing new movies. Such as Unsung Hero and The Fall Guy, coming soon.

“Unsung Hero is a 2024 American Christian drama film directed by Richard Ramsey and Joel Smallbone. The film follows Rebecca, Joel, and Luke Smallbone of For King & Country, and their life journey to become Christian recording artists.”

“The Fall Guy is a 2024 American action comedy film directed by David Leitch and written by Drew Pearce, loosely based on the 1980s TV series about stunt performers. The film follows a stuntman working on his ex-girlfriend’s directorial debut action film, only to find himself involved in a conspiracy surrounding the film’s lead actor.”

I’d never heard of either of them, but now I have. 1980s TV series about stunt performers? That didn’t ring a bell either. So that’s what Glen A. Larson did after the implosion of the original Battlestar Galactica, and Lee Majors did after the Six Million Dollar Man was retired for lack of replacement parts.

How did I miss that? Right, I didn’t have a television in the ’80s.

More buildings on the square.

One that’s small but stately. Farmers of Shelby County, it says, your money is safe here.

It was. Farmers is still an ongoing operation, nearly 120 years after its founding. The bank still occupies the building, and has other locations in East Texas.

Not every building on the square is occupied.

Not every building is even a building any more, but clues remain.

That didn’t take long to look up. Site of a dry goods store for much of the 20th century.

Shelby County partly borders De Soto Parish, Louisiana. That morning, we headed for the border, driving on Texas 7 and then U.S. 84 until we got to a town without any sign noting its name (or maybe we missed it), crossing a river without any identification either. I remembered I wanted to mail a few postcards when I saw a sign pointing the way to a post office. When we got to the p.o., I saw that we were in Logansport, Louisiana. We’d crossed the Sabine River, but as noted, there was nothing to tell us that.

Missed the former international boundary marker, too. I didn’t read about it until later. It’s a few miles out of Logansport (pop. 1,300), and once (and briefly) marked the border between the Republic of Texas and the United States.

No matter. Took a look around Logansport.

Here’s the name we missed. Not on the road we came in on.

Main Street.

Seen in a shop window in Main Street. Do they celebrate Mardi Gras in Logansport?

Yes they do, in the form of a parade put on my an outfit called the Krewe of Aquarius.

We spent some time in a resale store on the main street, Swamp Water Flea Market. I spotted something I don’t think I’ve ever seen at a resale shop.

Yours for $150, an antique leg iron. Not sure I’d want to have it around. Seems like a haunted artifact that might land you in an episode of The Twilight Zone.

Have You Ever Been to Nacogdoches?

Posted on April 25, 2024 by admin

When planning our most recent trip, devising its dumbbell structure of three days on the road, five in place, and four more on the road, it occurred to me that with a little southward jiggering from Dallas, we could visit Nacogdoches, Texas, one of the oldest towns in the state, rife with history: home to prehistoric Indian activity and the establishment of a Spanish mission in the 18th century, base of filibusters and other rebellions in the early 19th, mentioned famously in a late John Wayne movie, and much more.

All that would have been a reason to come, but mainly I wanted to visit my old friend Kirk, resident of the town for nearly 40 years. We hung out mostly in high school, but had known each other as far back as elementary school, ca. 1970.

In exchanging text messages ahead of the visit, we couldn’t remember the last time we’d seen each other, but finally decided, once Yuriko and I met Kirk and his wife Lisa at their home for lunch on April 13, that it was probably in April 1986 at the wedding of a mutual friend of ours in Austin.

That’s a long time. We had a good visit, a good reconnect – I find it good to reconnect – spending most of the afternoon with them, hearing about life in Nacogdoches, his medical practice there, their raising six children, all grown.

Later in the day, Yuriko and I spent a little time in downtown Nacogdoches, which offers a more sizable square than most towns, even in Texas, handsome on the whole, with a scattering of specialty retail in the area, but mostly still professional services, city government offices and other utilitarian activities.

Mural detail a block from the square, facing a parking lot.

We arrived during the 12th annual Nacogdoches Wine Swirl, just by raw chance. I’d never heard of a “wine swirl.” The brick streets around what I took to be the courthouse were closed to cars. People clustered here and there and lined up for wine.

The square doesn’t surround a courthouse, but rather a former federal building, now the Charles Bright Visitors Center. Nearby is “The Gateway,” depicting doughty American pioneers traveling the Old San Antonio Road into Texas, a fairly recent work (2013) of Michael Boyett.

“The ticketed wine event will showcase Texas wineries and local and regional food trucks and shopping vendors along the historic brick streets,” Visit Nacogdoches says regarding the event. More marketing at work, with the goal of furthering Nacogdoches as a day-trip town.

That Texas has wineries is not news. I went with Jay to visit one of the earlier ones in the Hill Country in the mid-70s. But did Central Texas wine makers come all the way to Nacogdoches to sell their wares? Further investigation tells me there’s an established wine-growing biz in East Texas.

“But, what if I were to tell you that East Texas has over 30 wineries and vineyards just waiting to be explored?!” Totally Texas Travel breathlessly says. Even if that isn’t the precise number, I’ll take even a paid travel site as a reasonable source the existence of wineries here.

Moreover, there’s a marketing invention called the Piney Woods Wine Trail.

The Piney Woods Wine Trail? In East Texas? That goes against stereotype, and I won’t have it. They make (and drink) either beer (domestic beer, closer to Texas-made the better) or hard liquor, the closer to homemade the better. That’s what I get for traveling into East Texas, a busted stereotype.

Tyler Rose Garden

Posted on April 24, 2024 by admin

The cliché is to stop and smell the roses, lest you pass your life in drab unappreciation of the delights easily available to you during your short lifespan. It expresses a worthwhile sentiment, almost always meant metaphorically.

At Tyler Rose Garden in Tyler, Texas, smelling the roses is literal. It’s the largest rose garden I’ve ever seen — and according to some sources, the largest such garden in the United States — with some 38,000 bushes representing 600 cultivars on 14 acres.

We arrived late in the warm morning of April 13, the day we left Dallas, on our way to visit an old friend of mine in Nacogdoches, Texas, as well as to (partly) rectify how little time I’ve spent in East Texas, a serious lacuna in my travels. Tyler is just south of I-20 east of Dallas, but not quite on that highway. We headed south on U.S. 69 from I-20 to get there.

Why a rose garden? Turns out Smith County, of which Tyler is the seat, was once the hub of U.S. rose production.

“Large-scale commercial production started in the early 1900s, and in 1917 the first train carload was shipped,” the always informative Texas State Historical Association says. “Droughts, freezes, and disease had destroyed the area’s peach orchards, so the nurserymen were forced to turn to something else. The climate and sandy loams of Smith, Van Zandt, Gregg, Cherokee, Harrison, and Upshur counties proved excellent for this type of horticulture, and large-scale commercial rose growing centered there.”

By the end of the 20th century, domestic and foreign competition had eaten into Texas’ market share for roses, but they are still grown in the area.

The day we came to Tyler was warm and clear, just right for a stroll among the roses of a free municipal garden.

And take time to look closely at – and of course – smell the roses. Watch out for bees, though.

It isn’t all roses.

“Let’s spell out Tyler in big metal letters, but leave out the Y.”

“Why?”

“Right, Y.”

But why?”

“Yes, Y.”

“Huh?”

And so on. A clever idea, whoever thought it.

Pea Ridge National Military Park

Posted on April 23, 2024 by admin

I’ve been told that I visited Pea Ridge National Military Park when I was small, four or five years old, during my family’s short vacation in the Ozarks in the mid-60s. Went to Branson, Mo., on that trip as well, when it was merely a minor lake resort and not Las Vegas designed by Ned Flanders.

I don’t remember any of that. I have wisps of other memories, which would be my very first travel memories, but I’m not sure how reliable they are. Maybe that was the trip when billboards for a place called Villa Capri Motel gave my brother Jim giggle fits, because he insisted that it was pronounced “Villa Crap-Eye,” or when he was similarly amused by Skelly gas stations, which became “Skeleton” gas stations, but I’m not sure.

I do remember visiting the future Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas, which would have been a private tourist attraction in those days. The allure of diamonds got through even to a small child (good work, De Beers), but of course we didn’t find any, and the only impression I have now is that it was a hot, dusty, boring field.

When we arrived at Pea Ridge on April 7 around lunchtime, I was essentially seeing it with new eyes. So was Yuriko, who’d never heard it. No surprise, since it isn’t one of the more famed Civil War battles. I expect many Americans, maybe most, haven’t heard of it either. Not necessarily a big deal. Go through a list like this and be impressed by just how many battles there were.

A one-way road circles the 4,300 acres of the battlefield, with signs to explain what happened where in March ’62. About 27,000 men on both sides clashed there, including some hundreds of Cherokee and other Indian cavalry fighting for the Confederacy, or rather, against the United States. They were fully acknowledged as part of the fighting force at the small museum at the visitors center, though perhaps not with as much detail as this article.

Unlike other, more famed battlefields – such as Vicksburg – the place isn’t chockablock with memorials or statues or the like. There are some cannons and restored fences, however.

The view from the East Overlook. The battlefield, I’ve read, is one of the better preserved ones, probably because growth has only come recently to this corner of Arkansas.

Elkhorn Tavern, which was once on the Telegraph Road, a thoroughfare name I find particularly evocative.

Much fighting took place nearby, and the building was pressed into service as a field hospital for a time. First it was captured by Union forces, then Confederates on the first day of the battle. Union forces took it back on the decisive second day, as the battle went their way.

“The Federals used the tavern as a military telegraph station until Confederate guerrillas burned it in 1863,” the NPS says. “The present building is a reconstruction.” Including, if you look closely, an animal skull on the roof — an elk, no doubt.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling