Place-based Poetry

02
Apr
2024

Crater of Diamonds (52 Parks : 52 Poems)

Date of Visit: 16 March 2024

Murfreesboro, AR

65º by noon, foggy morning to clear skies

Park 24, Crater of Diamonds, pops up in local news from time to time. The park draws people from all over the world as it offers one of the only public-access areas for surface-level diamond mining. In fact, in January, Julien Navas of France came to Arkansas and found a 7.46 carat diamond! Of course, this park ranked at the top of my most anticipated list. Having heard about these kinds of finds for years in the media, I hit the road, ready to capture a headline myself. I brought my trusty hiking hat and buckets of sunscreen for skin protection, my rubber garden boots to slog through the muddy field (it had rained a few days earlier), and forgot my gloves for wet sluicing. Luckily, Murfreesboro Hardware provided a great selection and was right on the way to the park.

I chose to visit the park on the first Saturday of Spring Break because park interpreters offered some extra programming, one being a “daybreak” tour of the field. I arrived at 7:45am (doors open at 8:00), and walked in about 10th in line to pay my $15 for the chance to find a sparkly. The line for entrance was at least 30 people deep by 8:00, with tons of families, and continued in that vein all morning (pun intended!). Winding down to the equipment rental station, I paid $15 to rent my “Basic Diamond Hunting Kit”: an army shovel, screen set, and 3.5-gallon bucket. Then, I turned to observe “the field,” 37.5 acres of volcanic spew and churned up crust. The “spew” contains ash as well as the diamonds and semi-precious stones like amethyst (go to Canary Hill to find these), agate, jasper, quartz, and calcite to name a few. Of course, there is plenty of mud, sand, and gravel to sift through in search of the gems brought up from the deep. This picture is “first of the day.” The photos I took later show several hundred people (about 50% kids) ranged all around the rows plowed by park staff, doing their best to claim a find.

On my tour, I learned that the average diamond found in the park is 1/4 carat or less, roughly the size of a match head. The park interpreter showed us examples of these finds in the three colors of diamonds produced by this eruption: white, yellow, and brown. Being on this journey to get to know Arkansas via the parks, I found the history of this one just as fascinating as the rest.

Apparently, people had always pointed out the strange ground and how its little stones glittered. Rumor of diamonds abounded until the early 20th century when a pig farmer who owned some of the land finally tried to bank some diamonds. The stones didn’t quite look right, so the bankers sent them to Tiffany’s in NYC, where they were confirmed to be diamonds, just of a different sort than those produced by the geologic forces in South Africa and elsewhere. Arkansas diamonds took an unusual ride to the surface. Instead of getting here all in one shot, the volcano had to erupt twice, many, many years apart. So the diamonds actually melted! Arkansas diamonds are smooth and round. The interpreter told us to look for shiny marbles. Who knew diamonds could melt? While unusual, the larger diamonds can be cut for gemstones. Fortunately for us, there aren’t enough of them to make the mine commercially viable, although folx tried from the 20s to the 50s. Then, one person bought the whole property and opened a pay-as-you-go, amateur experience, just like what the State Parks operate today. They acquired the land in 1972 and simply continued the system.

Later, after scooping up gravel and mud and hauling it in my bucket, I stood at the sluicing station. A fellow sluicer, who had done much more research than me, let me know that the field only gives up 2 diamonds per day on average, again all quite small. I laughed and admitted I was in it for the experience more than anything else. The range of people, their experience and their expectations, ended up as my biggest takeaway of the day. There were folx who hauled in professional looking rigs of equipment (no motorized anything allowed), hobbyists who shared their knowledge with anyone who wanted to listen, and a whole ton of kids shouting “I found one! I found one!”

Best thing to keep in mind: summer brings massive heat, heat, heat, and there’s no shade on the field. This park makes an excellent winter visit. And my results? Drumroll…no diamonds. Park staff identify finds for free at a sorting table, and I did find jasper, clacite, agate, and volcanic ash (along with tons of small bits of sandstone alas). Granted, going alone makes it a bit extra hard work. Next time, I’ll take a pal to help with the hauling of dirt.

Next up: Millwood

Posted by Sandy Longhorn
21
Mar
2024

Historic Washington (52 Parks : 52 Poems)

Date of Visit: 15 March 2024

Washington, AR

67º light drizzle to cloudy skies

Park 23: Historic Washington offered yet another unique way to think about the definition of a state park. 47 buildings, from homes to businesses to government offices, comprise this park within the town of Washington itself. Most of the buildings have been recreated but several are original, including the Hempstead County Courthouse (1836 – 1874), which served as the Confederate Capital of Arkansas after Union soldiers took Little Rock in 1863. The focus here is on 19th century life in south Arkansas; however, very little of the park mentions slavery, a fact that troubled me greatly. Park information includes phrases like, “The area’s wealth came from cotton and other agricultural products” but says nothing of the people forced into labor to produce this wealth. The displays then highlight the formation of a Freedmen’s Bureau, established after the war ended to aid newly freed African Americans, as well as an academy and seminary for African American students. I understand living in a state with a difficult history, but I think omitting the hard details does us all an injustice.

That being said, I chose the weekend of the 15th to visit the park for the annual jonquil festival. Sadly, due to our early spring, nearly all of the jonquils were past their prime and the rain from earlier in the day knocked many of them sideways. I did catch a glimpse of the beauties pictured here on a sheltered street corner while I wandered.

Because it was festival weekend, volunteers in historic dress staffed many of the buildings and offered tidbits about life in a 19th century town. My favorite stop was the Print Shop, which features a large display of printing presses from hand operated to electronic behemoths. I even got to pull a commemorative jonquil festival print to take home! While there, I learned about the formation of the Washington Telegraph in 1840. The interpreter told me that once a place had a newspaper, it reached the status of an established town and was no longer considered on the “frontier.” He also showed me 8 pt font metal type and a sample of a paper printed in the same. Wow. They packed those lines tightly to get the most use out of every inch of paper. With my poor eyesight, I’m not sure I’d have been able to read the news for very long, especially given I’d have been reading it by whale oil lamplight!

Another fascinating discovery: when most Easterners got to south Arkansas, they were used to building their houses out of hardwoods. South Arkansas provided mostly soft pine. Wanting their interior woodwork to look the same as “back home,” they used rubber patterned rollers to paint their doors and sills. They also painted pillars with faux marble finishes. I believe this was a trend nationwide but the painting of pine to look like oak and maple still fascinated me. At the Crouch House, settlement and the building of the town take center stage. Displays about the forest Euro-Americans found here (and decimated) as well as about construction techniques and tools line the walls. Given my family’s history with construction, I lingered quite awhile. Later, at The Sanders House & Farmstead (original buildings), I saw elaborate, colorful wallpaper recreated from fragments found when park staff stripped down the walls during renovation to restore the building to its original form. Fun note: the ceilings there are 14′ high because Sanders competed with another local man and had to outdo him. I don’t envy anyone having to wallpaper that much space!

I capped off my visit at the Hempstead County Courthouse. Taking my time to get there, I knew the history was difficult. Again, the interpreter there glossed over the Civil War and focused instead on the building itself as historic artifact and talked about how the early legal system worked, given how many miles separated each town and how long travel took pre-automobile.

Stepping back outside for some air, I discovered and fell in love with this giant catalpa tree. Known as the “Mail Carrier Smith Southern Catalpa,” this tree is one of Arkansas’ champion trees, which recognizes the largest of each species in the state. In 1831, the story goes, a teenaged mail carrier working between Louisiana and Arkansas, grabbed some catalpa seeds along the Red River and brought them back to scatter them around the courthouse. The state estimates that this tree is one of the original grown from these seeds. Regardless of the facts, I circled this amazing creature for a long time trying to get a picture that would do it justice. I failed. However, as I studied all the nooks and crannies and stunning twists in the trunk and largest branches, I let go of trying to capture the image and just absorbed the power of something so determined to remain. Spending time with this tree ended the day on a happy note.

Next up: Crater of Diamonds

Posted by Sandy Longhorn
20
Mar
2024

Delta Heritage Trail (52 Parks : 52 Poems)

Date of Visit: 25 February 2024

Barton Visitor Center, Walnut Corner, AR

62º partly sunny, breezy

I closed out this three-park journey with Delta Heritage, a rails-to-trails project running north-south along the eastern border of Arkansas from Lexa to Arkansas City (roughly from Helena-West Helena to 14 miles south of Rohwer). Eventually, the trail will run for about 85 miles. When I visited, I walked a bit of the 21 miles now open from Lexa to Elaine. At the southern end, the trail is open from Watson to Arkansas City for 24 miles. In 1992, Union Pacific Corporation donated 73 miles of railroad, and in 2010, the state parks extended the southernmost trail by another 14 miles on the Mississippi River Mainline Levee.

On arrival at the Barton entrance, the visitor center, a converted cotton gin, offers some history of the railroad and some info on local wildlife. Lucky to visit on a very quiet day, I got a tour of the behind-the-scenes rooms so I could take in the enormity of the gin from the inside. In terms of accessibility, this trail gets a huge thumbs up. With a need to accommodate walkers, runners, and bicyclists, the wide trail of compacted gravel made for an easy stretch of the legs. While I didn’t choose to bike on my visit, wanting to do so makes adding this park to my “must return to” list a no-brainer. In fact, I’m even more curious now about the southern portion that runs along the levee.

Because the park is all about movement on the trail and I visited at midday, there wasn’t much in the way of wildlife. I enjoyed tracking a red-bellied woodpecker as I practiced with my brand new set of binoculars. Of course, an abundancy of squirrels kept me entertained, along with many LBBs and LGBs (little brown birds and little gray birds 🙂 ). However, given a slow pace and great sunshine, I stopped to photograph some blooming moss. This has come to be one of my favorite photos from all of my park adventures. For the sake of the moss, I cheered the lack of bicyclists.

Next up: Historic Washington

Posted by Sandy Longhorn
19
Mar
2024

Mississippi River (52 Parks : 52 Poems)

Date of Visit: 24-25 February 2024

Marianna, AR

57º sunny & breezy

Typing out the name of this, my 21st park, Mississippi River, makes me itchy to add “State Park” to distinguish from a visit to the river itself. As the photo shows, the park rests within the St. Francis National Forest. While my overnight trip to the park proved fun and fruitful, I was quite disappointed that it lacks a focus on and easy access to the river itself. Instead, most of the park highlights the southern tip of Crowley’s Ridge, Arkansas’ least-known and least-understood ecoregion. Even in the visitors center most of the presentation material centers on the land, beginning with the Louisiana Purchase survey. I did appreciate the chance to read more about this after having been to Louisiana Purchase State Park earlier in the day.

Per my usual routine, I started the visit at the welcome center and took in all of the informational displays. I stood for a long time in front of the box (maybe 18″ x 18″) with the chains shown in the picture here. Having visited the headwater swamp where the survey began, I imagined men working these lengths into straight lines in cardinal directions, marking out the land one slow, trudging, bushwhacking, malaria-suffering mile at a time. Stunning.

In the visitor center, a cut-away diagram of Crowley’s Ridge rising up out of the delta also dazzled me. Fun fact: the ridge is not an uplift formation. Instead, much like the Ozark Mountains in the northwest, the ridge is the product of erosion created by wind, rain, and eventually rivers. In fact, the St. Francis River forms the eastern border border and the L’Anguille River the west.

For this trip, I lucked out and a good friend accompanied me. We gave the camper cabins at the park a double thumbs up, and we found the Bear Creek Loop Trail fascinating. The trail provides a chance to learn to identify at least a dozen trees native to Arkansas, as placards in front of key species offer information on height, leaves, flowers, and bark. My friend is a master naturalist and general fan of all things nature. To my delight she caught this wee cricket frog so we could take a closer look before letting it get back to doing whatever it is that little frogs do. We saw deer and raccoon tracks, caught prairie trillium coming up out of the ground, checked out the stiff bristle fern growing on tree trunks, and at the very end of our hike, thought a bear or a very large person must be hiking off trail based on the sound of the disturbance in the leaf litter down below us. Turns out it was an armadillo scrambling around. A lot of noise for such a pint-sized creature.

The next morning, our luck ran out. We headed out from the cabin by car, determined to find the confluence of the St. Francis and Mississippi Rivers. After all, the title of the park promised as much, and I could see a little road marked on the map. Alas, we made it to within 500 yards (so said my GPS), when flooding forced us to turn back. Here’s a picture of the dry road that we took out of the park, windows down to catch the birdsong and to better view the swampy surroundings. It seems that at every park I’m left saying, “I need to come back so I can … .” This one was no exception. Heads up, confluence, I’ll be back next year (after I’ve managed to visit all 52 parks once) to check you out.

Next up: Delta Heritage Trail

Posted by Sandy Longhorn
09
Mar
2024

Louisiana Purchase (52 Parks : 52 Poems)

Date of Visit: 24 February 2024

Hwy 49 south of Blackton, 34.645540, -91.053230

54º windy

People ask about my favorite parks. Even before I visited, I knew Louisiana Purchase State Park would rank in my top 3, and it did not disappoint. Years ago, when reading about township and range lines and how Iowa got parceled out in such neat squares, I learned that while President Jefferson sealed the deal to acquire the land west of the Mississippi, President James Madison, about a dozen years later in 1815, actually ordered the official survey. Madison sent men west to establish the Initial Point as anchor for all future land parcels. These men marked the point 26 miles west of the Mississippi River, north of the confluence of the Arkansas and Mississippi Rivers. From this point, the men used rods and chains to divvy up the land the US government needed to pay veterans of the War of 1812. Today, a monument stone rests in a gorgeous headwater swamp to mark this point.

I found it incredibly difficult to capture the park in photographs, so I encourage you to use the link above to access the park website to get a better sense of this amazing place. The park covers 37.5 acres of mostly swamp over 3 counties, but a spacious, 950-foot boardwalk with interpretive placards makes a small portion accessible by foot. Since I visited in winter, the cypress and tupelo trees showed off their towering, straight stature and flared bottoms. The flared trunks, and for the cypress their knobby knees, help keep them standing tall in water. On this trip, I learned a new geological feature: the “headwater” swamp. Common swamps are “backwater” which fluctuate greatly between flooding and drying out. Headwater swamps maintain a more static existence; they don’t super flood and they don’t dry all the way up. Shallow wetlands, you can imagine that the soil beneath is super rich. So, while there used to be many headwater swamps in the area, almost all have been drained in favor of agriculture. Thank goodness the State Parks preserved this one. The light & shadow, the mirror surface of the still water, and the wind winding through bare branches offered a bit of a haunt to the start of my day.

At the end of the boardwalk, deep in the trees, the monument stone sits as witness to an exact moment of colonization. Surrounded by the wilderness of the swamp, it didn’t slip my mind that I could be awed by the science involved as well as devastated by the damage we managed to do with that science. (Fun fact: In 2002 a new survey using electronics and lasers found that the survey of 1815 was accurate to within one inch!)

Behind the stone in this photo, you’ll see one of 4 “bearing trees” red-tagged at the cardinal directons around the Initial Point. Not pictured, a tree just to the right of here. Dead, decaying and hollowed out in vertical striations, it sang when the wind blew across it. The vibrations brought to mind an orchestra of winds, reeds, and strings. While I definitely want to return in summer to see the place alive in green, traveling in winter meant I only met three other people all together on the boardwalk, and each respected the cathedral-like specter of this untranslatable space.

Next up: Mississippi River

Posted by Sandy Longhorn
07
Mar
2024

Marks’ Mills and Jenkins Ferry Battlegrounds (52 Parks : 52 Poems)

21 February 2024

Hwy 8 & 97, Hwy 46 north of Leola (respectively)

65º partly cloudy with breezes

Even though it will mess up the math of having 52 individual posts on the blog, I’m writing about Marks’ Mills and Jenkins Ferry Battlegrounds together. First because Marks’ Mills is quite small and second because they are the continuation of the battle story started with Poison Springs Battleground of my last post. I’m already stressing about whether I will write three individual poems or if they will end up three parts of one long poem, thus screwing up my math even more. Ah, poet troubles.

Marks’ Mills occupies a thin wedge of land created by the angled intersection of Arkansas highways 8 and 97, northwest of New Edinburg. A small stand of pine trees, saved from the lumber industry that surrounds it, shelters a few picnic tables and three informational placards. Biggest surprise here: this isn’t the actual battleground; instead, the park commemorates the battle that took place roughly a half a mile away on the private land of the Marks family. Again, this battle centered around a wagon train. This time though, it was a train returning to Pine Bluff after resupplying Steele’s Union army at Camden, following the defeat at Poison Springs. Confederates captured over a thousand horses and mules, wagons, ambulances, 4 big guns, and official Union communications. Among the Union train were 300 refugee slaves trying to get north. The Confederate soldiers murdered over 100 of these people.

The placards offer directions if anyone wants to drive the byways back into the woods to visit the actual site. With this history heavy on my heart, I didn’t need to stand on the exact land to feel the weight.

After Poison Springs and Marks’ Mills, and my reading ahead of time, I knew Jenkins Ferry would be another difficult visit, although with a somewhat happier ending, if one can even say that of a battle. At this park, 37 acres of Saline River bottomlands where the river intersects highway 46 northeast of Leola, there are the requisite picnic tables and placards, but the trees turn to oaks along the shoreline, and the river offers its own marking of history. The space provided much needed room to stretch my legs and ramble along the muddy banks.

I stood where the old ferry once ran and revisited the battle. After the overwhelming losses in the previous fights, General Steele took the remains of the Union Army in Arkansas and abandoned Camden to retreat north to Little Rock. It was April, the river flooding. At the site of the ferry, Steele ordered his engineers to construct an India rubber pontoon bridge that the forces used to traverse the waters. Once across, Steele’s men scuttled the pontoons, sinking the safe passage and stranding Confederate forces on the southern side of the Saline. The area was probably much greener then, in April, but the muted February colors gave the place a haunted vibe as I walked, again, on bloodied land.

For me, the happier ending was, of course, the escape of the Union troops. Yes, I am now more Arkansan than Iowan, but I will never be able to see the Confederate side.

Turning away from war, the park rewarded me with more wilderness than the previous two provided. As I finished my tromping through old leaves and scattered trees, I looked down and caught sight of a giant paw print and a small heap of fresh scat. (I’ll spare you the picture of the scat.) While I desperately wanted this to be a bobcat, I saw the claw marks immediately and knew it could not be. Bobcats, like nearly all felines, retract their claws when they walk (because who wants dirty nails!). Once home, I celebrated when I identified the print and scat as coyote. Who knew I would come to love identifying all things wild?

Next up: Louisiana Purchase

Posted by Sandy Longhorn
04
Mar
2024

Poison Springs Battleground (52 Parks : 52 Poems)

Date of Visit: 20 February 2024

Halfway between Chidester and Camden off Hwy 24

72º sunny skies, small breezes

Poison Springs Battleground (park #17) and the two parks to follow — Marks’ Mills Battleground and Jenkins Ferry Battleground — took me back to my trip to northwest Arkansas last summer and my visit to Prairie Grove Battlefield. These sites focus on some of our most violent and vitriolic history. For this reason, I read up ahead of time and learned about the Red River Campaign and the Camden Expedition, the last major victory for the Confederacy in the Civil War. I also noted that none of these parks offer services beyond a scattering of picnic tables, some outdoor grills, and educational placards. Poison Springs does offer a small trail down toward a creek, perhaps the produce of the spring itself.

The hardest truth, among many: on this site, the First Kansas Colored Infantry Regiment fought in the battle the Union lost, and the Confederacy did not take prisoners from African American troops; they slaughtered them. And yet, the battle reminds me that no one survives a war blameless. The Union forces had been on a foraging venture, being half-starved in their Camden encampment, and by all reports, Union soldiers did not limit their theft to corn from area farms and plantations. Civilians reported the looting of household goods: silver, jewelry, and clothing, including that for women and children. This inspired the Confederates to engage the wagon train. In the end, Union forces numbered 1,134 (236 killed, 65 wounded, 125 captured) to the Confederate’s 3,335 (16 killed, 88 wounded, 10 missing). As always, I speculate about the language of the placards. 125 Union men “captured,” but 10 Confederate men “missing.” Only 16 Confederate soldier’s dead? Accurate or not, many lives ended here; none of them ended easily.

Interesting to me: I found no mention on site of the rumor about the place name. Many of my friends born and raised in Arkansas had told me the tale of Confederates putting something in the water to make Union soldiers ill. According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, “The name Poison Spring was known to Camden area residents at the time of the engagement and was used in battle reports, but its origins are uncertain. Later legends suggested that Union soldiers became ill after drinking the cold spring water, but no contemporary accounts confirm this story.” Again, history proves an imprecise science. As I walked along the trail among the trees, I remembered what a friend had texted earlier that day in response to my preparations for such a grim visit. She wrote, “The civil war is full of sadness. But today they [the grounds] are nice habitats.” Indeed. Nature takes no sides; it suffers and thrives regardless.

Next up: Marks’ Mills

Posted by Sandy Longhorn
27
Feb
2024

White Oak Lake (52 Parks : 52 Poems)

Date of Visit: 20 February 2024

Bluff City, AR

55º and glorious sun filtered through loblolly pine

Park 16, White Oak Lake took me back to my expected park experience, wandering around out in nature. While a smallish state, Arkansas contains six distinct natural divisions, and this park gave me the opportunity to explore the one I knew the least about: the west gulf coastal plain. In all my years in Arkansas, most of my travels have occurred in the northern and eastern parts of the state, leaving the south central and southwestern areas a bit of unexplored territory. Reading about the ancient ocean bed that created this plain gave me a bit of a foundation to build on. Walking on that very land opened up even more wonder and imagination.

Like most of the “lake” parks, White Oak Lake draws the majority of its visitors from those who want to fish, boat, kayak, or camp. Having left my fishing days in my youth and being a body that tends to sink if de-boated, I’m always glad to find some hiking within eyeshot of the water. This park offers three hikes of varying length, and I went with the middle range of 3 miles on the Coastal Plain Trail. The very first thing I noticed? Walking the trail felt like walking on a springy mattress. Wide without being over-groomed, a sandy soil makes up the trail bed with a covering of pine straw. Going back to that ancient ocean bed, within the park, the land is largely made of sand! In fact, the trail brochure tells me, “Most of the soils consist of 90% sand and contain only .5% organic matter.” Wow. Growing up in northeast Iowa with our dense, black loam, my brain did some gymnastics to rearrange my expectation of “soil.” Because of this sand, water runs all throughout the ground, making a somewhat limited environment for trees. Loblolly pine (or swamp pine) dominate. I did also see American holly, beech, sweetgum, and water oak, among other hardwoods I couldn’t name. Given the time of year and the time of day, I only saw squirrels, but the pine warblers were singing and singing and singing, everywhere I went. My overall note on the trails reads, “So quiet out here. So much room to think.”

After my walk (hard to call it a hike as the ground remained level and smooth for the entirety), I headed back to the visitor center to refill my water bottle and bumped into the park interpreter I’d met earlier on my arrival. She proceeded to do what park staff do, she added to my trip. She asked, “Now, do you know about the Arkansas Little Grand Canyon?” I shook my head, and she proceeded to give me a handout that contained directions. Housed just outside the park on Arkansas Game and Fish land, this geological wonder stopped me in my tracks. I may have taken an excessive number of photos here. In the picture, this looks like rock eroded by water. The erosion is correct; however, that ground is, in many places, densely compacted sand. On returning home, I discovered that I could have made my way down to the creek bed. Alas, I was hesitant to disturb anything. Perhaps on a return visit, I’ll explore the lowest elevations.

Overall, my time at White Oak Lake left a sizable impression of natural wonder.

Next up: Poison Springs Battleground

Posted by Sandy Longhorn
16
Feb
2024

Lower White River Museum

Date of Visit: 25 January 2024

Des Arc, AR

55º dense fog advisory, light rain

If Pinnacle Mountain caused me to ask “who gets to determine what a mountain is?” then my 15th park, Lower White River Museum made me ask “who gets to determine what a park is?” Located in Des Arc (population approx. 1,900), this museum park is self-contained within four walls. While small, I found lots and lots of information here about the White River in general, and about the lower portion of the river specifically. The museum houses exhibits on the history of the local area concerning: the Civil War, Education, Medicine, Agriculture, Timber, Fishing & Hunting, and the most important of all, Pearling and Button Making.

I started my visit with this amazing map used by a local lumber company, labeled “a blue line copy of a hand-drawn map from the early 1900s.” What the picture fails to depict accurately is the size of the map. I’m terrible at estimations, but this thing is quite large, and I couldn’t help but think of who might have carried it around, folding and unfolding it, while navigating the land and the river. Around the corner from this display, I found information on early Euro-American settlers to the shores of the river. These folx poled up the river on flatboats that they hauled up on shore and dismantled to use the wood as material for their first shelters. What is that old story about any number of explorers/conquerers burning their ships so their people would have no choice but to go forward? Farther along, in the Civil War display, I learned that the “deadliest single shot” of the war killed 105 Union troops in the Battle of St. Charles. I had to investigate and found out this happened when a Confederate artillery shell hit a Union ship square in the steam drum, which did the initial damage.

The education exhibit provided some levity, offering up a set of “Teacher Rules” from 1872. These included the following. #4 “Men teachers may take one evening each week for courting purposes, or two evenings a week if they go to church regularly.” #6 “Women teachers who marry or engage in unseemly conduct will be dismissed.” And #7 “Every teacher should lay aside from each pay a goodly sum … for their benefit during their declining years so that they will not become a burden to society.” All this and you had to provide the water and the coal each day, too! By 1915, some new rules ruled, including this #4 “You may not loiter downtown in ice cream stores.” This begs the imagination to ponder just exactly what those teachers got up to!

Pearling and button-making take up the greatest share of the museum, given how important the industry was from the end of the 19th century until the mid-twentieth. Originally harvested by hand and searched for pearls, the mussel industry expanded in 1900 “with the invention of a machine that could cut buttons from [the] shells.” And here is where I got very excited because, the factories along the White River and many, many others, including the Mississippi River, mostly cut “blanks,” the button rounds. The cutting factories shipped these buttons where? To Iowa, of course, where Muscatine became known as “Pearl City.” I love finding these connections between where I’m from and where I am. Shellers harvested the mussels using “crowfoot hooks,” shown in this picture. They dragged long bars from which these hooks dangled over the mussel beds. Irritated by the hooks, the mussels opened up and clamped down on them, only to be pulled from the riverbed.

I ended my time in the museum as it began, with a map. This one entirely different. Equally as cool as the lumber map, this one, of the entire state and the major rivers, was made entirely of carpet and mounted on the wall from floor to ceiling. Those rivers are not dyed! Someone hand cut the brown carpet and the blue carpet to create this map.

After my visit, a short drive from the museum took me down to a nice riverside park where I mulled over all of the history while watching the rain-bloated river roll by.

Up next: 3/4 of the Red River Campaign: Jenkins Ferry Battleground, Mark’s Mills Battleground, and Poison Springs Battleground.

Posted by Sandy Longhorn
03
Feb
2024

Lake Chicot (52 Parks : 52 Poems)

Date of Visit: 6-7 January 2024

Lake Village, AR

Day 1 ~ 45º and cloudy; Day 2 ~ 55º bright sun

Sitting in the far southeastern corner of the state, I made Lake Chicot State Park my first official sabbatical park. Sadly, all the cabins were booked, but a good friend put me up in Greenville, MS (thank you, friend!) and I got to traverse the beautiful, “new” suspension bridge on highway 82. During my sabbatical (spring semester) I will travel to at least 22 parks, and I selected all of the parks in the southern half of the state for these trips. I wish I could visit all of them in March and April for the prime weather and prime plants, but alas, some have to be visited “off season.” Lake Chicot does not disappoint, no matter the weather. In fact, it turns out the my visit coincided with a lot of migratory bird activity, as the park falls directly in the path of the Mississippi flyway. I found so much beauty here and so much great information about landforms and history that I’ve already drafted the poem.

On arrival, I spent time in the visitor center, learning that Lake Chicot takes the prize of being the largest, natural oxbow lake in North America. The lake measures over 20 miles from tip to tip. In this picture, you’ll see a great aerial shot that demonstrates how/where natural oxbow lakes form off the natural meanders of rivers. Once upon a time (600 years ago), the crescent labeled “Oxbow Lake” (Lake Chicot) in the map was actually the main river channel. Check out the USGS for how the science works. The name of this park focuses on the lake, but the influence of the Mississippi River can’t be underestimated. In this picture, you can also see the influence of the levee system that separates the farmlands and towns from the river’s main channel (and major flooding). I loved finding a new word for me, “batture,” from the French meaning “to beat,” as in “where the river beats the land” (yay, metaphors!). And I loved the fact that having not been developed, the batture remains quite wild.

On the first day of my trip, I signed up for a levee tour. Traveling in the winter meant I was the lone participant and had the park interpreter all to myself for an hour-long drive along the levee between the lake and the river. The tour departed late in the day to capitalize on birdwatching and we saw quite a few. Great blue herons, great egrets, cormorants, both snow and Canada geese, mallards, buffleheads (a new duck for me!), hawks that I couldn’t specify, a bald eagle soaring, and some of my favorite fellows — 3 different small flocks of wild turkeys. I adore how they run; they look just like some of the running dinosaurs in Jurassic Park! I use my iPhone to take these pictures, so I can’t share any of the bird sightings. However, the end of the tour involved driving down to the actual Mississippi River, just upriver from the Greenville Bridge. Given the record droughts we’ve been having both here and up north, the low, low water level did not surprise me. Still, it was disheartening to see so many feet of riverbank exposed. If you look closely in the photo, in the mid-upper left, you’ll see some grey stone above the rest of the darker bank. That’s the usual waterline. I was standing on the first few feet of river bottom when I took the picture.

On day two, the sun shined hard and I returned to the park to focus on the lake. I attended a park talk demonstrating the formation of oxbow lakes with a clay and sand model. This time I was not alone. The family that joined me showed a lot of patience for my questions! After the demonstration, we all walked down to see the lake and learn more about it, especially about the cypress trees and their knobby knees. Again, no picture of the lake itself because my phone camera doesn’t suffice. But, the drought provided me with access to areas normally underwater here as well and I took a few more than one picture of the exposed cypress roots and knees. In this picture, most of these would normally be underwater up to the bank line about midway through the picture horizontally. Natural architecture wows me every time. While poking around the lake on my own, I added to my birding with red-bellied woodpeckers, Carolina wrens, a northern flicker, and a little group of kinglets. All in all, I couldn’t have been happier with this trip!

Next up: Lower White River Museum State Park

Posted by Sandy Longhorn