CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas

09/04/2026

Photo Friday!

Pictured here is Governor Bill Clinton wearing a hat and apron at an event promoting Arkansas beef, likely in 1983 when the Arkansas General Assembly passed Act 160 establishing the Arkansas Beef Council, a non-profit organization designed to “promote an understanding of the beef industry and maintain a positive marketing climate.”

The raising of beef cattle has been carried out in Arkansas since before the area became an American territory. Though beef cattle can be found in every county in Arkansas, the industry is largely centered in the northwestern counties of the state. As industry historian C. J. Brown writes, “The beef enterprise lends itself well to being combined with the poultry operations which have developed in those areas of the state.” According to the University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service, approximately 30,000 farms in the state produce beef cattle, and, in contrast to the poultry industry, a large percentage of these farms are family owned and operated.

Read more about the beef industry in Arkansas here: https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/beef-industry-4335/ And browse thousands of other images here: https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/media/

09/02/2026

EOA Minute... Head Pots

Head pots are a very rare and unique form of pre-historic Native American pottery found almost exclusively in northeast Arkansas and the adjacent bootheel region of Missouri. They are distinguished from other native North American pottery in that the entire vessel is molded into the general shape of a human head. Artistically, head pots vary from crude to remarkably lifelike representations. Most are somewhat smaller than the head of a normal adult, averaging about five to six inches in height. Head pots are associated with the Late Mississippian Period to the time of European contact, dating about 1400 to 1700. Read more here: https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/head-pots-571/

📷: Pictured here is a head pot from the Nodena Site near Wilson (Mississippi County), circa 1550; photo by Curtis Duncan, courtesy of the Arkansas State University Museum.

09/02/2026

New entry: Liberty Bell (Arkansas State Capitol Grounds)

Arkansas received a replica of the Liberty Bell in 1950 as part of a national savings bond drive; it later became the centerpiece of a monument on the grounds of the Arkansas State Capitol to commemorate the United States’ bicentennial.

Arkansas received a replica of the Liberty Bell in 1950 as part of a national savings bond drive; it later became the centerpiece of a monument on the ...

09/01/2026

New entry: Scull Cemetery

Signage at Scull Cemetery, located on Old Post Road north of Arkansas Post National Memorial in Arkansas County, makes a sweeping but unsubstantiated claim: “1778 / Oldest Cemetery in Arkansas.”

Signage at Scull Cemetery, located on Old Post Road north of Arkansas Post National Memorial in Arkansas County, makes a sweeping but unsubstantiated ...

09/01/2026

Yesterday was KABF's 42nd anniversary. 🎉

KABF radio station (FM 88.3) in Little Rock began broadcasting an eclectic mix of music, news, and community driven content in 1984. “The Voice of the People” has exposed Arkansans to genres rarely heard on commercial radio, given local artists radio airplay, and provided organizations and citizens with a means to reach a wide audience with their messages. The broadcast signal carries to most of Arkansas’s seventy-five counties, as well as some neighboring states, and reaches an estimated 50,000 listeners every week. KABF is one of only twelve non-commercial radio stations in the United States with the maximum allowed signal of 100,000 watts.

The KABF radio station (FM 88.3) in Little Rock (Pulaski County) began broadcasting an eclectic mix of music, news, and community driven content in 1984. ...

08/28/2026

Photo Friday!

The great Tim Curry died earlier this week, and today we feature the poster for the 1988 movie Pass the Ammo, a satire of greedy televangelists that was made in Eureka Springs (Carroll County).

It opens with a helicopter shot of the giant Christ of the Ozarks statue. This is followed by a television sermon by the Reverend Ray Porter, played by Tim Curry, who asks, “Why be afraid of nuclear war? Welcome it! For it is part of God’s prophecy.” The congregation in Porter’s megachurch and his TV audience listen raptly and, when he gets to his key point (“Today’s goal—$1 million for Jesus!”), they burst into an enthusiastic rendition of “Give Me That Old-Time Religion.”

Robert Cochran and Suzanne McCray, in Lights! Camera! Arkansas!, called the film “a spectacularly uneven but occasionally quite funny spoof of a greed-head televangelist.…The over-the-top approach is perfect for the subject—is it possible to exaggerate the tackiness or the venality of these guys?” Read more here: https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/pass-the-ammo-movie-6633/ and browse thousands more images on the EOA here: https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/media/

08/26/2026

Joe Nix has died.

Nix was a water chemist, environmentalist, naturalist, and educator considered by many to be the watchdog of Arkansas rivers and lakes with respect to water quality and usage patterns. His mission was to have society use good scientific data in making decisions about environmental matters. Nix studied chemistry at what is now Ouachita Baptist University (OBU) and credited the humanities, which he did not want to study, with providing him the bridge between chemistry and nature. He later served for decades as a professor at OBU, retiring in 1994 to work in nonprofits. Nix was a technical advisor and/or on-screen personality for the following documentaries on the Arkansas Educational Television Network: The Black Swamp (1994), Ouachita! (1996), The Mercury Story (1997), The Forgotten Expedition (2002), Saving the Eagles (2008), and The Buffalo Flows (2009).

Joe Nix was a water chemist, environmentalist, naturalist, and educator considered by many to be the watchdog of Arkansas rivers and lakes with respect to ...

08/26/2026

As remembrances pour in for the late, great musician and humanitarian Dolly Parton, we will add this Arkansas connection to the mix.

Pictured here is Arkansas folk singer/songwriter Jimmy Driftwood with Jane Fonda and Dolly Parton at the Driftwood Barn in Mountain View (Stone County); May 21, 1980. Driftwood had arranged for Fonda to stay with local couple Lucy and Waco Johnson so she could study the characteristics of a “mountain woman” for her role in The Doll Maker, which was released in 1984 as a made-for-TV movie on ABC. Parton (a mountain woman herself), who had just starred in the 1980 movie 9 to 5 with Fonda, was there at the barn too. Arkansas's Levon Helm would appear in The Doll Maker with Fonda.

Read more about Driftwood here: https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/jimmy-driftwood-2187/ and Helm here: https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/levon-helm-628/

08/24/2026

EOA Minute... Olyphant Train Robbery

During the nineteenth century, travelers on steam locomotives were at risk for train robberies. In Arkansas, one particularly high-profile train robbery happened in the small town of Olyphant (Jackson County) in 1893. What followed was a sensationalized manhunt and the ex*****on of three bandits involved in the incident.

📷: Courtesy of Jacksonport Courthouse Museum

08/21/2026

Photo Friday!

On April 3, 2018, Violet Brumley Hensley (right) and her family celebrated a “homecoming” for the third fiddle Hensley ever crafted, a child-sized fiddle she had made for her friend Luda Driggers in the early 1930s (she received a quilt in return). It was returned by Driggers’s granddaughter Judy Gillemand (left), who had inherited the fiddle and later learned that it was made by Hensley.

Hensley died earlier this month at age 109. Read more about her remarkable life as a fiddle maker and performer here: https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/violet-brumley-hensley-4698/ And browse thousands of other images on the EOA here: https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/media/