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On a barge at Rosedale

Thursday, May 16th, 2013

In a recent newspaper column, I harkened back to the much-publicized signing of a pact between the governors of Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana. The ceremony took place in the spring of 1988 on a barge anchored in the Mississippi River at Rosedale, Miss.

I was listening to former President Clinton speak to a meeting of the Delta Grassroots Caucus in Little Rock a few weeks ago when I began thinking about that day on the barge.

Here’s how James Saggus of The Associated Press previewed the event in a story on May 12, 1988: “The governors of Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana will join forces aboard a Mississippi River barge Friday for a fight against the Delta region’s depressed economy. Govs. Ray Mabus of Mississippi, Bill Clinton of Arkansas and Louisiana’s Buddy Roemer will sign an agreement to address chronic problems of unemployment, illiteracy and poverty in fertile farmlands along the river. … Mabus said he hoped the ceremony would mark ‘the start of a regional economic development effort, one that will signal a new focus on our region of the country and attract international investments and national attention to the three-state region.’ Statistics show the Arkansas and Mississippi counties and Louisiana parishes in the Delta region — the flatlands on both sides of the river from Memphis to Natchez — are among the nation’s poorest, many with poverty levels above 50 percent.”

All three states had young governors with national political ambitions. It was often suggested in the late 1980s that one of them might become president.

“If we are successful, the country succeeds,” Mabus said that day in Rosedale. “We cannot have a truly vibrant country if we have pockets of despair, if there are places that do not fully share in the American dream.”

So here we are a quarter of a century later.

Clinton, of course, spent eight years in the White House.

I spent almost four years working on Delta issues in the administration of his successor. I was appointed by President Bush to serve on the Delta Regional Authority, which had been created in the final months of the Clinton administration.

Now it’s the spring of 2013, and Clinton is speaking on a Thursday night about the problems of the Delta. I’m sitting there taking notes, just as I would always do 25 years ago when I would cover Clinton in my job as Washington bureau chief of the Arkansas Democrat. It doesn’t seem much has changed in 25 years.

Are the problems of the Delta that intractable?

Will we still be talking about the same problems 25 years from now?

I learned a lot about the Delta by working full time on its issues and traveling its highways day after day. It was quite an education. I studied its history and came to the conclusion that, at least in my lifetime, most true Delta counties will never have the population bases they had 60 or 70 years ago.

The tens of thousands of sharecroppers who were once required to grow big crops of cotton are long gone from the region. Their children and grandchildren are never coming back. People go where the jobs are.

For too long our approach to economic development has been based on the idea that “bigger is better.” The goal was to find that manufacturing plant that would suddenly bring 300 or 400 jobs to town. Those kinds of industrial successes are going to become increasingly rare.

I came to the conclusion that Delta communities would have to get away from the idea that “bigger is better” and adopt the motto that “better is better.”

Concede the fact that the population of your town will never be as big as it once was while at the same time vowing that the community will work to ensure that the public schools are better, the hospital is more advanced, the streets are cleaner, race relations are improved, etc.

See what I mean?

Better is better.

Looking to the future, Clinton pointed to the good news: The Delta still has some of the world’s richest land. As the world’s population increases and the United States takes on more responsibility for feeding people, that land will become ever more valuable.

As land increases in value, the tax base improves.

Consider these facts just about Arkansas:

– The state is in the top 25 nationally in the production of 24 agricultural commodities, accounting for more than $16 billion of value added to the state each year.

– Arkansas continues to rank first nationally in rice production, growing about 48 percent of all U.S. rice. Rice is the state’s top agricultural export and is grown on more than 1.3 million acres of land.

– The value of rice exports from Arkansas is $918 million annually. Soybeans are next at $807 million. Rice and soybean prices have been high the past few years.

– The overall value of rice production is valued at almost $2 billion annually. Records were broken last year as rice growers in the state produced 7,340 pounds per acre, up 8 percent from 2011.

– Arkansas ranks third nationally in the production of cotton (with an export value of $473 million) and sixth in the production of grain sorghum.

– The state ranks second in overall aquaculture production and leads the nation in baitfish production, raising more than 80 percent of all U.S. baitfish. Arkansas also leads the nation in the production of largemouth bass for stocker fish, hybrid striped bass fry and Chinese carp.

Danny Kennedy of Riceland Foods does the math: “Today’s world population of 6.8 billion people is expected to grow to 9.1 billion by the year 2050. About half the earth’s population consumes rice as a primary component of their diets. World rice consumption will continue to increase in order to feed the expanding population.”

The world population growth also bodes well for the state’s soybean industry — soybeans are grown in more than 50 of the state’s 75 counties — and its expanding corn sector.

There’s also increased agricultural diversification in the Arkansas Delta. For instance, the state’s peanut crop grew from 600 acres in 2009 to 18,000 acres in 2012. Sweet potato acreage also is increasing.

Yes, the Delta will have fewer people. But the land will be worth more than ever. How do we leverage that to help those still living in the region?

There are two economic keys for the Arkansas Delta as we look out 10 to 20 years:

– Increased trade opportunities and public investment in the infrastructure (navigable rivers, ports, intermodel facilities, etc.) that enhance foreign trade. As far back as 1996, the Federal Highway Administration was noting in a report: “The most significant changes for the Delta economy have been improved access to intermodal transportation terminals, combined with the increased capacity of those terminals. This has greatly strengthened the region’s commercial linkage to the rest of the nation and to important international markets around the world.”

– More value-added processing for agricultural products. Rather than simply shipping out commodities, the Delta must find additional ways to refine and process those commodities for consumers.

The most frustrating thing in my time with the DRA was the idea on the part of so-called local leaders that a small government agency could somehow change the economic trajectory of the past 50 years.

In his visit to Little Rock earlier this month, Clinton said: “There’s never going to be enough government money to take a poor region of America out of the dumps all by itself. You’ve got to have private-sector growth. And in order to have private-sector growth, you’ve got to have good government policy.”

In the Delta, much of the private-sector growth will be driven by agriculture. So when we talk about good government policy, we’re talking about farm policy, free-trade agreements, port investments and the like.

Clinton, who has always been an optimist at heart, said his “instinct is that the country is due for a pretty good recovery. There is going to be a revival of economic fortunes in rural America. The real questions should be: How do you speed it up? How do you make it sustainable?”

The Arkansas Delta was built first through the harvest of hardwood timber (virgin timber was shipped north to build homes and businesses in places such as St. Louis and Chicago) and later by cotton.

With more and more mouths to feed in the decades ahead, it appears the region’s salvation now will be rice, soybeans, corn, wheat and grain sorghum.

“There’s nothing wrong with people who live in the Delta,” Clinton said. “I just want you all to know that I do believe, after all of these decades, that you’re going to get rewarded if you just stay with it.”

Perhaps the barge that served as a political stage 25 years ago can in the future play a role in hauling grain to hungry people in India and China.

Posted in Building Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi | 3 Comments »

Speaker Carter and change in Arkansas

Wednesday, November 28th, 2012

In my newspaper column for this week, I noted that the incoming speaker of the Arkansas House of Representatives — a 37-year-old banker and attorney from Cabot named Davy Carter — personifies the two revolutions that are forever changing the Arkansas in which I was raised.

The first is a demographic revolution.

The second is a political revolution.

Carter, a man I happen to think will make an outstanding speaker, was raised at Marianna in Lee County.

Lee County is representative of the counties in east Arkansas and south Arkansas that are bleeding population, a trend that has sped up in the past decade.

The largest population ever recorded in Lee County was 28,852 in 1920.

Here are the Lee County census figures since then:

1930 — 26,637

1940 — 26,810

1950 — 24,322

1960 — 21,001

1970 — 18,884

1980 — 15,539

1990 — 13,053

2000 — 12,580

2010 — 10,424

As you can see, Lee County now has about a third of the population it had in 1920.

Lonoke County, where Carter now lives, is representative of the counties in central and northwest Arkansas where there’s explosive population growth.

As agricultural mechanization took hold and sharecroppers left the farm, Lonoke County saw its population decrease from 33,400 in 1920 to 24,551 in 1960.

Then came white flight from Little Rock and the growth of Cabot as a Little Rock suburb. Take a look at the Lonoke County census figures since then:

1970 — 26,249

1980 — 34,518

1990 — 39,268

2000 — 52,828

2010 — 68,356.

With his move from Lee County to Lonoke County, Carter symbolizes the population switch taking place in Arkansas — 39 counties gained population and 36 counties lost population between 2000 and 2010.

It’s a trend for which there’s no end in sight as east and south Arkansas lose population while the central, western and northern areas of the state grow.

Next, there’s the political revolution.

For the first time in any of our lifetimes, Arkansas is truly a two-party state. For the first time in 138 years, Republicans hold majorities in both houses of the Arkansas Legislature, and those majorities are likely to grow in the years ahead.

Because he is a Republican — and a young, articulate one at that — Carter also symbolizes the political revolution. This revolution is one in which younger business and civic leaders statewide are now identifying themselves with the GOP, especially in those 39 counties that are gaining population.

Jay Barth, the Hendrix College professor who understands this state’s politics better than most, divides the state into five political regions. They are:

1. The fast-growing counties of northwest Arkansas, which tend to vote Republican.

2. The counties surrounding Pulaski County, which are also now Republican. The growth rate in these counties match, or in some cases exceed, the growth rates in northwest Arkansas. From 2000 to 2010, Faulkner County grew 31.6 percent, Lonoke County grew 29.4 percent and Saline County grew 28.2 percent.

3. Pulaski County itself (which grew 5.9 percent in the first decade of this century) with its reliably Democratic voters.

4. The Delta counties (most of which are losing population) with their Democratic tendencies.

5. A swath of swing counties that run from the southwest corner to the northeast corner of the state (skipping Pulaski County).

Barth sees these swing counties going more and more Republican in the years ahead. Indeed, when I grew up in Clark County, we didn’t know what a Republican was. Earlier this month, Clark County, of all places, elected a Republican to the state House of Representatives.

“The decisiveness of the Republican gains in these counties in 2012 suggests that they may have swung so hard that, combined with the other two GOP-leaning regions, there is now a comfortable Republican advantage in all statewide elections,” Barth wrote in last week’s edition of the Arkansas Times. “The statewide elections in 2014 will test this hypothesis. Probable Democratic gubernatorial nominee Dustin McDaniel may be able to bring some of the rural swing counties in the northeast part of the state back into play for his party, but the Obama-era gains up and down this spine of rural counties suggests that they have left behind their populism of the past and may well quash Arkansas Democratic hopes in the future.”

I agree with that analysis. Unlike Barth, though, I’m not yet ready to call McDaniel the probable Democratic nominee. I think there will be hotly contested primaries in both parties.

And I’ll go ahead and declare that the 2014 election for governor is one of the most important in the past century in this state. Because of our two revolutions — the demographic revolution and the political revolution — it’s crucial that we elect someone with the leadership ability necessary to prevent Arkansas from splitting into what in essence is two states within a state.

We need a governor who understands all of this state’s regions and their residents. In that respect, Arkansas has been fortunate in recent decades. Gov. Mike Beebe grew up in the Delta in Jackson County and never forgets the needs of east Arkansas, though he maintains strong support in the more prosperous regions of the state.

Beebe’s predecessor, Gov. Mike Huckabee, grew up in the southwest corner of the state in Hempstead County and knew what it was like to be an Arkansan outside the reach of the Little Rock television market.

The twin revolutions require a governor who understands the needs of all 75 counties and has the ability to work with both Republicans and Democrats.

Things get even more interesting when you consider that this will be the first governor’s race since 1966 without a clear frontrunner or an incumbent in the race. In 1966, Orval Faubus chose not to seek a seventh two-year term as governor. Republican Winthrop Rockefeller, who had lost to Faubus two years earlier, defeated Democratic nominee Jim Johnson, becoming the first Republican governor since Reconstruction.

Consider what has happened since then:

– Rockefeller ran as an incumbent in 1968 and 1970, winning the first time and losing to Dale Bumpers in 1970.

– Bumpers won as an incumbent in 1972.

– David Pryor entered the race as the acknowledged frontrunner in 1974 in a Democratic primary race against Faubus and my Arkadelphia neighbor at the time, Lt. Gov. Bob Riley. It was evident that the Faubus era had passed and that Riley couldn’t raise the money needed to run a viable campaign.

– Pryor won re-election in 1976.

– In 1978, then-Attorney General Bill Clinton began the race as the frontrunner. He lost as an incumbent in 1980, and Gov. Frank White in turn lost to Clinton as an incumbent in 1982.

– Clinton then won re-election as an incumbent in 1984, 1986 (when the state went to four-year terms) and 1990.

– Jim Guy Tucker moved up from lieutenant governor when Clinton resigned to move to the White House at the end of 1992, and Tucker won as an incumbent in 1994.

– Huckabee moved up from lieutenant governor following Tucker’s resignation in July 1996, and Huckabee won as an incumbent in 1998 and 2002.

– Beebe entered the 2006 race as the frontrunner and won re-election as an incumbent in 2010.

So we had incumbents in the race in 1968, 1970, 1972, 1976, 1980, 1982, 1984, 1986, 1990, 1994, 1998 and 2002.

In the other years — 1974, 1978 and 2006 — there were established frontrunners at the start.

In the newspaper column, I mentioned a story I wrote for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette more than 16 years ago when I was the newspaper’s political editor. In the spring of 1996, with Clinton running for re-election as president, we decided to publish stories on 10 key states. One of the states I wrote about was Texas.

I visited with then-Gov. George W. Bush at a Lincoln Day dinner in Waco, but I decided to focus my story on the changes in Williamson County, which is just north of Austin.

Williamson County was experiencing a population surge at the time. The pace of growth hasn’t subsided since then. The county grew 69 percent from 2000 to 2010. I went to the county seat of Georgetown and heard how Williamson County, once solidly Democratic, had turned Republican.

What was happening in Williamson County in Texas back then reminds me of the things happening now in places such as Saline, Faulkner, Lonoke and White counties in Arkansas.

People such as Carter represent the future of Arkansas politics.

Carter attended Arkansas State University. After a short time in Memphis working for the investment banking firm Morgan Keegan, he returned to Arkansas to work in banking for First National Bank of Eastern Arkansas. He later attended law school at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

Carter, who first was elected to the House four years ago, works for Centennial Bank. He won me over back in early 2010 when he answered a question from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s Three Rivers Edition that went like this: “What’s one thing you want to accomplish in life but haven’t yet?”

His answer: “Own a barbecue joint.”

Now you’re talking. What else would you expect from someone from Marianna, the home of the great Jones barbecue joint, winner of a James Beard Award earlier this year?

Posted in Building Arkansas, Politics | 5 Comments »

Archie Schaffer: Another Arkansas original

Thursday, October 4th, 2012

It was among the best writing assignments I’ve had in a long time.

A couple of months ago, Roby Brock called to ask if I would be interested in doing a cover story for TBQ magazine about Archie Schaffer III of Tyson Foods.

I jumped at the opportunity to write about one of my favorite Arkansans.

Grab a copy of the new issue of TBQ and tell me what you think.

Later this month, Archie’s retirement from Tyson Foods will become official, though he will continue to serve as a consultant for the company. On Friday from 4:30 p.m. until 7:30 p.m. at Arvest Ballpark, the Springdale Chamber of Commerce will sponsor an event known as “Chicken, Peelin’ and Politickin’” with Schaffer as the guest of honor.

More than 1,000 people are expected to show up to eat chicken jambalaya while peeling boiled shrimp and crawfish.

Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Paul Greenberg once described Archie as “everybody’s favorite Arkansas lobbyist.”

Greenberg wrote: “Even when arguing with him over some petty political matter, I’ve always found him candid, convivial, convinced — the way everybody in politics should be.

“Okay, maybe a little cantankerous on occasion, but who isn’t? I certainly am. If curmudgeonhood were a crime, who should ‘scape whipping? Life would be so much poorer without its Menckens or even Carvilles. And certainly without its Archie Schaffers.”

As I wrote in a recent newspaper column, one of the nice things about this story assignment was that it gave me the opportunity to spend a long lunch with his aunt and uncle, Dale and Betty Bumpers.

I kidded Archie later by saying, “We spent about 10 minutes talking about you and the next two hours telling political war stories.”

If I make it to age 87, I hope I’m doing half as well as Sen. and Mrs. Bumpers are doing at that age. We actually spent a lot more than 10 minutes talking about Archie, who the Bumpers call “Spike.”

A Franklin County family tree probably is in order at this point.

Elizabeth Callan Flanagan Bumpers — that would be Betty — was born Jan. 11, 1925, to Herman Flanagan and Ola Callan Flanagan in the Franklin County community of Grand Prairie. The family moved to Fort Smith during World War II and later to Iowa before returning to Franklin County. Betty Bumpers attended both the Chicago Academy of Fine Art and the University of Iowa.

Dale Leon Bumpers was born Aug. 12, 1925, in Charleston. He was one of four children born to William Rufus and Lattie Jones Bumpers. His father began working for the Charleston Hardware & Funeral Home beginning in 1924 and bought the business along with a partner in 1937.

Betty’s older sister, Maggie, was Archie’s mother.

Betty and Dale dated during their senior year in high school but were separated for a time after that. Dale briefly attended the University of Arkansas and then joined the U.S. Marines. He was on a ship headed for the Pacific theater when World War II ended. He was discharged from the Marines in July 1946 and graduated two years later from the University of Arkansas with a degree in political science.

While attending law school at Northwestern University, Dale received word in March 1949 that both of his parents had been killed in a car crash.

On Sept. 4, 1949, he married Betty, who had been teaching the fifth grade.

After Dale graduated from law school, the couple returned to Charleston. Dale took over his father’s store, which he owned until 1966, while also practicing law. Betty continued to teach school.

Archie’s dad, Archibald Schaffer II, had come to Arkansas in the early 1940s for Army basic training at Fort Chaffee. He met Maggie while in Arkansas. The couple married in 1944, and Archie III was born in January 1948.

Archie’s father, who was in the Army Reserves, later was reactivated to serve in Korea.

“From a young age, Archie was always there for anyone, dating back to when his father went to Korea,” Betty Bumpers said. “He was responsible for looking out for his two younger brothers, and he often watched our three children. He just had this incredible sense of responsibility from a very young age.”

Former Sen. David Pryor is just as big a fan of Archie as is Dale Bumpers. Schaffer chairs the board of the David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History at the University of Arkansas.

“There is no one who listens more effectively to people than Archie Schaffer,” David Pryor said. “He’s a walking sponge, soaking up Arkansas history and politics. He just absorbs information and then uses it in a wise way.”

Pryor said people often come to Archie for advice “because they trust him. They know he’s someone they can confide in. When he speaks, it’s always in measured tones. He exudes confidence. Archie is imbued with wisdom.”

The former senator was quick to note that Archie is also a fun person to be around.

“I can’t think of many people I’d rather be with,” Pryor said. “Everybody loves Archie. He’s just one of those people everybody considers a friend. Because of that, everybody asks him to serve, and he often says ‘yes.’ He has 20 balls in the air at any one time.”

Archie, whose official title at Tyson Foods is executive vice president for corporate affairs, is further described by Pryor as the “eyes and ears of that company. I can’t imagine that John Tyson will let him go too far.”

During our lunch, Dale Bumpers related numerous tales of how Archie could calm people down, turning enemies into friends. Bumpers remembered one incident during his 1974 Democratic primary campaign against U.S. Sen. J. William Fulbright when an angry man stormed into the campaign headquarters.

“Richard Arnold tried to reason with him, and the man just kept getting madder,” Bumpers said. “Then Archie came out of his office. After Archie spent about three minutes with him, everything was fine.”

Martha Perry, a longtime, Bumpers aide, said Archie was invaluable because “he was family. He was the kind of guy who could tell Dale when he had spinach between his teeth.”

Archie thought he had retired from working in politics when in 1985 rumors began to fly that then-Gov. Bill Clinton was thinking about challenging Bumpers in the 1986 Senate primary.

“There were people encouraging him to run against me, and I know he was taking polls,” Bumpers said.

It came as no surprise when Bumpers asked Archie to go to Little Rock and make sure Clinton ran for re-election as governor rather than seeking the Senate seat.

Mission accomplished.

My favorite quote in the TBQ story was this one from Archie: “My job was to raise lots of money and scare Clinton off. We were successful in doing that.”

You know what they say: Bill Clinton became president because he couldn’t figure out a way to beat Dale Bumpers or David Pryor and become senator.

Scahffer took the job with Tyson Foods in 1991.

Most of those who followed Arkansas politics and public affairs during the 1990s are well aware that on Jan. 15, 1998, Archie was indicted by a federal grand jury on seven felony charges for allegedly providing illegal gifts to then-U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy. Jack Williams, a Washington lobbyist for Tyson Foods, was charged at the same time following an investigation by an overzealous independent counsel named Donald Smaltz. Don Tyson, John Tyson, Tyson Foods and the Tyson Foundation were named as unindicted co-conspirators.

“People thought Archie was being singled out unfairly,” said Gov. Mike Beebe, who has known Archie since they were both students at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro.

Soon after the indictment, Archie told Arkansas Business: “I’m not really sure why they have chosen to come after me. It has been suggested to me that my political history and my ties to a well-known Democratic senator like Dale Bumpers and a Whitwater figure like my wife (Beverly Bassett Schaffer, who served as state securities commissioner in the 1980s) might have something to do with it, but I choose not to speculate about that.”

Schaffer had been quoted when various investigations involving the Clinton administration began that Clinton’s election as president was “one of the worst things that ever happened to Tyson Foods and the state of Arkansas.”

He later told Arkansas Business: “Throwing the state of Arkansas in there may have been an overstatement, but I still think it’s the worst thing that ever happened to Tyson Foods. Were it not for all the extraneous issues such as the perceived Tyson-Clinton connection and the Espy investigation and all of those issues, I think my job would be great. I still believe strongly that Tyson Foods is a great company. Once we get all the extraneous nonsense behind us, I think the job can be what I thought it could be … when I first came here. I have no plan to do anything different. The company has said they fullysupport me. Obviously, I’m going to be somewhat distracted for the next few months, but I have no plans to leave the company.”

Long story short, a jury later found Schaffer guilty only of violating an obscure 1907 law known as the Meat Inspection Act, along with the federal gratuity statute. A federal court overturned that verdict, but in July 1999 a three-judge panel reinstated the Meat Inspection Act conviction, which carried a mandatory one-year prison sentence.

In October 2000, U.S. District Judge James Robertson reluctantly sentenced Schaffer to a year in prison. The judge made clear at the time that he believed Schaffer deserved only probation and a fine but said he was required by the 93-year-old law to impose the prison sentence.

During his final weeks as president, Clinton pardoned Schaffer.

“I did not see it coming,” Archie later told me. “I guess I was naive about what might end up happening. I was probably a bit overaggressive in my public statements about the investigation, which led to me being the primary target.”

He admitted that the months between the initial indictment and the pardon were “difficult. One of the things that made it even more difficult was that my wife was being written and talked about in the media each day. We used to joke that we were the only household in American being investigated by two different independent counsels at the same time.”

As securities commissioner, Beverly Bassett Schaffer had dealt with Jim McDougal’s Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan, a key part of the Whitewater investigation.

“The company was very supportive and continued to pay my legal fees or I would have never made it,” Archie said.

He said the trial judge realized that the charges against him “were a farce.”

When he later was sentenced under the Meat Inspection Act, the judge set a January reporting date, allowing for Clinton to issue a pardon just before leaving office.

In November 2000, Archie was deer hunting in south Texas with Little Rock businessman Craig Campbell (son-in-law of the late Witt Stephens) when his cell phone rang. It was someone from the Federal Bureau of Prisons telling him he had two weeks to report to a federal prison in El Reno, Okla.

“I explained to the person on the other end of the line that the judge had given me until January to report,” Archie said. “I suggested that they get a copy of the judge’s order.”

Arkansas Republicans and Democrats alike called the White House to ask Clinton to pardon Archie. A group of friends who hung out each afternoon at Uncle Gaylord’s in Fayetteville came up with the idea of the “Free Archie” bumper stickers, which at one time could be spotted on cars and trucks in all parts of the state.

After the pardon, Tyson Foods moved aggressively into the beef and pork sectors in addition to poultry, becoming almost three times as big as it had been. So it’s not as if life slowed down for Archie.

What’s next?

A book?

He doesn’t think so.

Running for office?

He was a constitutional convention delegate once and served for five years on the Charleston School Board in the early 1980s after having returned home from Washington.

Again, though, there are no such plans.

“I have a great deal of appreciation for those willing to put their names on the ballot, but I’ve decided that’s not something I want to do again,” Archie said.

In addition to being on the Pryor Center board, he serves on boards for the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute, the Nature Conservancy, the University of Arkansas Foundation and the Jones Center at Springdale. Those board assignments, along with more time spent with his three grown children and three grandchildren, should keep him busy for now.

“I think I’ll take a few months to decide what the next stage in my life will be,” Archie said.

With friends in all 75 counties, the options are many.

Posted in Building Arkansas, Business, Favorite Arkansans | No Comments »

Thinking big in Little Rock

Tuesday, August 14th, 2012

At the end of May, Max Brantley wrote a column for the Arkansas Times with the headline “Little Rock needs to think big.”

Max and I have known each other for too many years to count. For about five years in the early 1990s, we were among the “regulars” who showed up every Friday to appear on the “Arkansas Week” program on AETN.

Most people would consider us to be on opposite sides of the political fence, and often we are. We do have several things in common.

Neither of us grew up in Little Rock.

Both of us have lived here for years.

We both love the city and want to see it be all it can be.

When it comes to the need for Little Rock to think big, Max is right. What he wrote in late May dovetails nicely with the column I’ve written for Wednesday’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

My column topic is this summer’s demolition of Ray Winder Field. Thousands of people each day have passed the site on Interstate 630 and watched what I consider the greatest tragedy from a development standpoint in recent Little Rock history – the selling of valuable green space in the center of the city so UAMS can build yet another parking lot.

I had a discussion with a prominent Little Rock real estate developer recently. I tend to be an optimist by nature and noted how pleased I was with some of the developments planned for downtown Little Rock.

“Yeah,” he replied. “But we still have far too many surface parking lots and unimaginative storefronts.”

This is indeed the land of the surface parking lot. Because it’s in one of the state’s most visible locations, the Ray Winder demolition site is a powerful symbol. In a sense, the symbolism erases much of the good done along the riverfront and in other areas of town.

You know what they say: Perception is reality.

Here’s what the new UAMS parking lot screams out about Little Rock: “We’re stuck in the old urban renewal mode of the 1960s and 1970s at a time when other cities are going the opposite direction. We love the smell of bulldozer smoke in the morning.”

The story will be told far into the future. It’s a sad story about how Arkansas’ largest city took one of the most cherished ballparks in the country and sold it for a pittance so it could be paved over for surface parking.

It’s too late for Ray Winder, but out of this historic preservation catastrophe perhaps there’s a lesson to be learned. The lesson is that residents of the city must speak up in the future when things like this are being debated.

“Remember Ray Winder” can become the battle cry in a town that far too often in the past has torn down rather than renovated its historic treasures.

When we drive along Interstate 630 and look at that parking lot, this is what we can think for years to come: “We’re better than this. We must do better as a city. We owe it to our children, our grandchildren and all who live here.”

If that happens — if this travesty leads to additional public involvement in the decades ahead – Ray Winder will have taught us an important lesson.

Max wrote his column after a long walk around War Memorial Park.

“Across the freeway, I marveled at the children’s branch library under construction and the fact that the Central Arkansas Library System had saved a Craftsman-style house, as well as a stone storage building. The library builds monuments.

“On the north side of the freeway, I had a nice walk around the park perimeter. Careful on Monroe Street. It lacks sidewalks. More walking paths are also needed in the northwest sector of the park. The perimeter of the Little Rock Zoo could use some improvement, particularly the raggedy picnic area.”

The economic development game has changed dramatically in recent decades. So much of economic development these days is about attracting talented, creative people who have their choice of cities.

It’s about far more than building industrial, business and, yes, technology parks.

It’s about creating a place where people want to live. It’s about walking trails, biking trails, parks, baseball fields, restaurants and concert venues.

That’s all part of economic development.

Plugging that hole in the River Trail is probably the most significant economic development step this city could take right now.

In the newspaper column I wrote this week, I referenced a column that was produced last month by Frank Bruni for The New York Times. It focused on New York City’s parks improvements and how those mirror a trend in dozens of American cities.

“Whenever you doubt that the future can improve upon the past or that government can play a pivotal role in that, consider and revel in the extraordinary greening of New York,” Bruni wrote. “This city looks nothing — nothing — like it did just a decade and a half ago. It’s a place of newly gorgeous waterfront promenades, of trees, tall grasses and blooming flowers on patches of land and peninsulas of concrete and even stretches of rail tracks that were blighted or blank before. It’s a lush retort to the pessimism of this era, verdant proof that growth remains possible, at least with the requisite will and the right strategies.

“The transformation of New York has happened incrementally enough — one year the High Line, another year Brooklyn Bridge Park — that it often escapes full, proper appreciation. But it’s a remarkable, hopeful stride.”

Bruni noted that what’s going on in New York is “emblematic of a coast-to-coast pattern of intensified dedication to urban parkland.”

Van Valkenburgh, a noted landscape architect whose firm designed Brooklyn Bridge Park, said: “There’s a profound amount of interest and activity right now in making and remaking urban parks. I think it’s because we are reinvested in the idea of living in cities.”

Bruni pointed to other examples across the country, some of them in this region:

– The Myriad Botanical Gardens in Oklahoma City

– Discovery Green in downtown Houston

– Trinity River developments in Dallas

Catherine Nagel, the executive director of the City Parks Alliance, said the country is in an era of “re-urbanization” and that the increased population density brings with it the need for more green space.

“Amazingly, we’re getting it because citizens have demanded as much; because governments have made it a priority; because public and private partnerships have been cultivated,” Bruni wrote. “New York is the bright flower of all that.”

Sadly, the most high-profile public project in Arkansas this summer has been the demolition of one of the state’s historic treasures so it can be replaced by surface parking.

Each time you drive down Interstate 630, tell yourself that we can do better and vow to speak out in the future.

Remember Ray Winder.

Posted in Building Arkansas, Little Rock | 6 Comments »

Deep in the Arkansas piney woods

Friday, June 29th, 2012

In the previous Southern Fried blog post on Crossett, which centered on its history as a center of innovation in the timber industry, we mentioned R.R. Reynolds. He was a remarkable man.

Reynolds was born Dec. 21, 1906, near Howard City, Mich., and graduated from the University of Michigan’s forestry school with a bachelor’s degree in 1929 and a master’s degree in 1930.

In July 1930, Reynolds joined the U.S. Forest Service’s Southern Forest Experiment Station. He spent his first three years with the Forest Service doing case studies for individual companies and completing county economic studies.

The Crossett Experimental Forest opened in 1933, and Reynolds spent the next three decades directing the research center. He was the author or co-author of almost 175 publications.

Reynolds retired from the Forest Service in 1969 but remained active in the industry as a member of the Society of American Foresters and a practicing tree farmer.

The Crossett Lumber Co., which was extremely progressive for its time, had established a relationship with Yale University in 1912. That relationship with the forestry scholars at Yale resulted in improved forestry and manufacturing practices.

Many Yale-trained foresters found their way to south Arkansas and north Louisiana through the years. Their research was augmented by the work done at the 1,680-acre Crossett Experimental Forest, which was seven miles south of Crossett.

Because of the efforts of the Crossett Lumber Co.’s foresters and the U.S. Forest Service researchers, Crossett became a leader in sustained-yield forestry in which trees were treated as a renewable resource.

A.E. Wackerman was the chief forester for the Crossett Lumber Co. from 1927-32 and later was a member of the staff of the Southern Forest Experiment Station. He worked closely with Reynolds in the early years. They made quite a team.

In 1980, the Forest Service published a fascinating paper by Reynolds titled “The Crossett Story: The Beginning of Forestry in Southern Arkansas and Northern Louisiana.”

The paper covers the period from 1930-55. Reynolds described it as an era in which “clear-cutting of virgin pine timber came to a crashing halt because there was no more. It also marked the start of managing the second-growth stands at a time when no one knew how or why they should be managed. These stands, which had grown up in spite of no protection or management, were generally understocked and widely variable in age classes. To confound the problem, it was a universal belief that lumber from second-growth trees was worthless.”

Reynolds noted that once the Crossett Lumber Co. began to manage the second-growth forests, visitors from “around the country and the world came to Crossett to see the far-reaching developments. They learned how they might put the same practices in use on their own areas and forests.”

Large-scale harvesting of the virgin shortleaf and loblolly forests of south Arkansas began in the 1890s. There were no logging trucks in those days, so railroad spurs were built to haul out the massive logs.

“By the middle to late 1920s, the end of the big cut was near at hand, and by 1930 many of the mill owners, who had come south after logging in the Great Lakes states had been completed, started looking at the big, untapped virgin stands of the West as the location for their next operations,” Reynolds wrote. “Many families had moved into the uplands of southern Arkansas and northern Louisiana, had homesteaded and had established farms before the coming of the big sawmills. To these farmers, trees were something that had to be disposed of by cutting and burning before the areas were suitable for row crops. Since machinery for such operations was not available in those days, the farmers often welcomed the big sawmillers with open arms.”

Reynolds said that when he moved to Arkansas in 1930, he heard a story about how the Crossett Lumber Co. had set up a land office at Hamburg and offered $2.50 per acre in cash for timberland. Small farmers and timberland owners by the hundreds hurried in to get rid of their extra land before those “damn Yankees ran out” of money.

“As late as 1933, many people thought that timberland (or areas with trees) was wild and undeveloped land,” Reynolds wrote. “It would be of real value only when the trees were cleared and the acres put into pasture or row crops.

“When logging of the virgin timber began on a large scale, no one thought about developing the second-growth stands. Only one kind of lumber was worth anything for construction purposes: slow-growth virgin. Second-growth trees were often rapid growth, and second-growth lumber was supposed to be practically worthless ‘because it would warp or shrink or twist.’ And it supposedly had very little strength. So even though the lumber companies only cut trees that were about 14 inches and larger in stump diameter, they made no attempt to keep the smaller pines and hardwoods from injury. Many of those were cut and used for ballast and rough ties for the spur logging railroads.”

Most of the companies logging in the South in the early 1900s closed their mills once the virgin timber was gone and headed to the West Coast. Reynolds said the decision to manage the second-growth forest was a gradual one for those companies that stayed behind.

“Until about 1930, the Crossett Lumber Co. continued to offer its cutover land for sale to farmers and others,” he wrote. “The company also tried raising cattle on an experimental basis. It was decided that something of better grade than usual ‘range’ cattle should be produced, so the company purchased a high-quality and very expensive bull from Iowa in order to improve the strain. The idea was good, but the bull could not stand the ticks and the heat. The story was told that in hot weather they had to put him into a padded cell in the barn with fans blowing on him from ‘before’ and ‘aft.’”

Things changed when Yale professor Haupt Chapman entered the picture. Chapman headed the annual Yale summer camp for forestry students at Urania, La., which is between Alexandria and Monroe. Chapman became interested in the Crossett Lumber Co.’s second-growth stands.

“With the aid of his students, he inventoried some of these areas and suggested that perhaps the company could make a second cut of logs on some locations once the cutting of the virgin timber had come to an end,” Reynolds wrote. “In any event, he undoubtedly was responsible for creating an interest in timber possibilities in the minds of the owners of the Crossett Lumber Co.”

Reynolds said than when he joined the Southern Forest Experiment Station fresh out of the University of Michigan School of Forestry in July 1930, a number of the large Southern mills already had closed.

“The production of lumber had been largely taken over by small, ‘peckerwood’ mills that could be easily moved from place to place, and logging could be done by two or three pairs of mules or horses,” he wrote. “It was agreed almost universally that the South would soon be out of the large-volume, large-sawmill business, and few had any idea as to what would, or should, happen to the cutovers.”

In certain respects, the south Arkansas piney woods were still a wild place when Reynolds first came there in 1930. Most roads were unpaved. Rural residents lacked electricity and running water.

The oasis of civilization for the region was the Rose Inn at Crossett. Crossett natives still treasure the memory of the Rose Inn, which no longer exists. One of my mentors when I was in college at Ouachita Baptist University was Mac Sisson, a Crossett native. He had a framed print of the Rose Inn behind his desk.

Reynolds lived at the Rose Inn before he and his wife Geneva found a home.

“The Rose Inn was a three-story wooden structure with open walk-up stairways,” he wrote. “It was company owned and provided the only public overnight housing in town. It had a large lobby with a big fireplace and a long row of rocking chairs. Another long row of such chairs adorned the covered front porch. Rooms on the third floor were reserved for unmarried schoolteachers, who were required to live there. Not too much space was required since there was only one white and one black school in town.

“Crossett was very much off the main roads. In those days, the rooms on the second floor usually could take care of visiting lumber company officials, plus two or three of the single men who worked for the company and did not have other housing. It also accommodated an occasional salesman and other visitors.

“The large Rose Inn dining room, always with sparkling white tablecloths on the tables and waiters in white jackets, was famous for its good food. For many years, men had to wear ties and coats before they were admitted to the room. To be reasonably sure that those who came without proper attire could have something to eat, Mr. Boardman, the hotel manager, kept a supply of extra coats and ties on a clothes tree just outside the room.

“Geneva and I were allowed to live and eat at the hotel on a monthly rate that was similar to the one paid by the other regulars — $30 each per month. This included steak every night if one wanted it and always plenty of hot biscuits and many choices of potatoes and vegetables.”

All the houses in Crossett in those days were built, owned and maintained by the company. They were painted the same color. Most of them had outside toilets.

“Because of the low wages paid (by sawmills in general, including Crossett), families kept cows and chickens to help make ends meet,” Reynolds wrote. “There was no such thing as a stock law in those days. So, after milking time in the morning, the cows were turned out of each back yard to hunt for grass and other vegetation to eat during the day. Several people owned horses and pigs, and there were even a few mules. These, along with the cows, roamed at will up and down the streets, including the area that might be considered downtown.”

It was only 80 years ago, but it was a far different time in the deep south Arkansas piney woods.

Posted in Building Arkansas, Business, Trees | 6 Comments »

Crossett: A Southern timber capital

Thursday, June 28th, 2012

I had the honor of addressing the Crossett Rotary Club earlier this month after eating one of the best lunches I’ve had this year.

The meeting was held at Country Vittles, which is in a former drugstore downtown. My lunch consisted of perfectly fried chicken, fresh yellow squash, sliced tomatoes that likely were picked that morning and crowder peas.

I’ve long been fascinated by the history of Crossett – a former company town that has been associated with the timber industry since the city’s founding. It was once known as the Forestry Capital of the South.

As the forests of the Great Lakes region began to be depleted during the late 1800s and early 1900s, American investors turned to the huge swath of Southern forests that ran from east Texas to the panhandle of Florida.

On May 16, 1899, three businessmen from Davenport, Iowa — Edward Savage Crossett, Charles Gates and John Watzek — formed the Crossett Lumber Co. with land in south Arkansas and north Louisiana. They had purchased 47,000 acres at a price of $7 per acre from the Michigan investment firm Hovey & McCracken.

Edward Crossett had been born in February 1828 in West Plattsburgh, N.Y. His father was a veteran of the War of 1812. Crossett worked in a Troy, N.Y., printing office and later as a clerk in a shoe store, earning $2.50 per month along with room and board. With his brother as a partner, he purchased the store in 1848. Two years later, Crossett left the store in the hands of his brother and headed west.

By 1853, Crossett was operating a supply store for lumbermen in Black River Falls, Wis. He also was the town’s postmaster from 1854-56. Crossett purchased timberland along the way, moving from Wisconsin to Davenport in 1875 to join a trading firm known as Renwick Shaw & Crossett.

“In 1882, Crossett made his first investment in yellow pine, which was the predominant softwood species in the Southern forest,” the late Bill Norman wrote for the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture. “In 1886, he sold his interest in the Renwick firm, taking as payment 10,000 acres of Arkansas land covered with yellow pine.

“His friends were confident that he had made a serious mistake in this exchange. Having personally inspected it, Crossett was convinced of the great possibilities in yellow pine, and his judgment was speedily vindicated. Along the way, he became interested in other lumber companies just setting up operations in the same part of Arkansas.”

Crossett, Gates and Watzek held three-fourths of the stock of the Crossett Lumber Co. with the remainder held by top employees. Gates was the president and Crossett was the vice president of the new company. Charles Gates’ brother — Cap Gates — was sent to south Arkansas to supervise the building of mills and the development of a company town, which was named in honor of Edward Crossett.

Crossett died in December 1910 in Davenport. By then, the company had taken off.

Investors spent almost $1 million (a fortune for the time) starting the company — including building railroad connections — before the first commercial timber was sold. Construction of the first pine mill began in 1899, and construction of a second mill began in 1905. By the time both mills were in operation, the Crossett Lumber Co. was producing 84 million board feet annually.

The Crossett Lumber Co. became a leader in Southern forestry, adding paper mills and chemical plants in an effort to ensure there was minimal waste. Money also was spent on research and development projects, unusual in the early 1900s when many companies had a cut-and-run philosophy in the South.

The company built a school and homes, incorporating the city of Crossett in 1903. There was full electric service, something that was rare at the time in south Arkansas. A Methodist church was built in 1904, the city’s newspaper began publishing in 1906 and telephone service was added in 1907.

“The town-company dynamic was the epitome of how these two establishments could work together successfully,” Bernard Reed wrote for the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture. “During the Great Depression, Crossett Lumber Co. remained financially stable, and it supplied the government with lumber during World War II. In the 1940s, Crossett Lumber Co. focused on the expansion of the town, and many of its residents came to own rather than rent their houses.”

As part of its progressive philosophy, the company hired a Yale graduate named W.K. Williams in 1926 to help it begin a program of sustained forestry based on practices in Germany. The company also was helped by a Yale professor named Herman Haupt Chapman.

With the virgin timber running out across south Arkansas and north Louisiana, company officials knew they would either have to change their ways or go out of business.

“This involved ceasing the practice of cutting down trees as fast as they were growing, and then leaving the healthiest trees in an area to repopulate the soil,” Reed wrote. “These techniques kept the forests alive rather than destroying them. … The Crossett Lumber Co. was tackling and solving problems in the 1930s that would not be regarded as environmental issues until the 1970s.”

In 1933, the U.S. Forest Service established the Crossett Experimental Forest, which was among the first experimental tracts in the South. For decades, the forest was the home for scientific research in areas such as wildlife, hydrology, soils and silviculture.

“The scores of studies conducted on the Crossett Experimental Forest have generated hundreds of scientific publications, making the station an internationally known example of high-quality, long-term forestry research,” wrote Don Bragg and James Guldin of the Forest Service.

In July 1930, the Forest Service’s Southern Forest Experiment Station hired a University of Michigan forestry graduate named Russell Reynolds to help Southern landowners develop sustainable forestry plans.

In 1932, Reynolds was assigned to help the Ozark-Badger Lumber Co. of Wilmar in Drew County. During that period, he became familiar with the work of the Crossett Lumber Co. At the time, the Crossett Lumber Co. was down to its final 25,000 acres of virgin pine.

Reynolds moved to Crossett in August 1933 and began to work with a Civilian Conservation Corps crew to help the company inventory and mark its timber. In the fall of 1933, Reynolds joined forces with a forester named Albert Wackerman to find a site on the company’s cutover land that would be suitable for an experimental forest.

The 1,680-acre parcel they found seven miles south of Crossett had been cut prior to 1920. The Crossett Lumber Co. agreed to give the Forest Service the land in exchange for the standing volume of timber and the promise that research would be conducted there for the next 50 years. The deed conveying the property to the government was dated Aug. 2, 1934.

By late 1934, the federal government was building a lodge to house the CCC crew along with a filling station and a garage. The Works Progress Administration later built a log cabin-style home for Reynolds and his family that was completed in July 1936. Reynolds would live in this home for the next 33 years.

Several buildings on the site are now on the National Register of Historic Places.

“The primary objective of Reynolds and his staff at the Crossett Experimental Forest was to develop silvicultural principles and practices to manage the cutover second-growth loblolly-shortleaf stands typical of the area,” Bragg and Guldin wrote. “The challenge was whether it was possible to rehabilitate existing stands while simultaneously providing landowners with an acceptable return on their investment. If so, Crossett Experimental Forest research had considerable practical application not just for the Crossett Lumber Co. but also for other companies and landowners across the southern United States.”

U.S. Sen. Dale Bumpers once declared that “forestry began in Crossett.”

In a very real sense, many of the advancements in modern forestry came as a result of the work done by Crossett Lumber Co. foresters and Forest Service researchers stationed in south Arkansas.

Edward Crossett’s son died in 1955, and some of the heirs became interested in selling their stock in the company. By the late 1950s, there were consistent rumors about a sale or merger.

“Many larger Northern lumber companies had expressed interest in purchasing or merging with the Crossett Lumber Co, and stockholders were becoming worried about the company’s stability,” Reed wrote. “Although millions of dollars were spent in the late 1950s to modernize the company and give the impression of vitality, one of its board members, Peter Watzek, a relative of John Watzek, was instructed to conduct reports on companies with which a merger was possible. He also traveled to New York to meet with several merger prospects.”

Watzek concluded in his report that the company was strong enough to stand alone, but other stockholders remained restless. A sale to Union Bag & Paper that was announced in May 1960 fell through.

On April 18, 1962, it was announced that Georgia-Pacific had reached an agreement to buy the Crossett Lumber Co. It was the end of an era in south Arkansas.

Georgia-Pacific has now been a major part of the state’s corporate landscape for decades. In October 2010, the company announced that it would invest more than $250 million to upgrade one of its existing paper machines in Crossett with advanced technology and install associated equipment. About 1,300 people work at the Crossett paper mill.

Bad news followed in September 2011 when it was announced that Georgia-Pacific would shut down its plywood and stud mills in Crossett as the housing recession continued. The last day at work was Nov. 7 for almost 700 employees.

More than 70 of those employees have since found work at the company’s other divisions in Crossett. The upgrade at the paper mill, which makes bath tissues, continues with more than 350 construction workers involved in the project.

Crossett, founded because of the surrounding pine forests, remains joined at the hip with the forest industry, its ups and its downs.

Posted in Building Arkansas, Business, Traveling Arkansas, Trees | 1 Comment »

Charlotte Schexnayder: Salty Old Editor

Thursday, June 7th, 2012

I wasn’t surprised that the room was packed even though it was the middle of the day on a weekday. People had come from across Arkansas to hear Charlotte Tillar Schexnayder speak at the Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock.

She has had that kind of impact on our state and its people during her 88 years.

I’ve known Charlotte in several of her roles.

As a young newspaperman, I came to know her as the person who ran (along with her husband Melvin) one of the best weekly newspapers in the South.

Later, as a political reporter and as a member of the governor’s staff, I knew Charlotte as a leading light in the Arkansas Legislature.

She’s the epitome of a gracious Southern lady — but with a tough streak; governors and others learned the hard way never to underestimate her — and an Arkansas institution.

Her new book from Butler Center Books in Little Rock — titled “Salty Old Editor — An Adventure in Ink” – makes for fascinating reading.

“She’s a treasure,” says former President Clinton. “I’m so grateful I’ve had the chance to know her, work with her and be her friend.”

Former U.S. Sen. Dale Bumpers calls her “one of those too rare people who not only cares about what’s right and wrong in the world but spends a lifetime trying to do something about it. Together, she and her late husband Melvin were the bedrock of their community, the Delta and the entire state.”

Former U.S. Sen. David Pryor calls her a “powerful force for equality, fairness and justice. Her life has been an epic story of how one person can make a difference. She is a true public servant.”

Charlotte is a former president of the Arkansas Press Women, the Little Rock professional chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, the National Federation of Press Women, the Arkansas Press Association and the National Newspaper Association.

She also was the first female president of the Dumas Chamber of Commerce.

She has always been a pacesetter.

In the late 1940s, Melvin and Charlotte Schexnayder found themselves living in the pine woods of east Texas at Marshall. Melvin had accepted a job in early 1948 with the Texas & Pacific Railroad as a chemical engineer.

“His job involved analyzing oil and water samples for steam engines,” she writes. “I always dreaded the possibility that he might dislocate his lame shoulder when he climed the company water tanks for samples.

“More often, he was in the company laboratories or on a train going as far as Pecos, Texas — 800 miles away. The job demanded five to six days a week on the road, leaving us miserable with little home life.

“Mother came to visit in Marshall in the summer of 1948. Melvin drove her 1937 Plymouth there, and on the back was a coop of chickens from Tillar. We had a flat tire on the way, and a man who stopped to help us was much amused. However, we thought the fried chicken was very tasty that summer.

“My solution while Melvin was constantly traveling was to read and keep our domicile, all the while missing the news business. Occasionally, I traveled with him and particularly remember the dust storms in west Texas. Neither of us was content away from the other.

“In late summer, we received a telegram from W.M. Jackson, owner of the McGehee Semi-Weekly Times. He asked if we would come to McGehee as editor and advertising manager. Melvin had never sold advertising but had done well in business courses in graduate school. Tired of his constant traveling, we said to one another: ‘Let’s try the newspaper business for a year.’

“Little did we then realize, it would last a half-century.”

Southeast Arkansas had no bigger advocate during that half-century than Charlotte Schexnayder.

She was born Christmas Day 1923. Her father was Jewell Stephen Tillar, the son of Dr. Stephen Olin Tillar and Fannie Harrell Tillar, pioneer residents of southeast Arkansas. They had come over from Selma in Drew County to help found the town of Tillar as the St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern Railroad laid its track south from Little Rock in 1870.

Stephen Olin Tillar had fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War. He was captured and imprisoned near Chicago.

“When he was released, he walked home barefooted and was so emaciated that his family did not recognize him,” Charlotte writes. “He studied medicine and became a practicing physician. My father was born on Dec. 19, 1886, and was the youngest of his family.”

After working for the newspaper in McGehee, Charlotte and Melvin bought the Dumas Clarion.

Charlotte says they learned the following lessons during their years in McGehee:

– “Manage with one-boss rule editorially. A showdown with a composing room foreman who sought to direct all operations quickly taught me that I had to control content and deadlines. I made editorial decisions and always faced the consequences.”

– “Believe in your community, and the people will join you. Many coummunities depend on their newspaper publishers/owners for leadership.”

– “Plain hard work exceeds inspiration, probably in proportion of 90-10.”

– “Never leave to others some job you should do. A staff will seek to excel when the editor-publisher sets the standard.”

– “Listen for the little stories. They often are the most compelling because they touch the human heart. I once gained wisdom from interviewing a 90-year-old who said: ‘When ah walks, ah walks slow; when ah rocks, ah rocks easy; and when ah worries, ah goes to sleep.’”

– “Expect broadly flung daggers. I didn’t cause trouble but was blamed for reporting it. Many would rather blame the messenger than the culprit. Moreover, it seems more fun to fire at the messenger.”

– “Remember that you are writing current history and make every effort to get it right.”

– “Rely on some humor during tough times. It’s the best antidote.”

– “If the job isn’t fun, find another. I looked forward to every day. I was the eternal optimist; Melvin, the pragmatist. Together we knew how to set goals and reach them.”

Charlotte tells how her mother walked into the Dumas newspaper office for the first time and asked, “Are you sure you want this place?”

Charlotte and Melvin’s son John was just five months old at the time.

Tillar was 13 miles south. Dumas had 2,512 residents with the Missouri Pacific railroad tracks splitting its four-block business district.

“Climate control, virtually unheard of in small newspaper plants, was relegated to window and oscillating fans for cooling and an overhead butane gas heater for heating,” Charlotte writes. “It was drafty in winter we found, as we stood looking it over in late January 1954. We suspected the building could be much more uncomfortable in summer because of extra heat from the single linotype, metal-casting typesetter.

“Weekly newspaper offices were notoriously messy, and this was no exception. Stacks of exchange newspapers were piled in a corner, while metal single spindles held important copy waiting to be sent to a typesetter.”

Did they really want this place? Her mother’s question rang in Charlotte’s ears.

“We thought of the people who wanted us,” she writes. “Perhaps the desire for our very own newspaper obscured our vision of the surroundings, and we foresaw a great adventure. Melvin and I looked at one another, instead of at the plant, and affirmed, ‘We really do want this place.’”

At that point, Charlotte could not have foreseen a future political career.

In the 1970s, she became the first woman appointed to what was then called the state Board of Pardons & Parole.

She says her experience on the board led her to believe “I might bring energy, perseverance and my varied experience to the political scene. I found naysayers; I often had as a women who broke barriers. But I reasoned that a citizen legislature, as in Arkansas, would include members with potential conflicts of interest because of primary occupations. Since legislators were part time, serving in biennial sessions, one had to depend on personal wealth or employment.”

When she announced in 1984 that she would run for the Legislature, no one dared oppose her. Charlotte was already a legend in her district.

At the state Capitol, though, she still had to prove herself during that first session in 1985.

“As a newspaper editor, I was treated with obvious wariness, a bit of suspicion and even a tinge of distrust by a few,” Charlotte writes. “With quiet dignity and hard work, I tried to overcome those attitudes. There was one huge advantage, however. No one dared to offer a shady deal; I owned a newspaper.”

Veteran state Rep. Bill Foster of Keo, who had served in the House since 1961, once told her: “I was determined to dislike you. You were a newspaper editor. But it took me only a week to change my mind.”

During her first week in the House, Rep. Geno Mazzanti of Lake Village approached Charlotte and said, “No one expects much of a freshman representative. Just sit and listen and you will be fine.”

She replied: “You obviously don’t know me very well. I am not a sideline sitter, and I always have plans.”

Charlotte says she believes in the people of the Delta, and they believe in her.

“I have drawn strength from them and my forebears, beginning with my childhood in Tillar,” she writes. ”Tiny towns can launch fulfilling and diverse careers such as mine. The seed for the dream was planted in my childhood.”

What a life she has lived. And she still has more to give.

Arkansas is a better place because Charlotte Tillar Schexnayder is among us.

Posted in Books, Building Arkansas, Favorite Arkansans, Newspapers, Politics | 3 Comments »

The south Arkansas oil boom — past and future

Tuesday, June 5th, 2012

South Arkansas wasn’t prepared for the oil boom that occurred in the early 1920s, an event recounted in the previous Southern Fried blog post.

After the Busey No. 1 well struck oil on Jan. 10, 1921, one mile southwest of El Dorado, Union County became the center of activity in south Arkansas for a time.

The gusher sprayed between 3,000 and 10,000 barrels of oil up to a mile away. Speculators rushed in from across the country. The Arkansas Legislature even sent an exploratory train down from Little Rock so legislators could see what was going on (those legislative junkets have a long history, don’t they?).

In March 1921, Arkansas produced 38,000 barrels of oil.

That increased to 325,000 barrels in April of that year, 578,000 barrels in May and 908,000 barrels in June. There were 900 wells in operation by 1922.

Kenneth Bridges writes in the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture about what happened at El Dorado: “It changed from an isolated agricultural city of 4,000 residents to the oil capital of Arkansas as 22 trains each day ran in and out of El Dorado to Little Rock and Shreveport.”

There was even regular air service from Shreveport to El Dorado.

The boom moved a bit north in the summer of 1922 with Sid Umsted’s discovery of oil near the Union County-Ouachita County line.

Don Lambert describes in the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture what happened next: “Abruptly, a rumble came from deep beneath the earth’s surface. The crew stepped away, listening. Suddenly, a thick black column of oil burst forth and spurted high above the earth.

“Within six months, 1,000 wells had been drilled with a success rate of 92 percent. The little town of Smackover had increased from a mere 90 to 25,000, and its uncommon name would quickly attain national attention.

“Smackover was officially incorporated on Nov. 3, 1922. Lawlessness was so rampant that among the 25 petitioners on the incorporation document, none was willing to hold public office. The town’s population steadily declined as oil companies and their employees moved away when more lucrative oil discoveries were made in Texas and Oklahoma. About 100 independent oil companies replaced the 12 major petroleum corporations in this period.

“Unfortunately, conservation laws were absent in Arkansas and, as a result, wells were allowed to run wild until the natural gas had been vented into the atmosphere. This practice eventually ruined the giant oil field, which could be compared to a punctured aerosol can that has half of its contents remaining but no remaining interior pressure to remove it. By the early 1930s, the Smackover oil field’s production had declined dramatically, and the petroleum industry’s attention turned to new discoveries in Texas and Oklahoma. The 1923 population of 25,000 decreased to 2,500.”

Things improved some during World War II with new discoveries and a tremendous demand due to the war effort.

“Although the Smackover field is still going strong into the 21st century, it has none of the robust vigor that was so prevalent in the 1920s,” Lambert writes. “Its landscape is scarred by oil and saltwater running freely over the earth and into its streams due to the work of the oil industry.”

Arkansas Business has a story on the front page of its current issue with this headline: “Oil Field Viability Remains Mystery: First wells in Brown Dense yield fewer barrels than hoped.”

Luke Jones writes, “In the wake of the natural gas boom in north-central Arkansas, residents near the Louisiana border are hoping for a similar bonanza in the oil-rich area known as the lower Brown Dense formation. So far, however, it’s simply not clear whether there’s enough oil trapped in the carbonate mudstone to be worth the millions of dollars it costs to sink each well.

“Southwestern Energy Co. of Houston went on a leasing spree in the Brown Dense a couple of years ago, spending some $195 million to lease mineral rights on 520,000 acres across the formation. It has completed one test well so far and has a permit for a second.”

Columbia County Judge Larry Atkinson told Arkansas Business: “By the numbers I had heard, Southwestern needs 400 barrels a day to make it feasible. … They spent a lot of money and leased a lot of land, but I haven’t seen as much activity as I anticipated. I’m not saying it’s not coming, but the community expected an overflow of equipment. It hasn’t happened yet. We are waiting. We hope they haven’t decided to go anywhere else.”

It you think the predictions of El Dorado’s Richard Mason are overblown (see the previous Southern Fried blog post), consider the initial failures of the previous century.

“In 1914, oil explorers dug an unsuccessful test hole at Urbana, east of El Dorado,” Bridges writes. “A 1916 effort near the Union-Columbia county line also proved unsuccessful. Samuel S. Hunter commissioned a well some two miles east of Stephens in Ouachita County in April 1920. This well, the Hunter No. 1 well, produced some oil but never enough to sell commercially. This site was later acquired by Standard Oil Co. for exploration.”

As noted, everything changed when the Busey No. 1 gushed oil in January 1921.

A new oil boom could still happen in south Arkansas. And if it does, I can state with certainty that what’s now called the Golden Triangle is much more prepared now than it was back then.

Here’s how the website www.unioncountysheriff.net describes the scene in 1921: “People continued to pour into El Dorado. Chief of Police Hamp S. Lewis hired more policemen to cope with the rising crime rate. A full-time health officer was appointed, and two nurses and two sanitary officers were hired to help him. The city water supply had to be increased, and Harvey Couch, president of Arkansas Power & Light Co., came to the city to work out the arrangements.

“Something to do after dark was a problem, too. Men congregated on street corners in the evening to talk oil and some would break off into a quartet. … E.C. Robertson, who owned the Victory Theater in Fayetteville, came to El Dorado and opened a motion picture and vaudeville theater.

“Boxing matches were arranged, and on Feb. 3, 1921, Little Rock’s own ‘Red Herring’ and Patsy McMahon of Memphis ‘occupied the center of the sports arena.’ Jack Parsons, the ‘dean of Arkansas showmen,’ had a tent theater a block and a half from the square that presented shows nightly.

“Three months after the Busey well came in, work was under way on an amusement park located three blocks from the town that would include a swimming pool, picnic grounds, rides and concessions. Culture was not forgotten as an old cotton shed in the center of town near the railroad tracks was converted to an auditorium.”

Ninety years later, much more infrastructure is in place in El Dorado, Magnolia and Camden to handle the situation should a new boom occur.

The Arkansas Oil & Gas Commission, which has nice offices in El Dorado, was established in 1939 to prevent the kind of waste seen in the 1920s.

Southern Arkansas University at Magnolia, South Arkansas Community College at El Dorado and SAU-Tech at East Camden stand ready to provide higher education opportunities.

El Dorado, meanwhile, has done much in recent years to improve its quality of life with the most attractive downtown retail and entertainment area in the state, a first-class conference center, a new high school and more.

The downtown square in Magnolia also rates among the better downtowns in Arkansas.

El Dorado public relations executive Don Hale wrote earlier this year: “What we found in El Dorado was that our award-winning downtown was one thing that made us unique. It separates us from many other communities. El Dorado is fortunate to have one of the best downtowns in the South. Tree-lined streets surround a stately courthouse with retail boutiques and restaurants in a pedestrian-friendly setting ideal for shopping or enjoying a live performance at one of our weekend events.

“It’s the same setting that retail developers in Branson and other destinations have attempted to re-create with ‘lifestyle centers’ that lure tourists, shoppers and overnight guests to their destination. But even the most vibrant downtown is not a destination that can provide several hundred new jobs and have a major economic impact.

“We were asked, ‘What would tourists drive to El Dorado to get that they cannot get closer to home?’ This question challenged us to create an attraction that would draw visitors from 300 to 400 miles away. A plan that centers on the downtown was designed to develop an entertainment district featuring performing arts theaters, musical venues, festivals and events — a bold step for even the most imaginative of communities.

“The city’s existing annual events — for example, MusicFest, the South Arkansas Mayhaw Festival, the Boomtown Classic — serve as the basis for future events. More recently, El Dorado launched the first Southern Food & Wine Festival in our new conference center adjacent to downtown.

“Building on a deeply rooted artistic community, El Dorado will become the Festival City with the theme or tagline of ‘It’s Showtime!’ This new brand will not be launched with an extravagant marketing campaign. Instead, the community will work in the coming years to earn this distinction. Plans are to host an event every month along with year-round activities.”

Bring on the new oil boom.

I think south Arkansas is ready.

Posted in Building Arkansas, Business | No Comments »

Oil in Arkansas’ Golden Triangle

Friday, June 1st, 2012

I was honored in April of last year to be asked to keynote the annual meeting of the Golden Triangle Economic Development Council at El Dorado’s beautiful new downtown conference center.

The council is a nonprofit organization that was formed to ensure a united economic development approach for Union, Ouachita, Columbia and Calhoun counties. That’s what you can define as the Golden Triangle of Arkansas with El Dorado, Camden and Magnolia as the three main communities.

I’ve long been intrigued by this part of the state (as evidenced by my Southern Fried post on Camden earlier this week).

Great people, fascinating history.

You can imagine, of course, how interested I was in a guest column by Richard Mason of El Dorado that ran recently in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Mason is one of the people responsible for downtown El Dorado being among the most attractive, interesting downtowns in the South.

He’s also the president of Gibraltar Energy Co. and knows what he’s talking about when he writes about the oil and gas business.

Here’s part of what he had to say: “I know. When you hear the words ‘south Arkansas’ it brings a shake of the head and a thought — those poor south Arkansas folks, losing population, jobs flying off to China — a sad part of the state.

“In my opinion, and yes, it is an optimistic one, I believe that perception is about to change. I am a professional geologist with more than 40 years of experience, and yes, I am convinced that in the next 10 years south Arkansas will be part of a new oil boom that will make the oil boom of the 1920s seem insignificant and could even dwarf the northwest Arkansas real estate boom of the past 20 years.”

Wow.

Mason is talking about the potential for revitalizing the Lower Smackover Brown Dense due to the technological advances of recent years.

“Geologists have known for at least 75 years that the formation contains oil, but only in the last 10 years have we figured out a way to produce all that oil,” he wrote. “The technology of lateral-horizontal well drilling and multi-fracs has given us the tools to unlock and produce this oil.

“Industry professionals have estimated that 3 billion barrels of oil reserves are present in the Brown Dense. Just to understand the potential of unlocking these massive oil reserves, multiply $100 — the price of oil — by 3 billion, and you will find there is not enough space on your calculator to get the answer.”

Mason believes that during the next decade, the Golden Triangle of Arkansas will become a boom area that will experience the kind of economic explosion now occurring in the Bakken Shale in North Dakota and the Eagle Ford Shale in south Texas.

I can tell you that I had trouble finding a motel room in Magnolia last year because of all the land men in town.

“The leasing of nearly a million acres of land across the southern counties of the state has already enriched thousands of land and royalty owners to the tune of an estimated $300 million, and that is just the top of the money pot,” Mason wrote. ”Within the next 24 months, I estimate a minimum of 20 drilling rigs will be operating in the southernmost counties of the state. That alone will add more than 500 jobs to the economy, and when you consider the service companies that are critical to drilling and completing these wells, new jobs will likely jump to more than 1,000.”

The numbers Mason throws out boggle the mind. He predicts:

– A minimum of 1,200 wells initially drilled.

– The wells will average 300 barrels of oil a day and create a cash flow of more than $1 billion a month.

– Almost $270 million a month will flow back to landowners and royalty owners.

– Revenue from property, payroll, severance and sales taxes will soar in the region.

“Population losses will be reversed as thousands of jobs are created, and as the huge cash flows begin to affect the local economies, the resulting new businesses will create additional thousands of jobs. Tax receipts pouring into the area will enhance the quality of life by supporting many of the items that bring a skilled labor force into communities, creating additional businesses.”

Just a dream?

One need only look back at the state’s first oil boom to realize it can happen.

Consider what happened to the population of El Dorado. It went from 3,887 in the 1920 census to 16,421 in the 1930 census. Suddenly El Dorado was known as the Queen City of South Arkansas.

Mason noted how some Arkansans also called it Cadillac City due to the wealth.

The past 30 years have not been kind as the city’s population has dropped from 25,270 to 18,884.

Everything changed for this part of south Arkansas on Jan. 10, 1921, when Dr. Samuel T. Busey’s Busey No. 1 well just southwest of El Dorado struck oil.

Busey, an Illinois native with an interest in both medicine and geology, had traveled to Texas in 1901 to examine the first producing oil well in that state, the Spindletop near Beaumont.

Kenneth Bridges and John Ragsdale pick up his story from there in the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture: “He and a group of investors attempted to drill oil wells near Vera Cruz with mixed results. As the Mexican Revolution erupted in 1910, Busey closed his medical practice and once again resumed traveling. He eventually made his way to Bolivia, involving himself in a number of business activities. He organized the financing of the first successful rubber plantation in Bolivia and in 1915 successfully completed an oil well in that country.

“He returned to the United States, excited by his success in Bolivian oil. He lived for a time in New Jersey, Oklahoma and Louisiana in the late 1910s, continuing to explore for oil. In 1920, a well east of El Dorado was drilled and showed a large natural gas flow. Busey was in Homer, La., about 40 miles away, and rode a horse to El Dorado to confirm the well information the next day. Unable to find a room, Busey bought the Arcade Hotel for $2,500.

“By this time, the Mitchell-Bonham Drilling Co. had acquired drilling rights on the 80-acre David R. Armstrong farm southwest of El Dorado. It had drilled a well to a depth of about 1,700 feet, but operations were suspended for financial difficulties.

“On Nov. 15, 1920, Busey arranged with local investors to take 51 percent ownership of the company along with rights to the well, all tools and the 80-acre tract that was being drilled. Drilling operations were resumed, but by early January 1921, Busey had to sell off shares of the company and rights to some of the land to meet expenses.”

Then came Jan. 10, 1921.

It was 4:30 p.m. The Busey No. 1 struck oil at a depth of 2,233 feet.

“Oil erupted to the surface, spraying the area with oil for more than a mile around,” Bridges and Ragsdale wrote. “Busey’s rich Discovery Well produced an astounding 15 million to 35 million cubic feet of natural gas and between 3,000 and 10,000 barrels of oil and water daily. This led to the oil boom that began petroleum development in Arkansas.

“A frenzy struck El Dorado as thousands of speculators swarmed into the area seeking their fortunes with Busey credited for it all. He quickly sold the hotel for $5,000 and was besieged by offers for the well. People sent money from all over the country to Busey for him to invest in the new south Arkansas oil industry. He declined the offers for the well and quietly returned all the money sent to him.”

Busey later became convinced that Monticello would become the next Arkansas boomtown, but his drilling efforts in Drew County were unsuccessful. He continued to operate oil leases in Union County until 1928.

Up the road in Smackover, Texas native Sid Umsted became the king. Umsted had been in the lumber business, moving his mill from Homer to Junction City in 1901.

Ragsdale and Don Lambert wrote in the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture that Umsted’s mill was the “primary source of employment in an otherwise undeveloped economic area. He immediately purchased and leased several hundred acres of land north into Ouachita County, with the bulk of it situated in what is now recognized as the Standard-Umsted/Snow Hill locale.”

When oil was discovered in northern Louisiana in 1919, Umsted decided there was potential for south Arkansas. After Busey struck oil in 1921, Umsted got busy.

Ragsdale and Lambert wrote: “Umsted organized an exploration venture that included four partners from Camden: W.W. Brown, T.J. Gaughan, J.D. Reynolds and J.C. Usery, who shared a half-interest with the V.K.F. Oil Co. of Shreveport, which agreed to drill one well for a small share.

“Umsted selected a drilling location one mile south of the Ouachita River on land leased from farmer Charlie Richardson. On July 29, the drill bit spun into the Nacatoch geologic formation 2,000 feet below. It was a gusher, and the Richardson No. 1 discovery created a frenzy of drilling activity. Within a year, 1,000 producing wells had been completed in the field that covered 60 square miles. By this time, Umsted owned an estimated 3,000 acres of oil leases and an additional 1,000 acres outright.”

Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey purchased the site of the old Umsted sawmill in 1923 for a field office and employee camp complex. Thus the name Standard-Umsted.

Umsted moved to Camden in 1924 and built the Mediterranean-style home that now serves as a bed-and-breakfast inn. He was killed in a 1925 train accident in Mississippi at the age of just 49.

In that same year of 1925, the Smackover field produced more than 77 million barrels of oil. It was the largest oil field in the nation at the time.

By 1923, El Dorado alone had 59 oil contracting companies, 13 oil distributors and refiners and 22 oil production companies. In a scene much like what’s now being experienced in parts of North Dakota, there were whole neighborhoods of tents and hastily constructed buildings to house workers.

There were an estimated 30,000 people living in El Dorado in 1925.

Keep your fingers crossed for south Arkansas. It could happen again.

Posted in Building Arkansas, Traveling Arkansas | 7 Comments »

Camden on the Ouachita

Wednesday, May 30th, 2012

Mayor Chris Claybaker drives his car slowly along the railroad tracks in downtown Camden on a Tuesday afternoon and invites me to take in the view below.

The Ouachita River, the river along which I was raised (upstream at Arkadelphia), shimmers in the late afternoon sun.

On a small sandbar on the other side of the river, several people have put a beach umbrella in the sand and are enjoying the low humidity.

A boat cruises down the middle of the river.

At the ramp, a man backs his boat into the river in order to get in a couple of hours of fishing before dark.

It’s almost as if the Camden Advertising & Promotion Commission set this up as a postcard shot on a late spring day.

Claybaker, who has been Camden’s mayor since 1995, talks about one of his dreams.

“I’ve long had a vision of somebody opening a restaurant on this site,” he says. “Imagine sitting on the back deck and listening to live music on a day like this.”

For now, that part of the mayor’s vision remains far from reality. But so much already has been accomplished along the river. This Friday night, a series of outdoor movies at the Camden Riverwalk amphitheater will commence. The movies, which are free, will begin at dusk. A film will be shown on a big screen each Friday evening for nine consecutive weeks through the end of July.

Several hundred people have shown up in past years for the Friday night free movies when the weather is good.

Sandy Beach Park along the Ouachita River was built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the 1970s, but the city failed to maintain the park properly.

“It wasn’t a place you wanted to spend time when I became mayor,” Claybaker says on our drive through the park.

He saw to it that city employees cleaned up the property and kept it clean. On this day, people are having picnics in a park that once was a haven for drug sales. Through the years, the mayor has worked to obtain grants from organizations ranging from the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department to the Ouachita River Commission to the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission to continue the riverfront development downtown. There are now docks on the river, retaining walls, a boardwalk, the amphitheater and even an artifical waterfall.

“When I became mayor, you couldn’t even see the river from most of this area,” Claybaker says. “It was all grown up with weeds and vines. We cleaned that out.”

Steamboats plied the Ouachita from 1819-1910, making Camden an important town.

The Vicksburg District of the Corps of Engineers states on its website: “The river commerce was a great force with activity from November to July. It was noted that during high water the steamboats traveled from Monroe to Arkadelphia. When the steamboats approached towns, the captain would blast the horn and the townspeople would stop all activity to run and greet the ships.”

The Ouachita River originates in the Ouachita Mountains of Polk County and flows south for 510 miles. Near Jonesville, La., it converges with the Tensas and Little rivers to form the Black River. The Black River, in turn, meets the Red River about 41 miles south of Jonesville. Another 28 miles downstream from there, the Red River joins the Atchafalaya River.

What’s now known as the Ouachita-Black River Navigation Project began in 1902, making the Ouachita navigable from Camden to Jonesville. Construction on a system of six locks and dams was completed in 1924. There are now four locks and dams in the system.

The northernmost lock and dam is the H.K. Thatcher northeast of El Dorado. That dam produces a navigable waterway 52 river miles north to Camden. It’s named after H.K. “Big Daddy” Thatcher, who spent a lifetime promoting the Ouachita River and whose contributions are recognized with a plaque at the Camden riverfront.

“During the 1850s, Camden served as the supply center for several counties and was the mercantile center for a radius of 100 miles,” Daniel Milam writes in the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture. “During this time, as many as 40,000 bales of cotton were shipped from its wharfs in a single year. As a steamboat river port, Camden had the accommodations and transportation to service the planter provisioning trade to New Orleans. By 1860, with a population of more than 2,000, Camden had newspapers, churches, schools, merchants, lawyers and manufacturers.”

Union Gen. Frederick Steele occupied Camden during the Red River Campaign of 1864. After losses at Poison Spring and Marks’ Mills, Steele and his troops headed back to Little Rock.

“After the Civil War, cotton production remained important to Camden,” Milam writes. “Much of it was accomplished by sharecropping. Steamboats continued to navigate the river, but railroads were coming. In the 1880s, the Iron Mountain and Cotton Belt were opened, and in the early 1900s, the Rock Island connection was completed.

“Trains opened up markets for Ouachita County’s pine and hardwood forests. Though they were challenged by the railroads, the steamboats continued to service Camden until the 1930s.”

Even as river transportation declined, Camden thrived. There were three major reasons for this.

First, as mentioned, Camden became a railroad center.

Second, oil was discovered at Stephens in Ouachita County in the 1920s.

Third, International Paper Co. built a huge mill at Camden in the late 1920s.

There was other industry.

Camark Pottery operated from 1926 until 1984, its brand known across the country.

Benjamin Tyndle Fooks developed a new grape soda known as Grapette at his Camden bottling plant, which he had purchased in the 1920s, and the brand thrived.

The population of Camden exploded, going from 3,238 in the 1920 census to 15,823 in the 1960 census. Those four decades were the glory years.

The Camden Army Air Field operated from 1942-44. The Shumaker Naval Depot also was established during World War II. It closed in the late 1950s, but the location was transformed into the Highland Industrial Park.

Like much of south Arkansas, Camden has suffered economically in recent decades. The population dropped from 15,147 in the 1970 census to 12,183 in the 2010 census.

Responding to a declining population, the Camden and Fairview school districts consolidated in the 1990s. IP closed its mill a little more than a decade ago. It was a blow that, in many ways, continues to affect Camden to this day. The mill had been a mainstay of the local economy from the year it opened in 1927 until its closure in January 2001.

A March 2001 Associated Press article began this way: “For 73 years, the stacks at International Paper Co.’s mill belched gray, sour steam day and night over the pine woods of south Arkansas. On summer afternoons, the plumes sullied laundry hanging outside. On winter mornings, they guided deer hunters downwind of their quarry. In any season, townspeople knew the answer to the question ‘paper or plastic?’ But IP closed the paper-bag plant in January, leaving 580 workers without a way to support families long dependent on company paychecks. The employee union urged IP to sell to another papermaker, but the company refused to put it into a competitor’s hands while the market is down. Now, with the hulking plant sitting silent, this town of 15,000 is dealing with its pain and trying to figure out how to remake itself economically.”

Camden has done some things right in the past decade. Not only is there the development of the riverfront as an attractive gathering spot, there seems to be a renewed interest in the city’s downtown.

Emily Jordan-Robertson, who founded Jordan Construction Co. in 1999, has poured vast amounts of energy and capital into restoring downtown buildings for retail and even residential use. Her most exciting project to date is the renovation of the city’s old post office.

Completed in 1896, the building is a classic example of the Richardson Romanesque style of design. The cost of construction was $39,000 at the time.

The building, once scheduled for demolition, was saved by Jordan-Robertson, who then embarked on an 18-month renovation project. It’s now the Postmasters Grill, bringing people from across south Arkansas to Camden for dinner and occasional live music on the patio.

Unlike the downtowns of so many other Arkansas cities, there’s plenty of activity now in downtown Camden after dark.

In addition to the Postmasters Grill, Allen’s Restaurant on Washington Street and What’s Cookin’ on Adams Street bring people downtown for dinner. Head just a bit farther down Adams Street and you can have dinner at either the famed White House Cafe (among the oldest restaurants in the state) or the Sandbar.

Farther out on Washington Street, James Woods continues to serve some of the best fried catfish in the South at Woods Place. He also caters special events at the River Woods, the shaded facility on the banks of the Ouachita that was once the IP Supervisor’s Club. It’s one of those “if only these walls could talk” buildings that has served as an entertainment location for decades.

Camden has a surprising number of good, locally owned restaurants for a city its size.

Another major project during Claybaker’s years as mayor was to clean out the portion of Adams Street once referred to by locals as The Front. Back when I would go to Camden to either play in or broadcast football games on the radio from old Coleman Stadium, The Front was an expanse of liquor stores and beer joints where drug sales and prostitution were common.

While cleaning up The Front and seeking to capitalize on its riverfront and revitalize its downtown, Camden continues to celebrate its history.

Along the Clifton-Greening Street Historic District, visitors can pass by the Greening House, the John Hobson Parker House, the Ramsey-McClellan House, the Richie-Crawford House (built in 1909 for wealthy businessman Walter Richie and later owned by the ill-fated Maud Crawford) and the Cleveland Avenue School.

Along the Washington Street Historic District, visitors can see the Godwin-Powell-May-Dietrich House (built in 1859), the Umsted House, the Marino Home, the Jordan-Shankle Home, the Graham-Gaughan-Betts Home, the Elliott-Meek-Nunnally Home and the McCollum-Chidester House Museum.

The McCollum-Chidester House, built in 1847 and used for five days by Gen. Steele as his headquarters during the Civil War, is open daily and operated by the Ouachita County Historical Society.

The Umsted House, built in 1923 by Sid Umstead, who prospered following the discovery of oil in south Arkansas, now operates as a bed-and-breakfast inn.

Later this summer, Claybaker will take over as president of the Arkansas Municipal League. He will be able to point to things going on in Camden — renewing a downtown, playing to your strengths (in this case a beautiful river), capitalizing on history — as ways to fight the opposing economic forces as the timber industry continues to suffer in south Arkansas.

Posted in Building Arkansas, Traveling Arkansas | 5 Comments »

Archive for the ‘Building Arkansas’ Category

On a barge at Rosedale

Speaker Carter and change in Arkansas

Archie Schaffer: Another Arkansas original

Thinking big in Little Rock

Deep in the Arkansas piney woods

Crossett: A Southern timber capital

Charlotte Schexnayder: Salty Old Editor

The south Arkansas oil boom — past and future

Oil in Arkansas’ Golden Triangle

Camden on the Ouachita

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