The skyline of Little Rock, Ark., framed by the Arkansas River, adds a new attraction when the Clinton Presidential Center and Library opens in November. Go to Arkansas photo gallery
Several years ago, I was riding a train in France and happened to start a conversation with the couple in the seat across from me. When I said was from Arkansas, the man immediately frowned and responded, "Ah, yes - Leetle Rock. Central High School."
He was old enough to remember the 1957 school desegregation crisis that, for weeks, put Little Rock on the front page of newspapers around the world. Arkansas, a place that few people had heard of and even fewer ever thought about, suddenly became a notorious symbol of Southern resistance to the civil-rights movement.
For years afterward, photographs of nine black students walking past angry mobs of white protesters haunted the city and the state.
But that was nearly a half-century ago, and for most people today, the Central High crisis is not even a distant memory. Now when I'm in a foreign country and mention that I'm from Arkansas, the response is almost certain to be, "Ah, yes: Beel Clean Tone."
Having a president hail from your state will change your reputation in a hurry. Whether people snicker or not is beside the point: Bill Clinton is, and will be for the near future, the new symbol of Arkansas.
And having a charismatic, well-spoken, politically successful Rhodes Scholar and ex-leader of the Free World as your poster boy isn't a bad way to go.
After all, what was Arkansas's image to the rest of America before Bill? A barefoot hillbilly in overalls, playing a fiddle? A university that's perceived as just another Southern football and basketball factory? Great swaths of farmland and forest?
Some people might have known the state as the home of Wal-Mart and Tyson Foods, two 800-pound gorillas of the retail world. But the truth is, most people didn't know Arkansas at all and, even now, after Clinton, most still don't.
Simple geography played a big part in Arkansas' history and in making it the kind of place it is today. When Arkansas became a territory in 1819, 16 years after the Louisiana Purchase, few people lived here, and the ones who did found it awfully hard to get around. Much of the eastern half was so low-lying and subject to long periods of flooding that it was known as "the Great Swamp."
Just laying a railroad track from Memphis to Little Rock took a hugely disproportionate amount of time and effort. The western half encompassed the wild and rugged Ozark and Ouachita mountains, where building roads more serviceable than mule paths was next to impossible.
The Great Swamp was eventually drained and turned into cropland, but the people who settled in the mountains remained isolated by the difficulties of transportation well into the 20th century, holding on to traditional ways of living, speech patterns and music. These, then, were the "hillbillies" who played old-time English and Scottish ballads, clog-danced and used language reminiscent of immigrants who crossed the Atlantic in the 18th and early 19th centuries.
All this relates to an essential fact: For most of its history, Arkansas was (and remains) two places: the flat southeastern half, where farmers grow cotton, rice and soybeans, and which belongs to the true American South; and the mountainous northwestern half, which is more like the Midwest.
When the Civil War came, citizens in northwestern Arkansas strongly opposed secession, but the slave-owning southeast won the day.
During the century after the Civil War, Arkansas had as tough a time as any state in America. For one thing, it was terribly poor, in part because the state government defaulted on major loans and ruined its credit. (A governor who took office in 1874 said, "There isn't enough money in the state treasury to buy kindling wood for a fire in the governor's office.")
With its small population and lack of capital, Arkansas stagnated in a kind of permanent depression. The economic mainstays of cotton, apples, coal and timber all declined after the turn of the century; then came devastating floods in 1927 and 1937 and the true Great Depression. Between 1940 and 1950, Arkansas proportionately lost a higher percentage of its population than any other state. And just about the time economic growth was beginning, the '57 Central High crisis made the state an object of contempt and ridicule.
Things began to turn around in the 1960s. Several Arkansas politicians, including Sens. J. William Fulbright and John McClellan and Rep. Wilbur Mills, rose to influential positions in Washington.
In 1968, the state elected as governor the improbable Winthrop Rockefeller, a transplanted New Yorker and black-sheep grandson of robber baron John D.
Winthrop Rockefeller had so much money that people trusted him not to steal. He instituted serious reforms in areas ranging from civil rights to prison administration to economic development. He took on the good-old-boy politicians who had controlled the state for decades, and the stage was set for a young idealist named William Jefferson Clinton to run for attorney general, then governor, and later the White House.
About the same time, Arkansas began to transform some of its liabilities into positives. Its northwestern half was mostly rural, undeveloped and forested. In the 1960s and '70s, Americans discovered hiking, backpacking and canoeing, and Arkansas just happened to have nearly 3-million acres of national forest, the country's first national river (the wild and beautiful Buffalo), a better state park system than many larger, richer state, and an array of other back-to-nature attractions. It adopted the tourism slogan "The Natural State," and invited the rest of the country to enjoy its lack of freeways, congestion and smog.
This helped Arkansas's image and self-esteem, but no place gets rich off campers and paddlers. Economically, a boom in northwestern Arkansas led by the phenomenal growth of Wal-Mart turned the area into one of the fastest-growing in the United States during the 1990s. Several other companies in central Arkansas and elsewhere have seen nationwide success, although, like the rest of the country, the state has had downs to go with the ups during the roller-coaster economy of the past 20 years.
Arkansas won't be mistaken for SoHo, South Beach or Santa Monica, but it's indisputably part of the 21st century. It has slick modern office buildings, sprawling suburbs of million-dollar houses, music clubs, excellent restaurants in diverse styles, symphony orchestras and theater companies, and much of the rest of the contemporary U.S. lifestyle package-including (shhh . . . don't tell anybody) congested freeways full of people driving their fancy foreign coupes while calling on their cell phones to reschedule their therapist appointments, Pilates sessions and yoga classes.
The traveler today can explore many places that typify Arkansas's mix of natural world and urban scene, difficult history and present promise. Among them is the state capital, Little Rock, which is also Arkansas's urban, financial and geographical center.
Little Rock was established on the first high ground (there really was a "little rock") that settlers reached as they ascended the Arkansas River. An earlier capital in the southeast, Arkansas Post, was flooded too often to grow into a real city, and was eventually abandoned; today the National Park Service operates it as a national memorial site.
Little Rock's major attraction isn't quite here yet: the Clinton Presidential Library, housed in a striking building overhanging the Arkansas River downtown. Until the doors open in November, we can only wonder what kind of priorities it will give to Clinton's various successes and scandals.
In the meantime, famed Central High School has been honored as a National Historic Site, in memory of its important role in the civil rights era. You can't wander the halls here (it's still a functioning public school), but you can admire its impressive architecture and tour the visitor center across the street, where exhibits enlighten those too young to remember the long struggle for equal access to education.
Less than an hour southwest of Little Rock, set among the long ridges of the Ouachita Mountains, lies Hot Springs National Park, an odd combination of federal park and modern city, and certainly not much like the national parks most people know. In the early 19th century, the U.S. government protected the area for the alleged therapeutic properties of the hot water that flowed from hillsides. Later, it was designated a national park, and a thriving spa town grew up around the springs.
Today the park encompasses a relatively small area of the hills around downtown Hot Springs, plus several historic bathhouses from the era when "taking the waters" was a fashionable holiday for society folk.
All sorts of people, from Al Capone to Babe Ruth to Harry Truman, visited Hot Springs in its heyday, and nightclubs (with open, though illegal, gambling) brought in top entertainers. The clubs are gone now, and few people believe in healing baths anymore, but Hot Springs still has a horse-racing track, several pretty lakes for fishing and water-skiing, quick access to the campgrounds and trails of the 1.8-million-acre Ouachita National Forest, and a history that legitimately can be called unique.
If you expect Yellowstone or the Everglades, you'll be disappointed; Hot Springs National Park's attraction is the way its peculiar past has shaped a modern urban area.
The area around Mountain View, in north-central Arkansas, provides another look into the state's history. The nearby Ozark Folk Center was established to keep alive the traditional arts and crafts of the mountains. As you wander the grounds, you'll find people weaving, making baskets, smithing and crafting fiddles and dulcimers, among other occupations. Regular concerts of traditional and folk music are held at the center's auditorium.
Not far west, in the heart of the Ozark Mountains, lies what is perhaps Arkansas's most famous natural attraction, Buffalo National River. Nearly destroyed by dams in the 1960s, the Buffalo winds for more than 130 miles past beautiful bluffs and gravel bars, offering spring whitewater for serious canoeists and calm, easy floating for summer boaters. Outfitters licensed by the National Park Service provide not only canoes and shuttle service, but advice on which stretch of the river best matches the skills of floaters.
Among other destinations that reveal the essence of Arkansas are Eureka Springs, in the northwest, full of Victorian architecture and an odd assortment of artists and counterculture types; Old Washington, in the southwest, a state park preserving historically significant 19th-century buildings; and Crater of Diamonds State Park, also in the southwest, a spot where you can dig for real diamonds (no kidding) and keep any you find. It's the only diamond mine in the world open to the public.
Poor and troubled Arkansas's past may have been, but from the perspective of the early 21st century, some good things have evolved from its experience. Arkansas has preserved more of its heritage than most states have, including both its natural and human history. There's room to roam here, and room to grow. And an awareness of difficult times may have made its citizens more appreciative of contemporary blessings.
For years, Arkansas's slogan was "Land of Opportunity," and for years it seemed only that: a slogan. Today, perhaps, its people may be ready at last to take advantage of their opportunity to move into the future while holding on to the best of the past.
- Arkansas native Mel White was a newspaper reporter and magazine editor for several years before becoming a freelance writer. A contributing editor for National Geographic Traveler, he specializes in travel and natural history.
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Top Two Annual Festivals
Arkansas Folk Festival: Amateur and professional musicians get together for a weekend of fiddling, strumming and picking in this everybody's-welcome annual event. Included are formal concerts as well as folks simply gathering on the courthouse square to play traditional songs. Mountain View, third weekend in April; www.mountainviewcc.org.
Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival: Quickly gaining a worldwide reputation, this 10-day festival includes the screening of dozens of documentaries, lectures by visiting scholars, workshops with filmmakers, and a chance to mingle with various film buffs. Hot Springs, mid-October; www.DocuFilmInst.org.
The Best Legend - True or Not
Tradition has it that before the arrival of European settlers, Indians designated the valley now known as Hot Springs National Park as neutral ground, so members of warring tribes could bathe in peace in the thermal waters.
Three Must-See Places
Thorncrown Chapel: Why was a tiny wood-and-glass chapel in Arkansas chosen by architects as one of the most influential building designs of the 20th century? See for yourself just west of Eureka Springs at the exquisite Thorncrown Chapel, created by Fayetteville architect E. Fay Jones. www.thorncrown.com
Talimena National Scenic Byway: Winding for 54 miles along ridge tops of the Ouachita Mountains, this highway in the sky offers some of the best panoramas between the Appalachians and the Rockies. The byway runs from Mena, Ark., to Talihina, Okla. www.fs.fed.us/oonf/rec/scenic.htm
Blanchard Springs Caverns: Second to no cave in the beauty of its formations, Blanchard Springs Caverns near Mountain View ranks among America's most underpublicized natural attractions. Strictly protected by the U.S. Forest Service since opening to visitors, it remains a "living" cave, its formations still growing.
Three Places to Avoid
The Interstate 30 bridge over the Arkansas River at Little Rock during rush hour.
Anywhere downwind of an odoriferous commercial chicken house on a hot day. (Arkansas is among the top poultry-producing states in the country.)
Eureka Springs on a summer weekend. The traffic and crowds will make you miss the real charm of this eccentric "town where misfits fit."
Best Place to Taste Regional Cooking
Sim's, in Little Rock, and Lindsey's, across the river in North Little Rock, let you choose between two varieties of barbecue sauce (mustard-based at the former, tomato-based at the latter), and typify the way Arkansas lies at the crossroads of southeastern-style and Texas-style barbecue. Later, head to the nearby town of Scott for home-style cooking and fabulous onion rings at Cotham's.
A Famous Native Son or Daughter
You thought I was going to say William Jefferson Clinton, didn't you? Nope, the Arkansas person who has had the greatest worldwide influence has been an adopted Arkansan named Sam Walton. In 1962 he opened a small variety store in Rogers. Seventeen years later, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. reached $1-billion in annual sales more quickly than any company ever. In 2002, Wal-Mart set a record by selling $1.43-billion in merchandise in a single day.
A Major Problem Residents Now Face
The Arkansas educational system was declared unconstitutional in 2003 because of differences in opportunities for students among the state's school districts. The state has been struggling painfully and contentiously ever since to merge small, inefficient districts and provide money for teacher salaries and other needs.
Best Joke Residents Tell on Themselves - Or Their Rival State
If an Arkansas couple gets a divorce, are they still brother and sister?
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ABOUT THIS SERIES: The Louisiana Purchase doubled the size of our young nation. Here is the 12th in a series of articles reporting, state by state, what the Louisiana Purchase represents today.
ON THE WEB: Readers can find all the articles in our series on the Louisiana Purchase, which ends in May, by going to the Web site www.sptimes.com/lapurchase There are links to the installments and interactive features.
