Episode 16: Sweet Home and Happy Trails (of Trees)

This week we visit Sweet Home and Flat Rock (Sharp County) then talk about trees.

New Feature: Weekly Livestream Recordings

We've decided to begin sharing the recorded versions of our weekly livestream events here at EIC Journal. As an addition to the other posts we make here documenting our adventures, these videos will keep our readers more closely informed about what we are up to. This week's episode discusses the work Jeff Moser and his crew have been doing over the past several months with Izard County's abandoned or neglected cemeteries. There is also a "Tree-Talk" segment with a video of the Grafted Trees at Jumbo. It clearly shows why all bent trees in the woods simply cannot be dismissed as having been formed by natural events. We hope you enjoy this new feature:

Ten Years in a few paragraphs...

A lot of things have happened in the past ten years...both in our personal lives and with our activities with "Exploring Izard County". I lost my father to cancer after a lengthy fight with the disease in September of 2010 and then my mother to Alzheimer's in 2012. Bot of my founding colleagues suffered their own personal struggles and tragedies. Because of the circumstances involved with these events in our lives, our work (and play) at EIC has been sporadic. It was not non-existent, however. We did do a lot over these ten years - including hosting some incredible events! these include:

"Calico Rockin" Road-Trip 2010

*The "Heavenly Heartland" Road-Trip in the Spring of 2010.

*The "Calico Rockin' - The Bluff City Bash" Road-Trip in the fall of 2010.

*The "Old Lunenburg Music-Fest" in the Fall of 2011 An afternoon and evening of great local music and talent.

*The "Spring Splash 2" Road-Trip in the Spring of 2012 (with special guests, "Don't Stop Please").

*The "Trail of Trees - Trail of Tears" Road-Trip in Spring 2013.

*The "Trail Tree Symposium" with a presentation by Bob Gaut and appearance by "Ozark Traditions" traditional mountain folk group in January of 2014.

*Numerous "Flash Excursions" with groups numbering as many as 30 going to various places around the county. 

*The "Trail of Trees - Mystery Trees" Presentation & Tour with  Bob Gaut and a showing of the Mountain Stewards' film "Mystery Trees" Knob Creek Church in Spring 2016.

"Spring Splash 2" Road-Trip 2012

*The "Trail of Trees 2" Tour in connection with the Calico Rock "Native-American Day" in September of 2016 including a showing of "Mystery of the Trees" at the Calico Rock History Museum.

*The "Hidden Hollows" Road-Trip in Spring of 2018

*The "Schoolhouse Rockin' " Road-Trip in the Fall of 2019

So...we haven't been completely inactive. We've also found...or been told about many incredible places that were new to us. A complete list of those would include places like Benbrook Mill site, Old Water Mill site, Byrd-Smith Mill site, Cool Cave, Ball Hollow, Sadieville Falls among many other incredible places! And Trail Trees! Man, we got 'em!

"Trail of Tree-Trail of Tears" Road-Trip 2013

And while our posts at the "Exploring Izard County" blog  have been "far and few between", we have had a pretty steady presence on our companion Facebook Group page. If you are on Facebook and have never joined our group, please do! We have a lot of great discussion and interaction with our followers there. It's also a place where you can share your own adventures and historical knowledge in and about Izard County with interested folks!

Throughout this past ten years, there have been periods of activity on our part and at other times periods of inactivity. But our work at EIC and our love of the county has always been a large part of our lives - even during some of the darkest times. There is something quite therapeutic about getting out on the backroads and into the outback of Izard County. There's something comforting about learning the history of our area and the people who lived and struggled before us in this amazing place on Earth!

"Hidden Hollows" Road-Trip 2018

Looking forward, the EIC Crew will strive to keep finding the hidden gems in the county, both physically and historically: The stunning places of natural beauty; the funny and interesting anecdotes from the people of the past. We'll continue sharing what we find with those who are interested and hope to be a service to those unable to get out into the Izard County Outback themselves because of distance or infirmity. We will work hard towards a goal of helping individuals and organizations find ways to preserve and restore historic properties that are in their charge. 

The ten years ahead of EIC will be awesome! 

                                                 

The EIC Crew Nearly a Decade Later

Here we go again! Oh, my! When I set up this page, of course I intended it to be a running journal of our activities with the blog "Exploring Izard County". I did okay the first year...then slacked the next two until...well...now. I hope that's about to change and in fact has in a way already. In September of this year, we began doing weekly live-streams on our Facebook Group Page where we talk about things we've done recently and in the more distant past, what we are working on currently, and what we're wanting and planning to do in the future. We will begin multi-streaming soon to include our "Hunkahillbilly" YouTube Channel activities well!. This addition to our activities will give our followers the opportunity to interact with us real-time.

 While we are just learning how do use this service and the tech involved in creating enjoyable programs, we welcome your questions, comments and suggestions. If it were not for our readers and followers, the bulk of our content could never have been made. It's because of the tips and encouragement we have received over the years that we have continued to both be able to and want to share our adventures and other activities with you.

 In addition to the live-stream programming we will be offering, I would like to revive this page to document our activities in writing. Not only for your pleasure, but just to have a historical record of them. It's our hope that as the generations behind ours matures to the point of being interested int heir roots, someone else will come along and take the mantle-the one that was handed us by the accounts of history contributed by the great local historians as well as curious adventurers of the past. We love this county and want to share it's astounding beauty and captivating history.

 So, although the entries here may not be weekly or even bi-weekly, we will AGAIN begin documenting our activities here on this page. We will begin with a description of what has happened over the past nine years or so since the last entry in this journal. That entry will publish here very soon.

Indian Cave on Calico Rock Bluff

Click images to enlarge.


View Video Here.


A property-owner from Calico Rock, Ed Matthews, recently asked the EIC Crew to visit the site of an interesting and very unusual cave within the city of Calico Rock. Ed and others with properties near the cave have long wondered about the origins of the unique rock walls that have been built inside the natural shelter and asked us to investigate and add our insight.

On Saturday, May 29th, 2010, the EIC Crew, joined by Tony McGuffey and his wife Roberta as well as by Jeff and Laura Snyder, visited the site during a preliminary trip to prepare for a future expedition to more thoroughly investigate what we found. The cave, which lies only a few feet from a main County Road, has a carefully concealed entrance, the mouth having had a stone retaining wall built in front of it and backfilled to create a small slit in the earth with steps leading to the cave below. The natural shelter is approximately 40 feet wide and as many feet deep with walls constructed of stone to create three seperate rooms resembling a warehouse or underground dwelling. In fact, a natural hole in one wall of the cave opens into a small chamber containing clear, fresh water which stands in a natural reservoir. This "cistern" is accessible from above the cave as well as from inside. The largest man-made wall runs the width of the cave and sports a doorway and two wondows perched near the roof of the shelter.

The property-owners near the site have never spoken with any long-time residences of Calico who remember anything at all about the use of this cave. No one in living memory seems to have any idea whatsoever how the site was created or for what it was used. Speculation persists.

Some have offered the suggestion it was used as a speak-easy during the days of prohibition. Others have guessed it might have been used as storage for munitions during the Civil-War, though...as we found on our preliminary visit...it's very moist inside the structure. Buddy, a local landowner who has lived near the cave for 20 years, told us that they had tried keeping potatoes in the cave but they soon rotted suggesting that the cave would not have been used for the purpose of storing produce of any kind.

Personally, considering the fact that there were many in Izard County during the Civil-War who opposed slavery and who were also defiant towards the Confederacy, I believe it is possible the site could have been used as a stop on the notorious Underground Railroad, though its just as possible some home-owner during the latter part of the 19th century simply built the walls in the shelter cave as a summer home to stay cool during the suffocating heat of the season.

The EIC Crew has asked those who were along for this preliminary visit to the site to share their own thoughts about what we observed. We also invite readers to join the conversation. We will be revisiting this post in the future after we have had a chance to more thoroughly investigate the site. We hope to even dig a few small "test-holes" to see what kind of artifacts we can find which will help to give a better picture of how the site was used in the past...and who actually used it.

We welcome your comments!

Backtrack, Forward - Ho!

I know. Terrible, ain't it?

We set up a journal, start publishing descriptions of our adventures, then just quit!

We oughta be ashamed of ourselves!

Well...hopefully we can spend a little time retracing our steps in a general way over the past TWO DAD-GUM YEARS we've failed to update the EIC Journal! Then, perhaps we can start all over again.

The last entry to the journal (apart from the publication of a letter from our friend, Cindy Cooper) was way back in June of 2008. It covered the hazards of getting out among nature in the hot, humid months of summertime in the Ozarks. We've found over the past 3 1/2 years that the hardest time of the year to persuade ourselves to get out and explore is when the tiny flesh-eating monsters lie in wait and will suck you dry if you've not already been drained by the oppressive heat and humidity! It's MUCH easier to get out in the snow, ice, and cold driving rain than it is to wade out into a field or grove of biting insects, by golly!

Despite the complaints, however, we did manage to learn something during the summer of '08 that has been beneficial to our goal of helping preserve the history and culture of the county. To avoid the weeds, woods, and the perils the former, we began visiting cemeteries in the county. This new tactic really opened up a whole new window into understanding the history and culture of this unique and wonderful place. As we visited these places of rest and began to learn about the lives of those buried there, the colorful and interesting history endeared the county to us even further than previously.

What we've learned over the past couple of years is this:

Izard County was the Wild West before there even WAS a Wild West!

We visited 17 separate cemeteries during the summer of '08. Since then, we've visited 19 more. You can find each listed on the sidebar of Exploring Izard County

Mind you, though we're often apprehensive about getting into the woods during the months of monsters, that doesn't mean we were complete wimps! We were able to visit many wonderful places during the summer of '08 including some of our favorite places like the Trimble House, the Jehoiada Jeffery Homeplace, The A.C. Jeffery Homeplace, The Hunt-Copp Mill remains, and Hobo's Den.

During the summer of '09, we continued our tactic of trying to stay out of the weeds by resuming our visits to cemeteries. We were rewarded by finding such historical jewels as Wayland Arbor Cemetery. But, of course, we also visited other very interesting places like the Rector Log Barn, Moser Schoolhouse, Shady Grove Schoolhouse, and the Pleasant Grove Schoolhouse (converted into a store-building along Arkansas 56.

A Note from Cindy Cooper

Following is a moving e-mail I recently received from Cindy Cooper after she viewed our latest post about Knob Creek:

Bring's tears to my eyes... It won't be long until it will start falling in. It seems like yesterday that I was a little girl and would walk over there. Uncle Gralen was blind, but he would always know when I was walking up in the yard...even from where he always sat at that window in a rocking chair. I always said he could see... because he was always at that window...but he couldn't. My Aunt Grace would be cooking in the back-kitchen and Great Grandma Turis would be settin' on the front porch swinging. She would have her little can of snuff and she'd roll her little stick in it then put it in her mouth. Her hair was long and she would unroll it and show me how she'd roll it back up.

They had an old grandfather clock that sat on the mantel and Aunt Grace would always wind it up just for me...it was stolen some time ago. I remember a white crochet bed spread that was on the bed . It was so beautiful to me. Out in the smokehouse, they had a grater that grandma would go get out and let me play with.

I remember those flowers being planted . She had some that were all different colors...like wild flowers. To this day, Easter flowers and wildflowers are my favorite!

I remember the old barn in back and the cows Aunt Grace milked. Out to the side of the barn was her clothesline, then a fence, and over from the fence was her garden. The road at that time passed in front of the house and up the side. They had a big collie dog like Lassie...can't remember his name. Great Grandma had a pair of tiny glasses. When she passed away someone gave them to me. I've since passed them on to Janet.

Me and Brother Pod would not miss a week to go over there to see them. Of course, Pod stayed at the creek most of the time and I would walk up from the spring from RJ's. Many times, Aunt Grace would give me a bucket and I would walk to the spring and get water for her. She never made me that I remember. I wasn't very strong, but I would always get them water. The cistern was at the side of the house but I just liked going to get them water...guess I thought I was being big.

I remember the newspaper being put up in the walls and closet. Aunt Grace would make up some flour and water and make a paste and put it on the walls.

Well...I have went down a lane Tonight that has me crying! Everyone calls the place “The Robert Cooper Place”, but to me and Brother Pod, it was our Grandma Turis or Aunt Grace's. Brother Ed wasn't born yet, so he doesn't have these memories of growing up on Knob Creek like me and Pod...or the ones we had of grandma Turis. I remember that Doyle was a baby when we saw the bear in the field that scared me and Pod to death! We had Doyle in a wagon.

I don't know how Grandma spelled her name so I guessed at it. She was over 100 years-old when she died in the Calico Rock nursing home. I loved her with all my heart and still miss them all! - Cindy Cooper