Cotton Plant

The rain continued to fall as I headed further east. The farms and fields seem to have mostly been harvested, and the grasses and vegetation had already started turning an autumn-like golden hue. Along the way I passed by this old tractor, collecting rust beside a field.







And then down the road was this old farm building, surrounded by a wall of overgrown grass.





And then I made it to the small town of Cotton Plant. The town dates back to the 1840s, and there was even a small Civil War skirmish fought nearby. And as the town's name suggests, the town grew and prospered due to cotton. By the 1900s, Cotton Plant was home to several cotton gins, sawmills and factories. It was considered to be the "cultural center" of the area, with the town even having an opera house. Cotton Plant is best known now as the birthplace of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the "Godmother of Rock and Roll."

Like many Delta cities, Cotton Plant's population began to decline after the mechanization of farming meant fewer workers were needed to pick cotton. And in the 1960s, many white families left the town to avoid desegregating the schools. Cotton Plant peaked with a population of about 2,000 people in the 1950s. Today the population is around 500 people. And also like many other Delta cities, the town has struggled. Most of the old buildings on Main Street are abandoned and falling apart. The roof of one building, which used to be a store, has finally collapsed.



Here's the same spot, taken on a previous visit in 2019:



I wonder whatever happened to that dust-covered merchandise that had been sitting there on display?





And then a few other buildings in Cotton Plant:







It was time to start heading home, so I turned south towards the interstate. But before joining the slow traffic on I-40, I stopped by this old sharecroppers cabin. There must have been thousands of these old cabins across the Delta, but not too many of them are still standing.



I tried to get a few pictures while wiping raindrops off the lens.

A Rainy Day In The Delta

I have finally reached that part of being in your 40s where (and sorry if this is too much personal information) I hit the recommended age to have a colonoscopy. And so I did, and luckily all went well. But to make up for the indignity of the "prep," I treated myself to an extra day off from work. And since it was raining, I headed out to get a few pictures.

I headed east into the Delta, and soon stopped at the old Johnson Chapel Methodist Church, which was built in 1871. Services were held there for nearly 100 years, and the old building still looks nicely maintained.



It had rained heavily overnight, which gave the drought-parched landscape a good soaking.







The road headed further east into the small town of Des Arc, which is the home to the Lower White River Museum State Park. Next to the museum is this historic dogtrot cabin.





There were a few other old building scattered around the grounds:



Des Arc is an old city, established in the 1850s along the White River. And the oldest building in Des Arc is the old Frith-Plunkett House, which was built in 1858.



Due to its strategic location along the White River, Des Arc was a busy spot during the Civil War. Which meant that over the course of the war, most of the buildings in town were burned or destroyed. But the Frith-Plunkett House was spared, since it served as a hospital for Union troops.





The old house is empty and quiet, its windows and doors hidden behind plywood boards. There is a faded sign in the yard asking for donations to help restore the old home.



A few blocks down the road is the Prairie County Courthouse, which sits on a low hill above the river. The courthouse was built in 1913.



And just a few blocks away was this old home, which also seemed to look empty and disused. The yard was covered with a carpet of pine needles. I got a few pictures before heading out, crossing the bridge over the river and heading further east into the Delta.



*** So my apologies to anyone from Des Arc who might be stumble upon this blog while doing something innocent like looking for pictures of their hometown. Sorry you had to first read about a colonoscopy **

A Little Bit Of Falling Water At Falling Water Falls

We left The Narrows, driving back down the same dirt road that runs through Richland Valley.



We got an early dinner at Hillbilly Slims, and then decided to pay a quick visit to the nearby Falling Water Falls. I was a little shocked to see that there was actually a little bit of water flowing through the falls, despite the long lack of rain this summer.



Just for a little comparison, this is what Falling Water Falls looked like the last time I was here in April:



There were just a few other people there at the falls, including some people swimming. They would jump off the top of the falls and land, with a loud smack, into the water below. They said the water was really cold.

The Narrows

I have to apologize for the lack of any recent posts to any readers of this blog (if there are any out there still). This summer in Arkansas has been brutally hot, and the heat has stolen any willpower to go out and take pictures. But last week it was like someone flipped a switch, and it went from temps in the 100s to temps in the 80s. And with the cooler weather, it made me want to leave the precious embrace of air conditioning and go outside to take some pictures. So I reached out to my good friend Zack, and we decided to pay a visit to a spot along the Buffalo River called The Narrows.

It's not easy to reach The Narrows. You can either get in a canoe and float there, or drive down a bunch of dirt roads. The dirt road option can be tricky, however, since the road crosses Richland Creek a few times. And when the water is up, you can't safely cross. But since we have barely had any rain this summer, we definitely didn't have to worry about this. We followed the road as it ran by the creek, and made a stop at this old abandoned house.



The house was built in the "dogtrot" style, with an open breezeway between the rooms in the house. A seemingly new decoration to the house was a selection of bones and a skull, hung Blair Witch-style on a railing. I'm assuming those were placed there to scare people away (or maybe they were fans of Georgia O'Keefe paintings?).



The wooden beams on the old porch didn't seem like they were very stable so we didn't really explore too much around the old house:









We then headed further down the road, and passed by a cool old barn:



And then another one:







And then we headed further down the road, as it headed deeper into Richland Valley:



And we went by another barn, which seemed to be leaning off to one side. This one probably won't be around for too much longer.







And then we finally made it to the Narrows (or The Nars), which is a really cool spot along the Buffalo River. It is the remnant of an old mountain, that once sat in between the Buffalo River and Richland Creek. The two rivers carved and eroded away much of the mountain, so all that remains is a narrow sliver of rock that stands about 100 feet tall, but is only a few feet wide in places. The Buffalo River still flows beneath the unique bluff, but Richland Creek has since migrated to the other side of the valley.





And to just give a sense of scale of how narrow the bluff is here. On one side is the Buffalo River, and the other side is the road far below.



The last time I was here was in 2012. We had camped in a field nearby, and we were visited in the middle of the night by a herd of elk.





We carefully made it down the bluff without falling, and I got one last shot before we left. This bluff that we were just standing on stands tall on the left side of the image. The road runs to the Buffalo River just beyond.