For the first time, Arkansas will have signs to direct motorists along three land routes that were used for the federal government’s forced migration of thousands of Indians across the state in the 1830s.
Richard Davies, executive director of the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism, said he hopes the signs are up by the end of the year.
“It has never been done before,” he said. “We’re taking the Trail of Tears route and matching it to highways and roads, and putting it on our website, arkansas.com.”
In 1987, the National Park Service posted signs designating the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail from North Carolina to Oklahoma, but it included only two routes: the Northern Route and the Water Route, which followed the Mississippi and Arkansas rivers. The Northern Route clips the Arkansas’ northwest corner.
But three land routes that traversed Arkansas - the Bell, Benge and Choctaw routes - never have been designated with signs. That soon will change.
Last year, the Arkansas Legislature passed Act 728,the Heritage Trails System Act, which called for four specific trail systems in the state to be designated with highway signs.
It included the Butterfield Stage Route, the Southwest Trail, Civil War troop movements and a map of American Indian removal trails.
Mapping for the first three trail systems is complete. Arkansas’ Trail of Tears map should be finished in about a month, Davies said.
Parks and Tourism is working with the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program and the state Highway and Transportation Department on the project.
Glenn Bolick, a spokesman with the Highway Department, said they don’t know yet how many miles of trails the system will include or how many highway signs it will require.
The federal government is also working on new signs designating the Trail of Tears.
With passage of the Omnibus Public Lands Management Act of 2009, the National Parks Service is adding the Bell and Benge routes to its trails system, along with land components of the Water Routeand dispersal and round-up routes, said Aaron Mahr, superintendent of the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail.
But the Parks Service will be marking only the migration of Cherokee Indians in 1838 and 1839, as specified by the federal law.
Arkansas’ maps and signs will include the migration of five tribes - Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw and Seminole, said John McLarty, president of the Arkansas chapter of the Trail of Tears Association. All five tribes were forced to relocate under the Federal Indian Removal Act in 1830.
McLarty said state and federal officials will work together on the Cherokee routes to make sure they are the same. Routes for the other four tribes will be designated by the state.
Davies said Arkansas’ signs may go up before the Parks Service signs.
“It’s ultimately our goal to sign the Bell and Benge routes or work with the state to sign the Bell and Benge route,” said Mahr. “The whole idea of this idea was to correct and tell the full story of Cherokee removal.”
John Bell and John Benge were Cherokee leaders who each led a detachment of Cherokees through Arkansas. Bell’s group included 660 people who traveled through southern Tennessee to Little Rock and north to Van Buren. Benge led 1,079 Cherokees from Lebanon, Ala., north to Tennessee.His group cut across southern Kentucky and Missouri before entering Arkansas, where it passed the sites of the modern towns of Harrison, Huntsville and Fayetteville before dipping south to Evansville.
The name Trail of Tears comes from an 1831 article in the Arkansas Gazette. When a group of Choctaw Indians passed through Little Rock, the chief told a reporter the forced migration was a “trail of tears and death.” The term Trail of Tears later became associated with the 1838-1839 removal of the Cherokee to Oklahoma.
The National Park Service’s current automobile route through Benton and Washington counties follows state and federal highways, so it isn’t very accurate, said Glenn Jones, vice president of the Arkansas chapter of the Trail of Tears Association. He said a Northwest Arkansas group called the Heritage Trail Partners has been working for five years to determine the correct route through that part of the state.
“We corrected history,” he said. “It’s extremely important.”
For some people, Jones said, the Trail of Tears is a very emotional journey. Visitors don’t need to be driving down congested U.S. 71 Business in Rogers, Lowell and Springdale thinking they’re on the Trail of Tears when they aren’t.
“Yeah, they follow it,” Jones said of the National Park Service auto tour, “but you’re 2, 3 or 6 miles off in some places.”
The new signs will be along Old Wire Road, which was the Butterfield Stage Route and the actual Northern Route of the Trail of Tears, said Jones. Old Wire Road is a few miles east of 71B, which the National Park Service had designated as the Trail of Tears route.
Geographic information systems and receipts filed with the federal governmentare being used to come up with accurate routes.
“We as researchers have discovered a treasure trove of these receipts at the U.S. Treasury Department,” said McLarty. “That gives us pinpoints, but pinpoints on the map don’t necessarily tell us how they got from point A to B.”
For motorists, the routes will include state highways, county roads and possibly some dirt roads. The marked roads will follow the original routes as closely as possible but will have to detour around developments and private property where there are no public roads.
“The trails will enable a traveler to follow as closely and safely as possible the original routes,” said Mark Christ, a spokesman for the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program. “In places they’ll be spot on it. And in other places, it’ll be the best reasonable alternative.”
“It won’t only be more accurate, it’ll be more accessible to everybody,” said Davies.
Christ referred to it as a “vicarious experience” for travelers. At Village Creek State Park near Wynne, Christ said, he has seen visitors get “teary eyed” when they walk a section of Bell’s Route that is still a footpath that probably looks much like it did 180 years ago.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 07/31/2010