A visit to Sawdust Hill

Headed east out of Wynne on U.S. 64, you quickly come off Crowley’s Ridge and are back in the heart of the Delta.

On either side of the highway, the corn stands tall. In this era of high corn prices, there are parts of east Arkansas that resemble Iowa more than the cotton-dominated region that some of us once knew. There’s still cotton grown here, just not as much of it.

There are also rice, soybeans and milo growing here. A field next to the Parkin Archeological State Park is filled with sunflowers. It’s hard to imagine this was once a giant forest of bottomland hardwoods that helped build Chicago, St. Louis, Memphis and other cities.

The St. Francis River runs muddy due to the rain. The St. Francis originates in the Missouri hills south of St. Louis and flows as a clear upland stream before slowing down near Poplar Bluff. The river forms the boundary between the Missouri Bootheel and Arkansas before entering the state for good near Childress in eastern Craighead County. It flows between the Mississippi River on the east and Crowley’s Ridge on the west, finally emptying into the mighty Mississppi in the St. Francis National Forest just north of Helena.

The river is sluggish and filled with silt by the time it reaches Parkin in Cross County. William Parkin of Memphis was in charge of laying tracks for the St. Louis Iron Mountain & Southern Railroad in 1887, and the new town that sprang up along the tracks was later named for him. Within a decade, Parkin was the center for lumber operations in the area. A couple of brothers from Pennsylvania formed what would become the Lansing Wheelbarrow Co. in 1890. That same year, George and Jake Mattox established the Northern Ohio Lumber Co.

In 1902, Henry Clay Coldren began the Parkin Cooperage Co. His business and the Mattox brothers’ company merged in 1906 to become the Northern Ohio Cooperage & Lumber Co. By the 1920 census, Parkin had 1,378 residents, more than the 1,105 residents in the 2010 census. Families-both black and white-moved to Parkin to work in the lumber industry in the early 1900s, and the companies provided segregated schools for their children.

More than three-quarters of the Northern Ohio sawmill employees were black. The company constructed a wood-framed schoolhouse for black children in 1910, and it remained in service until 1948. That one-room schoolhouse has been restored and is on the grounds of the Parkin Archeological State Park. Also on the grounds is a cemetery used from 1909-27. Sawdust from the massive mill was dumped here on a daily basis for years, and the area became known as Sawdust Hill.

Nature has never been a friend to this area. There were major floods along the St. Francis in 1912, 1913, 1927 and 1937, causing many residents to flee to tent camps on Crowley’s Ridge. A tornado hit the town in 1928, scattering lumber from the Northern Ohio mill for miles. That was followed by the Great Depression and a series of droughts. By the late 1940s, both the Northern Ohio and the Lansing Wheelbarrow Co. were gone. The hardwood forests had been depleted, and cotton was king.

In a strange twist, the existence of the Sawdust Hill community protected what turned out to be one of the premier archaeological sites in North America. Because homes sat atop much of the Parkin site, it was protected from what archaeologists simply call “pot hunters,” and from cotton farmers and their plows. The 17-acre Parkin site had housed a large community of American Indians from about 1000 until at least 1550. It was surrounded by a moat and a log palisade wall for protection. A tall mound is still on the banks of the St. Francis River. The Parkin site has been designated a national historic landmark, one of only 10 such sites in Arkansas.

A number of scholars believe this was the village of Casqui, visited by the Hernando de Soto expedition in 1541. The Spanish explorers were here from 1541-43. They reported that the chief known as Casqui and the residents of the community named for him walked to greet de Soto and invited the Spaniards to stay in the village. The chief and dozens of residents were baptized as Christians during that visit. The Spaniards erected a big wooden cross atop the mound during what’s believed to have been the first Christian service ever held in what’s now Arkansas.

In 1965, the University of Arkansas conducted a field school at the Parkin site. A year later, the Arkansas Archeological Society held its annual training program there. A powerful state senator from Parkin, Clarence Bell, began working to bring a state park to the site. The park was authorized by the Legislature in 1965, but no money was available until a decade later when land acquisition began. Development started in 1991, and the current visitors’ center was dedicated in 1994. The park operates under a partnership with the Arkansas Archeological Survey.

The state park is now the main attraction in the eastern part of Cross County, though old-timers also will tell you that it was after a show in Parkin that musician Carl Perkins overheard someone on the dance floor warn folks to stay away from his blue suede shoes. It’s said that Perkins wrote down those words and then recorded “Blue Suede Shoes” in December 1955, more than 400 years after de Soto had made some history of his own in the area.

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Freelance columnist Rex Nelson is the president of Arkansas’ Independent Colleges and Universities. He’s also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.

Editorial, Pages 17 on 07/31/2013

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