OPINION | REX NELSON: Cotton Plant luminaries
In a March 2018 story for The New York Times, Richard Fausset wrote about the slow death of Cotton Plant.
In a March 2018 story for The New York Times, Richard Fausset wrote about the slow death of Cotton Plant.
I was a teenager in the 1970s and just beginning my love affair with rural Arkansas. During visits to my grandparents' home in Des Arc, I enjoyed going on long…
The New York Times focused on our state last month due to the ongoing disaster known as the Arkansas Legislature. It published a major story about Bitcoin oper…
I'm in Princeton, the first county seat of Dallas County, but there's not much to see. In the 2020 census, there were 13 residents.
The great Mississippi writer Willie Morris once used a term that I think about on days like this: "the last of the desultory Southern drivers."
Like most counties in rural Arkansas, Dallas County has been bleeding population for decades. In 1930, there were 14,671 residents. By the 2020 census, that ha…
Growing up in Arkadelphia, I came to realize that I was on the edge of two worlds. I could head west into the Ouachita Mountains. There were hills, lots of roc…
It was 1985. I was 26, single, living in the state's largest city, serving as assistant sports editor of the Arkansas Democrat, covering Dallas Cowboy home gam…
Bald Knob is a surprisingly good place to dine for a town of 2,500 residents. There's the Bulldog, a past inductee into the Arkansas Food Hall of Fame. There's…
As a trustee of the Winthrop Rockefeller Charitable Trust, Marion Burton had a dream. Burton, who died in late January at age 93, dreamed of Winthrop Rockefell…
Former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour once described duck hunting this way: "The camaraderie and collegiality you get in duck hunting is totally different from…
During the decade I worked in the governor's office, I looked forward to trips when Marion Burton was flying the plane. Burton, who died in late January at age…
I'm having lunch with Woodruff County Judge Michael John Gray at Smokin' Joes BBQ along U.S. 64 in McCrory, and it seems he knows everyone in the room. That's …
The phone rang early one morning back in 2018. On the line was the man who at the time was chairman of the Arkansas Democratic Party, Michael John Gray of Augu…
It wasn't duck season yet, but I was like a child on Christmas morning when Woodruff County Judge Michael John Gray took me to the lodge for the Coca Cola Wood…
At the urging of Arkansas agricultural interests, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed a project in the 1970s to dredge and straighten several miles of th…
The interview I was conducting in Bald Knob ended more quickly than I had anticipated that July day. So I called Cave City Mayor Jonas Anderson to tell him I m…
James and Deborah Fallows wrote one of my favorite books six years ago. It's titled "Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey Into the Heart of America."
It was an honor to be asked last month to speak at the opening dinner for the annual winter meeting of the Arkansas Municipal League. It's one of the largest c…
When I noticed that Valentine's Day fell on a Wednesday (a column day for me), I began thinking about romantic getaways that Arkansans might not know about. I …
I became convinced that God has a sense of humor when my oldest son was a distance runner.
I'm sitting in the living room of the Calico Riverview Inn at Calico Rock, visiting with sisters Tracy Owens and Cathy Beard. The sisters were born six years a…
When Stan Parris retired as a full-time Baptist minister in Arkadelphia in November 2016, he told his wife he would like to take on the responsibility of groce…
The first time I was made aware of April's total solar eclipse was during a 2021 trip to De Queen. On that trip, I visited with civic leaders like Suzanne Babb…
If you like Arkansas towns near the Oklahoma border such as Mena and De Queen, you have Arthur Stilwell to thank.
Since entering Congress in January 2011, U.S. Rep. Rick Crawford has been about as much of a nonentity as one can imagine on Capitol Hill.
Phillip Wilson was working in the technology sector in Dallas after having grown up in rural west Arkansas when he experienced what a lot of Arkansans have thr…
I was watching the 2017 Tom Cruise movie "American Made" at a Little Rock theater when I suddenly felt the urge to text my wife.
Arkansas State University at Jonesboro reported a record enrollment of 14,903 students last fall. The previous record was 14,144 in the fall of 2017. The 2023 …
Todd Shields, the enthusiastic chancellor of Arkansas State University at Jonesboro, is giving me a campus tour in a golf cart. I'm in Jonesboro on a regular b…
It was quite the party on the Arkansas State University campus on the Saturday before Thanksgiving. I was in the chancellor's box at the football stadium in Jo…
The North Fork River begins in Missouri near the town of Mountain Grove. By the time it empties into the White River in Arkansas, it has covered 110 miles and …
I'm having lunch with Dan Daugherty, a longtime Little Rock public relations figure who retired to Norfork in Baxter County. We're at a place with the interest…
As 2024 begins, we find ourselves in a state that's doing well economically while being badly broken politically. A dark cloud hangs over our state Capitol.
A small sawmill was constructed in the pine woods of Lafayette County in the late 1860s. The mill later was purchased by Bodcaw Lumber Co. and grew into a mass…
It was cold and spitting snow that day in December 1992 when the cab driver dropped me off at Maya Angelou's house in Winston-Salem, N.C. I was political edito…
Another year of traveling across and writing about Arkansas begins. Here are things I would like to see happen in our state in 2024:
Alden Burge began smoking turkeys in a smokehouse behind his home at Lewisville after moving to this southwest Arkansas town from Shreveport in 1953. At first,…
The pandemic year of 2020 was coming to an end, and Arthur Orduna was ready for a change. Orduna was living in New Jersey while working on new products and ser…
Entering the state from the south, I cross the border from Louisiana on what becomes Arkansas 53. I pull into the Lake Erling Country Store, having heard it ha…
It was hot on the day of my visit to Blanchard Springs Caverns, but cool deep beneath the earth. The visitors' center operated by the U.S. Forest Service was p…
During the decade I worked in the governor's office, the expenditures that were hardest to convince legislators to support were those having to do with researc…
More than a dozen years ago, I wrote a column headlined "Man on a mission" about the Arkansas Research Alliance.
My most vivid childhood memory is from 60 years ago tonight. I was four years old. The nation was still in shock from the assassination of President John F. Ke…
It's hard to comprehend that David Bazzel is 60. In our minds, he will always be "Arkansas' most eligible bachelor," the former University of Arkansas football…
The weather couldn't be better as Dr. Dean Kumpuris, Jane Rogers and I walk through the Vogel Schwartz Sculpture Garden in downtown Little Rock's Riverfront Pa…
The day started early with breakfast at the Skillet Restaurant on the grounds of the Ozark Folk Center at Mountain View. It continued with interviews with peop…
When I was growing up in southwest Arkansas, the Christmas holidays meant more time for quail hunts. My father sold athletic supplies to high schools and colle…
Downtown Hot Springs was back in the news recently as business and civic leaders there continue to market the site of the former Majestic Hotel at the north en…
Tourism is the second-largest sector of the Arkansas economy (behind agriculture), and promises to become even more important to the state during the next seve…