Those of us who sometimes wax sentimental about the country roads of yesteryear may seem a little wacky to those people who are altogether grateful that we don't have those old roads to contend with anymore. I'm thinking that we old sentimentalists are well aware of the downsides to the old roads we remember, but we still remember and feel a kind of charm about them, even as we too are grateful for the paved and improved roads that we enjoy today.
Of course, some of those old roads of the 1930s and 1940s are still with us, even today. When I turn off Slack Street onto Ryan Road, heading south down through the woods, I feel like I am headed to Rogers in 1946. Driving Ryan Road from Slack Street to Sugar Creek Road is like being transported back in time. Ryan Road to me has always had a kind of seclusion and mystery about it. Of course, today, that quickly changes as Ryan Road ends at Sugar Creek Road. Before 1950, the road to Rogers continued right on south, crossing Sugar Creek Road, over the old bridge over Little Sugar Creek, and south up the hollow, until it climbed a steep hill to reach Tucks Chapel Road.
Then consider Sugar Creek Road itself. Sugar Creek Road may not be as old as the Old Wire Road, but it is a very old road connecting the Avoca-Brightwater-Pea Ridge communities to Bentonville. Some of the really old roads used to follow creeks, at times using the creek bed as the roadbed. Sugar Creek parallels the path of Little Sugar Creek, but for the most part the roadbed always stayed on the north bank and higher up above the water flows. On the other hand, on Otter Creek, north of Pea Ridge, there was once an old horse and wagon road which extended north from today's Clark Street, often following the creek bed and often passing through shallow water, until it merged into what is now Hayden Road (Ark. Hwy. 265) at our farm two miles north of town. Even the old Rogers Road (today's Ryan Road) used to follow a stretch of the old drainage stream at the bottom of the hollow below today's Waggoner farm.
Another of the roads which provides us a glimpse of the 1800s is the Old Wire Road itself, especially the section that runs through the Pea Ridge National Military Park, past the Pratt Cemetery and Pace Cemetery, and then reaches southward through old Brightwater and up to Avoca. In my imagination, I can almost see a stagecoach dashing along that old road, like in the 1850s, pulled by six gleaming horses, fully lathered, galloping like mad under the arches of tree branches reaching overhead.
Of course, sentimental imaginations and picturesque scenes cannot erase the fact that most of the old roads were rough on a rider's posterior. A stagecoach ride might seem in our imagination as a dramatic and delightful entertainment, and indeed the first mile or two of travel would likely be great fun. But, after the hours wore on, and the coach continued its radical lurching and swaying, and the wheels continued hitting the chug holes and unyielding stones, the exciting entertainment aspect of the trip would soon fade. I remember how our school bus used to shake, rattle and roll as we made our way south on Looney Road west of Pea Ridge. Especially when rain runoff had made washboards in the road, and washed out deep potholes, we would find our teeth jarring in our heads even at 20 miles an hour. We used to call potholes "chug holes" because the bus made a chugging sound as it chugged through the rough spots. The leaf springs on trucks and buses in those days were designed to hold up heavy loads, not to provide soft rides through the chug holes.
One of the main and outstanding differences between the old-time roads and today's improved highways is seen in the corners. Basically, today's wonderful roads don't have corners; instead, they have wide, sweeping curves. The old roads characteristically had many "square" corners. One outstanding example is on Arkansas Highway 72 on the way to Bentonville, by the sale barn on Jac's Ranch. Today that curve is sweeping and gradual, and one can easily negotiate it at 45 miles an hour. In the old days, it was a square corner, for which a driver slowed to 15 miles an hour. Another great example is Blackjack Corner on Arkansas Highway 94 west of Pea Ridge High School. Today, the highway makes a smooth, sweeping curve to the north, passing by the ball fields at Benton County 40 and It'll Do Road. In the old days, the westward road continued straight west into Benton County 40, whereas the road northward to Shady Grove schoolhouse formed a T, which we called Blackjack Corner.
The old-time roads were dusty, and our cars spent a good deal of time looking like they needed a bath. Some aggressive drivers, who liked to stir up things with their dashing and gunning around, may have enjoyed the dust, because with dust you could see what you were stirring up. But my brothers and I, when we got cars, generally wanted our cars to be clean and shiny. Especially my brother Ben would spend much of the day on Saturday washing, waxing and detailing his car in preparation for going out on a date. Then he would drive 5 miles an hour to town so all his work wouldn't get covered over with dust. A whole day's polishing work could be lost just by meeting another car on the dusty road.
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Editor's note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is an award-winning columnist, a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.
Editorial on 04/02/2014