Last week I wrote about some of my memories of Arkansas and our northwest section of the state in the days before Beaver Lake. This time I'm thinking of more of those memories and also about the building of Beaver Dam and the filling of Beaver Lake.
Probably one of the great historic motivations for building the dams and lakes in Arkansas was the great flood of 1927, which flooded at least a fourth of the land area of eastern Arkansas, and brought a mountain of misery to the people of our state. Beaver Lake, as well as Table Rock, Norfork, Greers Ferry, and others, came about as a result of the Flood Control Act of 1944. According to ranger Allen Bland, Beaver Lake was almost named after Congressman Jim Trimble, an immensely influential legislator from Carroll County and a major force in shaping the legislation affecting flood control efforts and rural electric power generation. But it was eventually named after the little river town of Beaver, which is a short distance downstream from the dam.
One of the fascinating high water stories from our nearby area on White River began in the 1920s south of Garfield. We now call the area Lost Bridge. When the Great Depression hit the nation in 1929, a bridge was under construction across the White River in that area. The bridge itself was nearing completion, but the approaches on either side had not been built. When the Depression hit, there was not money enough to connect the bridge to its approach roads on either side, so the bridge stood stranded and unusable for many years. Eventually, high water on the White River, compounded by debris picked up by the floodwaters, overwhelmed the bridge's support structures, and the entire bridge was lost; thus the name Lost Bridge.
I have tried to mention many of the benefits which we enjoy today because of Beaver Lake. But the lake project is also a reminder that with a project so major as the building of a dam and the forming of a lake, the impact on people living in the area being covered by the waters is momentous, and many people endure heavy personal and family sacrifices and losses in order for the lake to be formed. The Lost Bridge area can be taken as an example.
Several of our Pea Ridge residents grew up in small riverside communities over that way. One of those, the little river town of Glade, was recently in our news. Years ago, when Beaver Lake was formed in the mid-1960s, the old Glade Store and Post Office was moved onto a farm just east of Pea Ridge. There it stood for many years. Just recently it was moved back to Glade, to higher ground, and is now being renovated by the Glade Historical Society. The community's schoolhouse, the Coal Gap School, was also preserved nearby. On the other side of the river not far from Glade was the little town of Larue, some parts of which still exist today. Also nearby, just across the line into Carroll County, was the little river town of Mundell, now entirely submerged. And, just downriver from Glade, was Pine Log, the home of our famous itinerant sign painter and artist, Ernest Schilling, known across our area as "By Golly." By Golly always referred to himself as "The Sage of Pine Log." His little farm at Pine Log is also now under the waters of Beaver Lake.
According to Allen Bland, a ranger who oversees the lake today, about 1,500 parcels of land were purchased for the lake by the federal government, under negotiated purchase agreements. But some 500 additional properties had to be obtained through court-ordered purchases or land condemnations. This shows that almost any major project such as a lake comes about with great resistance from some of the people whose property is to be covered by the lake. The lake area took many acres of farm land, sometimes entire little towns, numerous country churches, hundreds of homes, and many cemeteries. I well remember when Ralph Miller, our local Pea Ridge funeral director, was moving some of the low-lying cemeteries to higher ground, because federal law prohibits the flooding of burial places by lake waters. For example, the Bland Cemetery and several other small cemeteries were relocated to what is now Moberly Lane in Bentonville. That site was well out in the country between Rogers and Bentonville when the relocation was done in 1961-1962. Now the little lane has become a major Bentonville street. Major cemetery relocations doubled the size of our old Pratt Cemetery on Old Wire Road near the Pea Ridge Military Park. The nearby Pace Cemetery on Old Wire is another example of a cemetery relocated from the lake area.
Just today, Nancy and I drove out Arkansas Highway 12 east of Rogers. As one crosses the lake bridge, with its roadbed not so high above the water, one almost forgets that underneath the bridge, the bridge supports rest on foundations some 200 feet below the surface. Scanning the granite bluffs to the north and west, one might suppose the bluff to be small, when in fact it used to be an amazing sight nearly 200 feet high. The lake waters seem to lie so naturally in their place, but to me it is fascinating to remember that only 50 years ago there was no lake, only the narrow flows of the White River far below. Beaver Lake was a stunning undertaking, brought about not without painful sacrifices. But our towns would not be the towns they are today without it.
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Editor's note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.
Community on 09/24/2014