Glade Post Office restored

Annette Beard

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GARFIELD -- Just off a narrow, winding stretch of county road sit three buildings, silent testimonials to the once bustling farming community of Glade along the White River.

Now, the farms, house sites and former post office site sit mostly beneath the placid waters of Beaver Lake. Leading away from the buildings into a wooded area and down to Beaver Lake is a path, recalled by former residents of the area as the Jennings Road which led to the Jennings Ferry.

"Back in the old days, we all walked to school," Pat Heck recalled. "The path to the school was right across here where this building is now planted -- that was the road. We would always come right through here and into the school."

Further down the road, for more than half a century, the Glade Post Office was the meeting place for residents of the Glade and Coal Gap communities along the White River in northeast Benton County. In 1945 when the post office began rural mail delivery, the post office was closed. No longer did residents of the rural area along the White River have to go to the post office to pick up their mail.

The Glade Post Office served as both post office and mercantile store from about 1890 to 1945, Heck said, adding that after 1945, there was neither store nor post office in Glade.

The building, on a site that would be under the waters of Beaver Lake once the lake began to fill, was moved to higher ground, according to Stanley Williams, whose father, Liss Williams, moved the building to a farm off Shrader Road east of Pea Ridge. There, it was used as a storage shed for another half a century. Inside, old store and office supplies, a black manual typewriter, milk cans and other antiques once the necessities of life in rural of Arkansas, sat gathering dust.

Now, it is back in the rural community, renovated and ready to display the treasures of the past. It sits across a drive from the Coal Gap School and teacher's cottage on land donated by Doris Briley.

The Glade Community Historical Society formed in 2011 to preserve the history of the Glade Community raised money and received a grant from the Benton County Historical Preservation Commission. Board members include Patricia Williams Heck, president; Sam Reynolds, treasurer; Judi Walter, secretary; and members Larry Hanner and Ruth Billingsley.

Two years ago, in July 2014, the post office building was moved back to the former Glade area. For the previous 53 years it sat on a farm off Shrader Road outside of Pea Ridge silently shielding its contents from the weather. The foundation stones were covered by the lake, but in 2013 when the lake was low enough to reveal the historic stones, they were collected and moved to higher ground.

"I was surprised to find it still existed," Reynolds said. He and his family moved down from Kansas City in 2000. "I found the foundation in the lake first; it was under water some of the time. We wondered what it was ... then found out building still existed. That's when we decided to move it back."

In 2014, the old gray, weathered wooden building traveled along the curvy Ozark roads back to a spot along Slate Gap Road west of Arkansas Highway 127. The offspring of Liss Williams, Stanley Williams and his sister Pat Heck, along with members of the historical society, were passionate about restoring the building. There were 52 foundation stones salvaged.

It cost about $400 to move the building the first time and nearly $8,000 to return it in 2014.

"The top had to come off the

building to move it. It looked awful... I remember it rolling in and wondering, 'Oh, my goodness, what have we done?'" Hanner said.

Williams and Heck both attended Coal Gap School and remember frequenting the post office and mercantile.

Larry Hanner, thought not a native, moved to the area in the late 1940s and attended school at Coal Gap School for the seventh and eighth grades. He said the family moved from Iowa because his grandfather, a railroad engineer, began having heart problems and needed the more southern climate.

"I was the only one in my class," he said.

Bob and Ruth Billingsley, moved to northwest Arkansas 12 years ago from Norman, Okla. The old school building and teacher's cottage are both on their land.

"My family said to tear it down," Ruth said, recalling her determination to save the old cottage. "We jokingly refer to it as the money pit."

The cottage is now restored and a lovely guest cottage with an additional room on the back. Billingsley said visiting missionaries have used it as a peaceful place for respite.

Judi Walter is from Maine. She moved to northwest Arkansas about 10 years ago and said she had been a member of historical societies in northern Maine. Contrasting the age of buildings on the east coast with historical structures in northwest Arkansas, Walter said the house in which she lived in Maine was 250 years old.

"We're glad she likes U.S. history," Pat Heck said of Walter, expressing gratitude for her involvement in the society.

"According to history, we're not exactly sure, but there were supposedly three post offices here," Heck said, explaining that the post office moved back and forth across the White River from Glade to LaRue. "So, the actual history is uncertain from 1858 to 1866... There were several name changes and location changes until 1903, then it settled near where I grew up."

She said that historical accounts indicate that the first post office was operated by Able Jennings who also had property in the area. There was a ferry there, too, called Jennings Ferry, which transported people across the White River. That road led into Rogers.

About a half mile from the Glade Post Office sat Coal Gap School providing first through eighth grades.

"No one had enough money to move to town and go to high school," Heck recalled.

One of those students, Cleva Douglas, who was born in the Glade Community in 1907, remembered attending Coal Gap School where she said she acquired the love of reading. Mrs. Douglas contributed much to the history of the school. In 2013, Cleva Williams Douglas celebrated her 106th birthday. She died Aug. 29, 2014, 13 weeks before her 107th birthday.

All board members agreed, they have been and will continue to collect the oral history and welcome anyone from the area to tell them their stories.

"We believe in history and the preservation of it and want to save it for future generations so they will have some idea of what life was like before Beaver Lake so young people can know everything wasn't air conditioned and it was a real treat to get a piece of candy," Heck said.

"I'd like to see it look as near as it can to when it was functioning -- add feed bags, put letters in there and label those of some of the people who lived around here," Reynolds said. "I don't think young people have any idea. This building didn't ever have electricity."

"I remember candy being there in a glass counter," Heck said, reminiscing about the mercantile in the 1940s. "Life before screens did exist."

"Yes, the Star Route came through in '47 or '48," Hanner said of rural mail delivery.

A Coal Gap School reunion is still held, but at Garfield now.

"We had 150 the first year," Heck said. "Many of them are now deceased."