Glade Post Office building is back

GARFIELD -- For more than half a century the Glade Post Office was the meeting place for residents of the Glade and Coal Gap communities in northeast Benton County. In 1945 when the post office began rural mail delivery, the post office was closed. The building then was moved northwest of there to Pea Ridge and used as a barn for another half a century. 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.

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

Members of the Glade Community Historical Society are hosting an open house from 3-5 p.m. Sunday, July 28, to show off the Glade Museum. There will be live jazz music, hot dogs, root beer floats and bingo. Participants are encouraged to bring their lawn chairs.

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."

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.

The Glade Community Historical Society was 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.

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.

The public is invited to visit the museum and enjoy the Open House.

This is the first in a two-part series about the Glade Community Post Office and Mercantile.

Community on 07/17/2019