} //alert(d.length); } The Arkansas River Valley(usually shortened to River Valley) is a region in Arkansasdefined by the Arkansas Riverin the western part of the state. The significance of the changes lay in the speed in which they occurred. Soil quality and its use here in Arkansas. Town and Country: Race Relations in an Urban-Rural Context, Arkansas, 18651905. First held in 1963, Weinfest is one of the most popular festivals in the region.[18]. Whayne, Jeannie M., and Willard B. Gatewood Jr., eds. By 2020, the number of dairy cattle had dramatically dropped to fewer than 5,000 cows and there were only forty registered dairy operations in the state. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2002. Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, Central Arkansas Library System. A new age in Arkansas agriculture had begun and was reflected in changing land and cropping practices. COLORADO SPRINGS Government officials, conservation groups, farmers, and Utility companies all met in Colorado Springs for the 27th annual Arkansas River Basin Water Forum. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1993. return s4() + s4() + '-' + s4() + '-' + s4() + '-' + s4() + '-' + s4() + s4() + s4(); count = d.length; considered here. [CDATA[ For ten years, the Southern Homestead Act was an experiment in public land reform, placing individuals using the land above the speculator. [CDATA[ Many had to seek public assistance. "&ea=" + encodeURIComponent(document.title) + Game and fish enthusiasts and environmentalists worried that clearing for crops would despoil the region. var iFrameID = document.getElementById('idIframe'); However, disease infested most orchards less than two decades after apple growing became commercially feasible. Our programs include aquaculture, diagnostics, and energy conservation. The first vineyards were established in the upper Arkansas River Valley in the 1870s by Swiss-German immigrants lured to the state by railroad agents promising fertile land at cheap prices. 2nd ed. Arkansas River Valley Local Real Estate Guide Arkansas Valley in Colorado was established between the 1700s and early 1800s when hunters, trappers, and traders of European descent came to the region. Two major yard-sale events, Bargains Galore on Highway 64 and Big To Do on Highway 22, happen annually in the River Valley. Whayne, Jeannie M.Creation of a Plantation System in the Arkansas Delta in the Twentieth Century. Agricultural History 66 (Winter 1992): 6384. Taylor, Orville. Typically, in a matter of several crop years, small farmers found themselves encircled by debt. Not only was their occupation gone, but also was the land that served as a source for food, fuel, and leisure. Elsewhere in the county, cotton and timber had given way to strawberry, hay, and cattle. It rises more than 200 feet above the floodplain and varies up to ten miles in width as it stretches 150 miles from the Mississippi River at Helena (Phillips County) to the Missouri border near Corning (Clay County). of our most important activity - agriculture. Agriculture has a history going back 200 years and has always been important to the economics of the region. The River Valley's first wineries date to the postbellum era, when they were founded to produce wine for the Swiss and German immigrants relocating to the area to work in coal mines. Learn to ID unwanted plant and animal visitors. The 1930s were difficult for almost all Americans, but for Arkansas farmers, the Depression started with the Flood of 1927, a disastrous flood along the Mississippi River and its tributaries. . [CDATA[ Making sound choices for families and ourselves. South of Dardanelle, the Holla Bend National Wildlife Refuge protects over 7,000 acres (2,800ha) of bottomland and wetland surrounded by a cutoff meander of the Arkansas River. The Klan had limited support, and much of the area was viewed steadily Re } While the state was fortunate to have two additional officesone in the Arkansas River Valley west of Little Rock and one in southwest Arkansas near the Red Riverall were far from the Delta and most of the public land. Delta Empire: Lee Wilson and the Transformation of Agriculture in the New South. Concurrent with the growth in human population in Colorado, there has been increasing pressure on land and water resources that were historically devoted to agriculture. In Clarksville, the Johnson County Peach Festival is the longest-running festival in Arkansas. Strawberries also began to have some commercial success by the early twentieth century. 100 Rock Street str = str.substring(8, str.length); var x = document.getElementById(b); The next year, 161 filed. In terms of age from youngest to oldest, the aquifers of the Interior Highlands include: the Arkansas River Valley alluvial aquifer, the Ouachita Mountains aquifer, the Western Interior Plains confining system, the Springfield Plateau aquifer, and the Ozark aquifer. The Arkansas River Valley is informally defined along county boundaries, including all of Logan and Sebastian counties and portions of Conway, Franklin, Johnson, Perry, Pope, and Yell counties. // ]]> The first extended the responsibilities of the Freedmens Bureau to assist with farming. From a high of fifty-two cents a pound on the Memphis market in 1866, cotton prices began a downward trend that reached a low of 6.5 cents for the 1899 crop. Gaining garden smarts and sharing skills. The first time you log in to our catalog you will need to create an account. Divided into six regions, each with unique soils, the state presented a variety of choices. // ]]> inner.style.display = "block"; for (var i in d) { slopes, and by the weathering of the existent parent material. Desha County, which had 26.9 percent of its acreage in cultivation in 1925, had 40.5 percent in 1940. The following month, the expedition fought with a tribe referred to as the Tula somewhere near Fort Smith. var d = document.querySelectorAll('#ptac-faq'); [8] Some immigrated directly from Europe, but most came from early settlements in the Ohio River Valley. d[i].id = "ptac-faq" + a; Beef cattle became an increasing part of the rural scene in the counties west of Little Rock after World War II. [7] Since settlement, the River Valley had been a largely cashless society with significantly less reliance on slave labor compared to plantation agriculture areas like the Arkansas Delta and elsewhere in the Deep South. Again, farmers turned to activism. In the next fifteen years, twelve watershed districts were formed; eleven were in the Delta. function guid() { The Arkansas Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Division (NRD) has released the 2022 Arkansas Groundwater Protection and Management Report. { d = document.querySelectorAll('[id^=threecolheader]'); The eleven flood-control projects resulted in more than 400 miles of stream channelization and brought 4.7 million acres into drainage districts. The new equipment came primarily in the form of tractors and improved planting and harvesting machines. } // ]]> inner.style.display = "none"; 107 talking about this. The need for workers in wartime industries drained rural Arkansas of farm workers in the 1940s. Arkansas/Oklahoma State Fair (at Fort Smith), SeptemberOctober, This page was last edited on 28 March 2023, at 10:13. To some extent, it worked, but a more significant outgrowth of the policy was the acceleration of soybean production. West and north of the Mississippi River floodplain lay the Ouachita Mountains and the Ozark uplift. for (var y in children) { [5], Hernando de Soto became the first European explorer to enter Arkansas in 1541. However, cattle raising changed dramatically after the mid-1950s when New York transplant Winthrop Rockefeller arrived in Arkansas. Wintering waterfowl and other migrating species use the area as a safe haven during their journey. The second came in 1866 with the Southern Homestead Act, which provided free land from the public domain in the former Confederate states. a++; By the time Congress took steps in 1888 to again limit access to the public domain, Arkansas had few public lands left. The Alma Performing Arts Center is the largest and most popular performing arts venue in the River Valley. Heavily capitalized, with access to thousands, sometime millions, of dollars, these farmers were products of an agribusiness system. Arkansas River Valley Research The Arkansas River has long sustained a belt of valuable agricultural production, an appealing rural lifestyle, and scenic vistas across Colorado's southern high plains. [11] Several of the River Valley's small towns were founded by these groups, beginning as small clusters of immigrants and evolving into cohesive communities. Graves, John William. var GIF = "https://ssl.google-analytics.com/collect?v=1&t=event" + Schedule these timely events on your gardening calendar. [12] River Valley soil and climate are much less conducive to cotton cultivation than the Arkansas Delta, and many settlers struggled. . // ]]> Vineyards and wineries around Altus have been in the same family for generations. After 1850, commercial agricultural in the Delta eclipsed subsistence farming. The Agricultural Wheel in Arkansas, 18821889. PhD dissertation, Syracuse University, 1953. Most small lumber companies were forced into merger or bankruptcy. There was some fertile land along the many streams that drained the upland watershed, but these valleys were typically narrow and subject to flooding. //alert(str); The federal Farm Bill of 1956 instituted a new plan for cotton producers. Prior to that time, few landowners raised cattle exclusively, although most homesteads had a few head of livestock, including milch cows. return Math.floor((1 + Math.random()) * 0x10000).toString(16).substring(1); At six cents a pound, standard wages for first picking in 1930, a hard worker could make six to eighteen dollars a day. Additional support provided by the Arkansas Community Foundation. function s4() { function iframeLoaded() { From 1940 to 1978, about 2.5 million acres of forest were cleared and most of that land was brought into cultivation. Geography played a key role in shaping Arkansas agriculture. Laws favorable to small-business development encouraged partnerships between poultry growers and processors and a redevelopment of land use. Many farmers applied chicken manure to reenergize pastureland for livestock. Some row crop agriculture is also present in the Arkansas River Valley. Agriculture has played a major role in Arkansass culture from territorial times, when farmers made up more than ninety percent of the population, through the present (about forty-five percent of the states residents were still classified as rural in the early part of the twenty-first century). Hundreds of people in the hill country were laid off. for (var y in children) { The Arkansas Grand Prairie. The Arkansas Delta: Land of Paradox. The lighter, finer soils were carried farther from the main source. } A typical hill country farm through most of the nineteenth century had about thirty acres in cultivationten acres of corn, five acres of cotton, and the rest in cereal grains, sometimes tobacco (particularly in the Ozarks), potatoes, and vegetables. Many other historical building blocks of the Arkansas . test = "answer" + test; In Van Buren, the King Opera House is a restored 1880s opera house, now holding various events throughout the year. } By settling on land that local farmers deemed undesirable or less desirable, newcomers contradicted the traditional land-holding pattern. Read on. Licensing for forestry and wildlife professionals. The Mississippian culture that supplanted the Woodland people kept some of their vegetables but added corn and became almost exclusively dependent upon this new grain for food. //alert(count); Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1996. Juice grapes continued to be a viable industry into the 1980s before market forces put most of the growers out of business. Some Delta land, already cleared and drained, brought $2,500 per acre. Rice, too, because of its greater economic return, found increasing favor in the Delta. Arkansas was second only to Florida in acres still in the public domain and offered an opportunity for thousands of Arkansans, black and white, to own farms free of charge. around pasture lands. To ensure that black farmers had the first opportunity to file, individuals taking up arms against the United States were denied access to public land until 1867. In 1940, Delta counties cultivated only 153,000 acres of rice and 176,000 acres of soybeans, compared with 1.2 million acres of cotton; those figures changed dramatically in the next twenty years. By the mid-1980s, the states agricultural revolution was largely complete. Mining became prominent by 1873, especially around the Altus area. Donations made to the CALS Foundation are tax-deductible for United States federal income tax purposes. Overall, many of the prime agricultural regions of Colorado are experiencing population growth-related pressures. [4] Research at the site has linked artifacts to cave art (pictured at right) in a cave on Petit Jean Mountain, as well as establishing links to the Caddo, Osage, and Quapaw tribes. productivity on these soils is often limited by their physical properties. "&z=" + (Math.round((new Date()).getTime() / 1000)).toString() + A crop lost to floods often offset soil fertility. Get the latest research results from our county agents. Before the war, cottons low tolerance for heavy, wet soil presented farmers a challenge in maneuvering their fields amid the forest and finding elevation high enough to avoid overflow. Cities such as Booneville, Clarksville, Morrilton, Paris, and Perryville serve as cultural and economic centers within the rural counties of the River Valley.[17]. Dangerous and demanding, the industry attracted Swiss and German immigrants who were unable to establish productive farms. It is one of six natural divisions of Arkansas.[2]. Costs of machines, land, and inputs had forced out all but the most skilled and daring farmers. Generally defined as the area between the Ozark and Ouachita Mountains,[1] the River Valley is characterized by flat lowlands covered in fertile farmland and lakes periodically interrupted by high peaks. However, competition introduced into the market by the railroads allowed farmers in Texas and other states to undercut the prices offered by River Valley farmers. var css = document.createElement('style'); Much of the farmers improved situation was due to World War I. Wartime demands for food and fiber led to a golden age in agriculture when cotton prices approached their Civil War levels. The marginal buckshot soil avoided by traditional cotton farmers was ideal for rice. Public assistance proved too limited and restricted, and families were forced to seek their own remedies. Some sought out national organizations such as the Patrons of Husbandry (Grange); others tried local groups, including the Brothers of Freedom and the Agricultural Wheel. Many events are held at the state parks and on town squares throughout the River Valley. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1993. Increase your knowledge of public issues & get involved. In August 1930, the official reporting station in Little Rock recorded its seventy-first consecutive rainless day. [10] These settlements received support from existing immigrant populations in Little Rock and Fort Smith, and groups of Protestant settlers also establishing settlements in the area.

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