I found out about this museum the day before I visited when I was plotting my route to three state parks in northeastern Arkansas. And since it was right smack on my way home, I decided to stop.
It was tucked into a large building right on campus. I had to walk down 60 yards of hallway before I happened upon any displays. Those displays were the skeleton of a mastodon and a wall of info on the New Madrid Fault. There was a table and a stack of wooden blocks. You could use the blocks to build a structure on the table, then push a button to see the table shake and the structure fall down. I’m not sure how educational that is, but it was kinda fun.
The main section of the museum was upstairs, and that’s where it all began to feel very familiar. There was an exhibit on rockabilly music, which got its start in northeastern Arkansas. I’d just learned a lot about this at Guitar Park in Walnut Ridge and at Johnny Cash’s Boyhood Home.
Then there was a reproduction of an old town, with displays in the windows of general stores, doctor’s office, barber, etc., like I’ve seen in so many, many museums (nowhere better than the McKinley Presidential Museum in Canton, Ohio), much like I’d recently seen at the Faulkner County Museum.
They had exhibits on all the major industries of the Arkansas Delta — button-making, cotton-growing, lumbering, etc., like I just saw at the the Lower White River Museum, at Powhatan, at the Plantation Agriculture Museum …
Here’s something I can’t remember seeing before — a fireless field slow-cooker that heated food with preheated soapstone so that everybody could work in the field and nobody had to cook.
There were a lot of cabinets of Indian pottery, like I’ve recently seen at Plum Bayou, Parkin, and Hampson.
And there were a series of displays of artifacts from various wars, like I just saw at the Wings of Honor Museum.
Finally, they had several exhibit of very bedraggled and woebegone mounted birds and animals.
And they had this, which I haven’t seen before.
It took me about 30 minutes to see everything. If I had read everything, I would still be there. The walls were covered with text, much of which had very little to do with what was on display. I especially appreciated the woke take on barbershops.
I’m not sorry I visited. It was arranged pleasantly and, at times, interesting. It just all felt very familiar.
