Here Are The Oldest Photos Ever Taken In Arkansas And They’re Incredible
I’ve scoured the internet just for you, dear readers. This time I was hunting for the oldest photographs taken in Arkansas, and oh my stars did I find a treasure trove. Below you’re going to find 13 of the oldest photos taken in the Natural State, the date range of these gems runs from just after the Civil War to 1915. From a youthful Cy Young training in Little Rock to poultry farming like you’ve never seen it before, these pictures offer unique glimpses into Arkansas’s past.
1. The steamboat Sultana, loaded with Civil War veterans on their way home, just days before its massive explosion. This image was captured on April 27, 1865, on the Mississippi River at Helena. Days later the sinking of the Sultana would go down as the biggest naval disaster in U.S. history.
2. The outlaw Belle Starr and Deputy U.S. Marshal Benjamin Tyner Hughes mounted on horseback in the mean streets of Fort Smith in 1886, when the fort was still an infamous border town tasked with doling out justice to the wilds of Oklahoma.
3. A game on the tennis courts of the 1886 Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs. This photo was taken between 1896 and 1900. It is no wonder the hotel is now considered to be the most haunted hotel in America.
4. The aftermath of a tornado in Fort Smith. This photograph was taken in 1898, long before the early warning systems that could have saved lives were in place.
Wikimedia/Public Domain
5. The Ozark Queen is seen here unloading at Calico Rock, ca. 1900.
6. McLeod’s Cabin, which was called Happy Hollow. This image was captured in Hot Springs, circa 1901. This is a good reminder of a time when Arkansas truly was a frontier.
Flickr/Jared Enos
7. The J.K. Hughes Family, taken three years after they came to Arkansas from Georgia. Murfreeboro, 1903.
9. University of Arkansas football team, circa 1908. Though it is not known when "Calling the Hogs" became a tradition, but it was likely during the 1920s, so if you hollered "woo pig sooie" at these fellows, they'd be mightily confused.
11. A flock of goats being raised in the Ozarks. This was captured near Waldron in 1912 by workers on the Kansas City Southern Railway.
Wikimedia/Library of Congress
12. These men are preparing poultry for shipment near Gravette in 1912. This is another photo from a series by the Kansas City Southern Railway. It certainly is a far cry from Arkansas's poultry industry today.
J.B. Weisenfels has lived in rural Arkansas for three decades. She is a writer, a mom, and a graduate student. She is also an avid collector of tacky fish whatnots, slightly chipped teapots, and other old things. In her spare time she enjoys driving to the nearest creek to sit a while. If you were to visit her, she'd try to feed you cornbread.
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