Speaker 1: She put a face on it that nobody else could
Speaker 1: put a face on. If they were going to do
Speaker 1: that to a little old woman who never did anything
Speaker 1: to hurt anybody, who only help people. You know, if
Speaker 1: they would do that to her, they'd just do it
Speaker 1: to anybody. And in our culture, the one thing you
Speaker 1: don't do is trample around on older folks. That's a
Speaker 1: real good way to get a really bad reputation.
Speaker 2: Today we'll learn the personal story of a true Ozark
Speaker 2: legend as we listen to bits and pieces of a
Speaker 2: historic interview with Ava Barnes Henderson from nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 2: who was one of the last private landowner holdouts in
Speaker 2: the ninety five thousand acre Buffalo National River in Arkansas.
Speaker 2: She didn't want to sell. It's a fascinating biopiece as
Speaker 2: we continue to explore this American doctrine of utilitarian conservation,
Speaker 2: the greatest good for the greatest number, and the injustice
Speaker 2: of it at times. On the last episode, we learned
Speaker 2: about the political state of America and how it informed
Speaker 2: the battle for the Buffalo River and the Ozarks between
Speaker 2: the pro damn pro park and pro leave us Alone landowners. Today,
Speaker 2: we'll hear words like communism, martyrdom, and displacement, which are
Speaker 2: unexpected themes in a conversation about a beautiful stretch of
Speaker 2: Pristine river. But we're telling a side of this story
Speaker 2: that's rarely told. And hang around till the dead gum
Speaker 2: plot twist at the end, when we'll learn there are
Speaker 2: people trying to redesignate the rivers standing with the National Park.
Speaker 2: It's very complicated, folks, and I really doubt that you're
Speaker 2: gonna want to miss this one.
Speaker 3: She lived three months after they moved out of it.
Speaker 2: Moved her out for three months.
Speaker 3: Yes, she did. She'd died at eighty seven. She spent
Speaker 3: one night in her new house that they built her,
Speaker 3: and then my brother Howard took her to his house,
Speaker 3: which was just a the field from him where she
Speaker 3: was where they built her house. She lived three months.
Speaker 2: What do you make of that?
Speaker 3: I make it they took her life away from her.
Speaker 2: The Ava Barnes Henderson interview credits that we're about to
Speaker 2: hear go to Texas Tech University's Southwest Collections Special Collections
Speaker 2: Library courtesy of Jane Kilgore. My name is Klay Nukem,
Speaker 2: and this is the Bear Grease Podcast where we'll explore
Speaker 2: things forgotten but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places,
Speaker 2: and where we'll tell the story of Americans who lived
Speaker 2: their lives close to the land. Presented by FHF gear,
Speaker 2: American made purpose built hunting and fishing gear as designed
Speaker 2: to be as rugged as the place as we explore.
Speaker 4: You were born around here? Where were you born?
Speaker 5: I was born right down this river about and the
Speaker 5: Lord and just below Prood.
Speaker 4: When was that eighteen nine to eighteen ninety two? Then
Speaker 4: you moved your parents moved up here.
Speaker 5: Yeah. My daddy home stood a depth there booth. Well
Speaker 5: it joins Gertie.
Speaker 4: Out there, Oh yeah, by Compton.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I was just fourteen months old. My dad died,
Speaker 5: of course, I don't remember your brother.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: What were your parents' names?
Speaker 5: My mother was a Buchanan, that's right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you see now your mother was the great.
Speaker 5: Niece niece of President Buchanan.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, the great.
Speaker 2: My dear bear, Grease, brothers and sisters. You have just
Speaker 2: been granted access behind culture Vail, into the very heart
Speaker 2: of the Ozarks, the place that few get to hear. See.
Speaker 2: That was the voice of Eva Henderson, known to her
Speaker 2: community as Ev and Since her global debut in National
Speaker 2: Geographic in March nineteen seventy seven, she's been known to
Speaker 2: the world as Granny Henderson. She would become an Ozarkian legend.
Speaker 2: The incredible portraits of her on her Newton County, Arkansas
Speaker 2: farm with her cattle, hogs, and chickens and dogs, taken
Speaker 2: when she was eighty five years old, would become iconic
Speaker 2: emblems of standing against government intrusion, self sufficiency, and the
Speaker 2: gritty backwoods way of life on the Buffalo River. This
Speaker 2: interview took place on July twenty second, nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 2: And like Memphis is proud of Elvis and Illinois is
Speaker 2: proud of Abe Lincoln, in Arkansas, we're proud of Grannie
Speaker 2: Henderson in a way she was a martyr.
Speaker 4: Would be a great great niece.
Speaker 6: Did you keep up with the presidents in your youth
Speaker 6: and through your life?
Speaker 5: Well, I used to.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Did you have a favorite.
Speaker 5: Well, I don't know. We all sawt pretty well. Roosevelt.
Speaker 6: Yeah, oh, did you do you remember Teddy Roosevelt.
Speaker 4: That's what I'm talking about, That's the what you're talking about. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: he must have been quite a guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I find it interesting that Grannie Henderson's favorite president
Speaker 2: was Teddy Roosevelt, one of the core authors of the
Speaker 2: doctrine of utilitarian conservation, The greatest good for the greatest number.
Speaker 2: Here's more from Ev Henderson.
Speaker 4: And you married to Henderson?
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, Henderson.
Speaker 4: Where'd you live after you married? Down here?
Speaker 5: Well? Yeah, my mother bought this place, oh, when I
Speaker 5: was thirteen. Yeah, so my husband up to for the
Speaker 5: scene about two years after we were married. You down
Speaker 5: this place?
Speaker 2: The Henderson Farm, bisected by the Buffalo River, was one
Speaker 2: hundred and sixty seven acres just upriver from what they
Speaker 2: call the Goat Bluff, which is on an inside bend
Speaker 2: as the river sweep south, carved from ancient sandstone and
Speaker 2: limestone towering three hundred and fifty feet above the water.
Speaker 2: The park and most outsiders call it the Big Bluff.
Speaker 2: EV's mother, Ira, bought the land in nineteen oh five.
Speaker 2: Ev married Frank Henderson when she was sixteen and nineteen
Speaker 2: oh nine, and they moved on to the land two
Speaker 2: years later and built a house around nineteen thirteen. She
Speaker 2: would live there until the spring of nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 2: I was thrilled when I learned that there was actual
Speaker 2: audio of Granny Henderson, and aside from the roosters, the
Speaker 2: quality is pretty good. The interviewer is Dwight Pitt Kathley,
Speaker 2: a respected historian for the National Park Service, and the
Speaker 2: interview is an hour and fifteen minutes long. It's truly fascinating,
Speaker 2: and in the Ozarks we don't apologize for roosters making
Speaker 2: incredible rackets. The interview continues and directly you can hear
Speaker 2: the rumble of a motor getting closer and closer, and
Speaker 2: there's an impromptu visitor that shows up, Yes.
Speaker 5: Visitors, Yeah, Robbie, Yeah, how you do? And just sitting here,
Speaker 5: how you all right?
Speaker 2: It's EV's granddaughter, twenty nine year old Jane Kilgore, Hiller's brother.
Speaker 5: His wife is coming down here. I'm going down Upsuckholm
Speaker 5: camp through two whore they get some water.
Speaker 2: She's asked her grandmother where a spring is to get water.
Speaker 2: It was a Sunday afternoon and there's a group of
Speaker 2: them going camping. Granny gets fired up as she gives
Speaker 2: instructions to the spring. You can hear her voice change, no, I.
Speaker 5: Can you or that spring is over there? I grand
Speaker 5: mama hunted for that. Well, I'll tell you, Jane, you
Speaker 5: go right over that before you know, Honey, at that
Speaker 5: second forward you go right down the edge of the
Speaker 5: creek on the far side, and you can't keep them
Speaker 5: finding well.
Speaker 3: And when heard all up now that creek, mate, and
Speaker 3: I never could find it too, Hillard, I said, and
Speaker 3: I forgot what it.
Speaker 5: Springs say, Well, it's plenty when you want to hunt Ford,
Speaker 5: I'm the with you old day.
Speaker 2: A while will. The improptu moment ends with Granny offering
Speaker 2: to help find the spring after the interview. The reason
Speaker 2: the National Park historian was interviewing her was that on
Speaker 2: March first, nineteen seventy two, the government had authorized the
Speaker 2: formation of the Buffalo National River, known as America's first
Speaker 2: National River. The land her family had owned since nineteen
Speaker 2: oh five was quickly en route to being owned by
Speaker 2: the United States government by whatever means necessary. Eva Henderson
Speaker 2: would be the last private holdout in the whole ninety
Speaker 2: five thousand acre National Park. That's why National Geographic came.
Speaker 2: Her husband, Frank worked in the logwoods, and Ev worked
Speaker 2: on the farm. They essentially were subsistence farmers, living not
Speaker 2: much different than the first white pioneers who came to
Speaker 2: this region in the eighteen thirties. They never had running water, electricity,
Speaker 2: or a phone. Frank bought his first truck in the
Speaker 2: nineteen fifties, but he died in nineteen fifty six. Ev
Speaker 2: never learned to drive a car and remained on her
Speaker 2: remote farm as a widow for twenty three years until
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy nine, but she would be close to family
Speaker 2: just down the river. EV's only daughter, Arby, lived with
Speaker 2: her husband and children. One of those children was Jane Kilgore.
Speaker 2: She's the one who asked about the spring. She was
Speaker 2: twenty nine years old in that audio clip. Today Jane
Speaker 2: Kilgore is seventy six, and I'd like to introduce you
Speaker 2: to her my whole life. Have heard about your grandmother.
Speaker 2: So what year were you born?
Speaker 3: I was born in forty eight, born down there at
Speaker 3: Malwahome Place Town.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yep. How long did you live there?
Speaker 3: Till I was thirteen? You'll have figure that's the difference there. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we moved to come to a point when was thirteen.
Speaker 3: The park brought us up.
Speaker 4: Two.
Speaker 2: Now did y'all move because the park bought your land? Yes?
Speaker 2: Jane has invited me into her home. She lives high
Speaker 2: on the mountain now above the river, on what some
Speaker 2: say is the prettiest farm in Newton County. Her home
Speaker 2: is tidy and comfortable and full of pictures of family.
Speaker 2: She made a coconut cream pie when she heard that
Speaker 2: I was coming by. About a dozen whitetail racks, four
Speaker 2: of which her shoulder mounted adorned the walls of her
Speaker 2: living room. The big eight point in the center her
Speaker 2: late husband, Hillard killed, but the other three shoulder mountain
Speaker 2: bucks or Jane's. I'm trying to pry from her everything
Speaker 2: I can about her life on the river and her grandmother.
Speaker 2: I asked her what her childhood was like. She answered quickly, wonderful.
Speaker 3: No electricity, We had running water, and we spend a
Speaker 3: lot of time with grandma, me and my sister.
Speaker 2: Did How far did she live from you?
Speaker 3: Probably half a mile? You don't where that big flat
Speaker 3: rock he is just down the creek from that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean you knew your grandmother?
Speaker 3: Well, oh, yes, yes, my grandpa Frank. Here was her
Speaker 3: husband's name, Frank Henderson. I helped him pick his tobacco patch.
Speaker 3: He chewed tobacco, and we'd have picked the worms off
Speaker 3: of it, and then I'd help him twist it. When
Speaker 3: we cut it off, we twisted it and then hung
Speaker 3: in the barn. And I remember that so well. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he gave me a little heap for calf.
Speaker 2: What was your grandmother like?
Speaker 3: Very tough woman. There'll never be another woman as tough
Speaker 3: as she was. I'm just not saying that because she's
Speaker 3: my grandma.
Speaker 4: She was.
Speaker 3: She lived three months after they moved out of it.
Speaker 2: Moved her out three months.
Speaker 3: Yes, she did. She died at eighty seven. She lived
Speaker 3: three months. She spent one night in her new house
Speaker 3: that they built her, and then my brother Howard took
Speaker 3: her to his house, which was just up the field
Speaker 3: from him where she was when they built her house.
Speaker 3: She lived three months.
Speaker 2: What do you make of that?
Speaker 3: I make it. They took her life away from her.
Speaker 2: I said earlier that Granny was a martyr, and that's
Speaker 2: really the way that we view her. The river nationalized
Speaker 2: in seventy two, but she was able to hold out
Speaker 2: into the spring of seventy nine when she sold to
Speaker 2: the park. They had built her modern house and as
Speaker 2: the crow flies, it was only two point eight miles away,
Speaker 2: and she spent one night in her new house and
Speaker 2: told her son that she couldn't do it, so she
Speaker 2: moved in with him, and within three months, on July tenth,
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy nine, Grannie Henderson passed away. I asked Jane
Speaker 2: how she was able to stay there seven years after
Speaker 2: the area was designated a national park.
Speaker 3: She had her lawyer and she thought it as long
Speaker 3: as she could. They I think they were pretty lenient
Speaker 3: with her, I mean in a way, but then they
Speaker 3: were people over them too say, and she didn't talk
Speaker 3: about too much. She just said, I will leave. We're
Speaker 3: gonna get ready. Well they know you won't, you know,
Speaker 3: but she did. She thought, I think that's reached him
Speaker 3: so long. They in a way felt sorry for her
Speaker 3: and didn't want to do it. But there were people
Speaker 3: in Washington, d C. Giving them a limited amount of
Speaker 3: time to do what they had to do.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I don't know all about the how the government worked
Speaker 3: that in that way, but I think that had a
Speaker 3: lot to do with it. She kept telling them she
Speaker 3: wasn't going. She told them she wasn't leaving, and she
Speaker 3: run one off that came down when talk to her
Speaker 3: more that she didn't recognize him because it was a
Speaker 3: different one than what had been there before, and she said,
Speaker 3: you might as well hit the trail. That's what she stuted. Oh,
Speaker 3: by here's something. Oh she was something else.
Speaker 2: Grannie was not a wealthy woman, but you know, many
Speaker 2: people like her saved every penny they ever made. I
Speaker 2: suspect that's how she could afford a local lawyer to
Speaker 2: fight against the behemoth of the National Park Service. Many
Speaker 2: sold right away, but not Grannie Henderson. I suspected did
Speaker 2: buy her some time. But that's about it. I asked
Speaker 2: Jane about the house the park built her.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they built her a house with electric running water, worshiper, dryer,
Speaker 3: bath inside bathroom. She never knew nothing about stuff like that.
Speaker 3: She didn't even know how to start a worship driyer.
Speaker 3: She works in the creek on the rubboard.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel like they just I feel like she
Speaker 3: would have lived a lot longer. She was eighty seven,
Speaker 3: and I always held it against them because how much
Speaker 3: lower would she have lived? And she would have lived
Speaker 3: a happy life. She might have lived to be a hundred,
Speaker 3: I don't know, and she would she would have lived
Speaker 3: longer than she did, Yes, but no, Grandma was a
Speaker 3: she was a tough woman. I wish I would have
Speaker 3: paid more attention because we were just me and Rosie
Speaker 3: played the creek most of the time if we wasn't working.
Speaker 3: She had a lot of old Indian remedies for like
Speaker 3: snake bites, bee stings, whatever, you know, just being kids,
Speaker 3: we didn't pay a lot of attention to her. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I know of three times she got copperheadbit and she
Speaker 3: never even went to the doctor. Is that right, that's right,
Speaker 3: that's absolutely right.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: And forgetting seed ticks and stuff on her, she would
Speaker 3: tie kerosene ragar and her ankles and she'd never get
Speaker 3: any text her checkers on her. I don't know what
Speaker 3: she did for the snake bites. I remember she told
Speaker 3: me one time that she mixed up turpe tine and
Speaker 3: sugar and stove soot for a cut. Now, that would
Speaker 3: stop the bleeding. But as far as the sneak bates,
Speaker 3: I don't know what she does.
Speaker 2: But I know of.
Speaker 3: Three times she got compreheaded bedow and she killed them
Speaker 3: and throwed them in with the hogs and they ate them.
Speaker 2: I remember.
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, I'll never forget my grandma.
Speaker 2: That's a pretty gangster move to feed the copperhead. That
Speaker 2: just bit you to the hogs and then whip up
Speaker 2: an herbal remedy, avoiding the lines that the er. If
Speaker 2: you want to get Clay Nucomb's attention, tell me how
Speaker 2: many times you've been bitten by venomous snakes, unless you're
Speaker 2: just fooling around like Brent was when he got bit.
Speaker 2: But the number of times you've been bit is a
Speaker 2: direct correlation to your exposure to gritty close to the
Speaker 2: land living. And if Granny was out of her bed,
Speaker 2: she was in some serious snake country. As I sit
Speaker 2: with my back to these four big ozark bucks on
Speaker 2: the wall, Jane pulls out the March nineteen seventy seven
Speaker 2: issue of National Geographic. I'm flipping through the pages looking
Speaker 2: at the incredible images of Granny on her farm. Tell
Speaker 2: me about when National Geographic came and did that peace
Speaker 2: on her.
Speaker 3: I didn't know anything about that until I got that
Speaker 3: through the mail. I didn't know anything about him. Even
Speaker 3: you know, she had lots of company that she didn't
Speaker 3: say too much about it to anybody.
Speaker 2: So she was in National Geographic, which in the seventies was, yeah,
Speaker 2: probably even bigger than it is today. I mean a magazine,
Speaker 2: a premiere print magazine. She was a national geographic and
Speaker 2: never told it. Just didn't think it was that big
Speaker 2: a deal.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 3: No, But when they first started coming down and talking
Speaker 3: to her about where she lived, I guess it's some
Speaker 3: part people out.
Speaker 2: She said.
Speaker 3: There were some strange people come down here, and she said,
Speaker 3: I answered some of their questions, and some of them
Speaker 3: I told there wasn't another business. But I thought that
Speaker 3: was such a god. Have you saw this?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: I have? I have?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I had it hunted for that wall ago and
Speaker 3: I had in a toad in my closet.
Speaker 2: That is probably that's the really famous picture of her
Speaker 2: right there.
Speaker 3: It is she's something. She was something else. Yeah, tough.
Speaker 3: She was ever a bit four foot seven and she
Speaker 3: would get up on top of a five gallon bucket
Speaker 3: and drive a wooden post with a sledge hammer. They
Speaker 3: didn't have tea posts back then.
Speaker 4: She was tough.
Speaker 3: She carried the water from and she had her some
Speaker 3: big tubs down there. But the fance she carried water
Speaker 3: from Buffalo, carried the water at Turkey Hoose in that tib.
Speaker 2: Did she always wear the camouflage.
Speaker 5: Old, yes, oh yes.
Speaker 3: On time we ever seen her with that is when
Speaker 3: she's getting ready to go to bed.
Speaker 2: She wore that specific canfula yes, yes, sir, Do you
Speaker 2: still have that?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 3: The sad thing of it is is when I go
Speaker 3: back down to her home place, all the windows are out,
Speaker 3: the riffs falling in. The purservice was supposed to have
Speaker 3: kept that up as a historical side. It's pitiful.
Speaker 2: I wonder why they're not keeping it up.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Grannie Henderson always wore an old school camo patterned bonnet,
Speaker 2: and that ended kind of on a downer note. You see,
Speaker 2: Grannie's house is still standing. It's a several mile hike
Speaker 2: or mule ride down there, but it's just a matter
Speaker 2: of time before the earth reclaims it. I do know
Speaker 2: that the park has done some work on it since
Speaker 2: she left, but the family isn't too happy about it.
Speaker 2: And I do know that there's currently a group called
Speaker 2: the Buffalo River Partners trying to raise money to help
Speaker 2: restore Grannie's house. And since we started researching for this podcast,
Speaker 2: the park has publicly stated new interest in maintaining the
Speaker 2: historic structures, but some say it's a day late and
Speaker 2: a dollar short. I visited Grannie's old home place many
Speaker 2: times as we hear this emotional story of Granny giving
Speaker 2: up her land, It's important to understand that the park
Speaker 2: did give every landowner the right of a life of state,
Speaker 2: which means they could live there until they died, and
Speaker 2: upon the death of the deed holder, the land would
Speaker 2: go into the possession of the park. It was kind
Speaker 2: of confusing when I learned that, because I'd have thought
Speaker 2: she would have taken them up on that deal. But
Speaker 2: for where she lived, the life of States had heavy
Speaker 2: restrictions on livestock and land use that she couldn't tolerate.
Speaker 2: And as I understand it, after a long battle and
Speaker 2: her being the last one on the river, all her
Speaker 2: neighbors and family had moved away, the family thought it
Speaker 2: was best that she should sell and move. She'd held
Speaker 2: out for so long. But even with this option of
Speaker 2: the life estate, it didn't soften the sting of the cold,
Speaker 2: stiff arm of the government. To an unbiased observer, it
Speaker 2: might be easy to say, well, that's fair. If they
Speaker 2: want to make a park for our nation to enjoy,
Speaker 2: at least they gave the option for folks to live
Speaker 2: there until they died. Then it's their choice. Well, it
Speaker 2: wasn't their choice, and the other option would have been
Speaker 2: the government never coming to buy your land. In the
Speaker 2: upper part of the Buffalo River watershed sits the small
Speaker 2: community of Boxley, and in nineteen seventy two it contained
Speaker 2: twenty seven occupied homes and approximately eighty people. And in
Speaker 2: the original National Park Service survey documentation in nineteen sixty one,
Speaker 2: they know Boxley and suggested a private use zone, stating, quote,
Speaker 2: areas possessing high agricultural values, such as those around Boxley
Speaker 2: and along Richland Creek, might be protected by acquiring partial
Speaker 2: rights or scenic easements only end of quote. Boxley was
Speaker 2: also along a prominent roadway into the park, and so
Speaker 2: Boxley was given kind of a special unique deal. But
Speaker 2: Granny's Place was truly in the backwoods and wasn't in
Speaker 2: a private use zone. They would follow through with this
Speaker 2: in the nineteen seventy two legislation, and it meant that
Speaker 2: the land at Boxley could remain in private ownership quote
Speaker 2: except for the rights purchased by the government to prevent
Speaker 2: unsightly changes in the pastoral setting end of quote. People
Speaker 2: could remain living there, but they couldn't as much as
Speaker 2: dig a hole in the ground without the Park's permission.
Speaker 2: This is still enacted today and many of the families
Speaker 2: in Boxley Valley still live there and it's beautiful. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: most of the ninety thousand acres of private land acquired
Speaker 2: weren't in the private land use zones. And even with
Speaker 2: all this looking really good on paper, what many of
Speaker 2: the locals say and what isn't written in the books
Speaker 2: by the Park Service, is that people were bullied and
Speaker 2: intimidated by the park and they were unorganized and unclear
Speaker 2: on communicating the new land acquisition laws. And you've got
Speaker 2: to remember this was way before the Internet and some
Speaker 2: folks like Granny didn't even have phones. You'll remember Misty
Speaker 2: Langdon from the last episode. She's kind of a grassroots
Speaker 2: spokesperson for the locals and runs the Remnant Project, designed
Speaker 2: to document the history of Newton County. People like her
Speaker 2: are really important and gutsy. She invited me to her home,
Speaker 2: which is a gorgeous multi generational cattle farm. You really
Speaker 2: want to hear how people feel, you go and talk
Speaker 2: to Misty.
Speaker 1: You know ev Henderson. Everybody calls her Granny Henderson. She
Speaker 1: was treated pretty pretty terribly, you know, as an older person.
Speaker 1: A lot of the you know, just the hatred and
Speaker 1: the you know, furre at the park was because of
Speaker 1: the treatment of her. She put a face on it
Speaker 1: that nobody else could put a face on. If they
Speaker 1: were going to do that to a little old woman
Speaker 1: who never you know, did anything to hurt anybody, who
Speaker 1: only help people. You know, if they would do that
Speaker 1: to her, they'd just do it to anybody. And in
Speaker 1: our culture, the one thing you don't do is trample
Speaker 1: around on older folks. That's a real good way to
Speaker 1: get a really bad reputation. People hurt, people are still
Speaker 1: so hurt.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 1: There are so many families that I deal with, and
Speaker 1: I'll call them up and say, hey, I thought you
Speaker 1: might have some pictures or some documents that you want
Speaker 1: to share with with the Remnants project, And do you
Speaker 1: want to tell me a few stories about growing up?
Speaker 1: You bet, come on, honey. But when you would get
Speaker 1: around and I knew to wait, I knew to get
Speaker 1: what I knew to save the park question for last.
Speaker 1: That is a subject that would be like if somebody
Speaker 1: in your family had some deep, dark secret and you
Speaker 1: didn't want anybody to know, and you were out in
Speaker 1: them publicly on the town square. That's the attitude that
Speaker 1: they have about talking about the park.
Speaker 2: It's just too it is too dark, too bad of
Speaker 2: a scenario. It's just we're just erasing that.
Speaker 1: From It's too painful, I think is one it was.
Speaker 1: I think it was probably one of the most painful
Speaker 1: periods for people here because everybody was scared. I asked
Speaker 1: my mom when all this came about, how do we
Speaker 1: keep our land? How did we not lose a bunch.
Speaker 2: Of going The land that we're on right now is
Speaker 2: the border of the park.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and about three quarters of our land is all
Speaker 1: surrounded by park. They are our neighbor and we're most
Speaker 1: of the time, we're really good neighbors with one another,
Speaker 1: you know. But with mom, when when the town hall
Speaker 1: meeting and stuff got called and for the redesignation stuff,
Speaker 1: and that's jumping a little ahead, but she came to
Speaker 1: me and she said she kind of had tears in
Speaker 1: her eyes and a lump in her throat, and she said,
Speaker 1: you're going to keep fooling around until you get this
Speaker 1: place took from us, because the park is liable to
Speaker 1: not like you doing this and take that. And I said, Mama,
Speaker 1: I don't think the park, you know, I think the
Speaker 1: park is done with their you know, acquisition, land acquisition,
Speaker 1: and I think we're all right. But fifty years later,
Speaker 1: she is still absolutely attitude like she she's set fear.
Speaker 2: She grew up thinking that these people had ultimate sovereign
Speaker 2: power and could just kind of do what they want.
Speaker 1: And that is exactly what happened. They did have sovereign power,
Speaker 1: and they did do whatever they wanted.
Speaker 2: As far as so how did how did Your original
Speaker 2: statement was how did we keep this land? Because it's
Speaker 2: three sides bordered by a national park? And as I
Speaker 2: understand it, I mean it was kind of I mean
Speaker 2: they were just drawing lines on a map just to
Speaker 2: say where this park was right, and I mean they
Speaker 2: could have they wanted exactly.
Speaker 1: They prayed. That was it. There was no Our family
Speaker 1: had no political pool. There were some families in Boxley
Speaker 1: that had some political allies, and I think that helped.
Speaker 1: But for us, it was Coove Lines was a preacher
Speaker 1: and so many people around here knew him. That's my
Speaker 1: great grandfather. And I reckon it was prayer and fasting,
Speaker 1: you know, it was on their face, you know, praying NonStop.
Speaker 2: But it was that imminent of a threat. Yes, that
Speaker 2: they took it serious like that, and it felt like
Speaker 2: it was so far beyond their control.
Speaker 1: Right there was nothing they could do. Yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: for me, it kind of felt like if a tornado's
Speaker 1: coming through the house and you all huddle up and
Speaker 1: you start praying, and but a you mean business. I
Speaker 1: kind of that's the image that I had in my mind.
Speaker 2: I thought the analogy of praying that a tornado wouldn't
Speaker 2: hit your home was a good descriptor. You get a
Speaker 2: sense of the helplessness, the fear, the random nature of
Speaker 2: the threat. It may hit us or skip us, but
Speaker 2: it's beyond our power. The shape of geographic boundaries are
Speaker 2: interesting data points that often indicate the type of authority
Speaker 2: that the boundary drawer had. Typically, indigenous peoples had boundaries
Speaker 2: based on rivers, mountains, valleys, and natural features, and even
Speaker 2: historical use patterns, which are rarely straight lines. The last
Speaker 2: couple thousand years, governments and specifically colonizers began drawing straight boundaries,
Speaker 2: meaning someone from somewhere else who didn't understand the way
Speaker 2: this place works, wanting to keep things simple, was drawing
Speaker 2: the geometric boundaries. This is highly simplified, but I think
Speaker 2: you get the point. And for the record, we tried
Speaker 2: to get the National Park Service to be on this podcast,
Speaker 2: but they declined the interview. We tried local and national
Speaker 2: channels and they said it was a funding issue. Whatever
Speaker 2: the reason, I can't help but think that it was
Speaker 2: a strategic error. And it's a shame because the vast
Speaker 2: majority of people that work for the National Park Service
Speaker 2: are wonderful, hard working, well meaning people, and here I
Speaker 2: am trying to interpret their law and their story, and
Speaker 2: I'm certain that I've got some of their side of
Speaker 2: the story wrong. It's possible, but this story is intentionally
Speaker 2: focused on the people who haven't had much of a
Speaker 2: voice in this now fifty year process. And this is
Speaker 2: no way designed to be a hit piece on our
Speaker 2: national parks, because I am a fan and a partaker.
Speaker 2: After the park was established in seventy two, the biggest
Speaker 2: shock in the community came when the first people were
Speaker 2: served papers requiring them to sell. Word of the encounter
Speaker 2: spread like wildfire. Here's misty on the perception of the
Speaker 2: park's process of acquisition of land.
Speaker 1: It was just so underhanded, and then the amounts that
Speaker 1: they would give people were all over the board. One
Speaker 1: person might get something that seemed like a fair price,
Speaker 1: and then somebody else like Roy Keaton, would absolutely get nothing.
Speaker 1: And I mean Roy and Katie for me Keaton, they
Speaker 1: had some of the harshest treatment that I know of
Speaker 1: in our area. Going through the notes and the transcripts
Speaker 1: and everything that I have seen, I don't know how
Speaker 1: anybody made it out of that without a shooting.
Speaker 2: I mean it was me. Kay House is a lifelong
Speaker 2: resident of the Buffalo River. Her family home seted here
Speaker 2: early and never left. She remembers when the Keaton family,
Speaker 2: Misty just spoke about the served papers and the acquisition
Speaker 2: of their land.
Speaker 8: My first memory of when the Park Service came in
Speaker 8: and took over We had a little grocery store there
Speaker 8: in Ponka's where a trailer's sitting now. But my first
Speaker 8: memory was whenever they came in and they took it
Speaker 8: Roy Keaton's property, which is the property up at Los Valley.
Speaker 8: That was my first memory, because the US Marshals came
Speaker 8: in that night, stopped there at the store and ask about,
Speaker 8: you know, where Roy Keaton lived. That was my first
Speaker 8: real memory. I mean, all the talk and everything.
Speaker 2: You remember, what did you how did you feel about that?
Speaker 1: I scared to death.
Speaker 8: I mean, you know, we just you just couldn't imagine
Speaker 8: things like that happening around here, you know, because it's
Speaker 8: such a quiet, family oriented place to live.
Speaker 2: And all of a sudden, everybody was like, this is real.
Speaker 8: Yeah right, that's I believe, if I'm not mistaken, that's
Speaker 8: the very first real action that was taken.
Speaker 2: How did how did the people that you knew respond
Speaker 2: to that?
Speaker 3: Curious?
Speaker 2: Really?
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean they were very, very upset at the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the community was scared, and it's hard to blame them.
Speaker 2: There's actually a recorded interview with Roy and Katie Keaton.
Speaker 2: In the early nineteen eighties, the park Service, recognizing an
Speaker 2: issue and an effort to restore and build relationships with
Speaker 2: the community, commissioned an outreach to gather oral history from
Speaker 2: the people who sold land. The Keatons lived in Boxley
Speaker 2: Valley in the residential zone. I listened to the entire interview,
Speaker 2: which is over two hours, and unfortunately the audio quality
Speaker 2: isn't great, especially when they talk about the park. But
Speaker 2: the Keatons described in detail how things transpired. Here's Misty
Speaker 2: reading just a small part of that transcript.
Speaker 1: This is Katie and Roy Keaton being interviewed by the
Speaker 1: Center for Ozark Studies June the ninth of eighty three,
Speaker 1: and the interviewer says, when did you first hear about
Speaker 1: the park? Katie answered, well, we've heard a long time
Speaker 1: about the park, but we never did hear a thing
Speaker 1: that they'd want to take our house till they brought
Speaker 1: us the papers. Really, they never confronted you, Oh no, nothing,
Speaker 1: never said nothing until this us Marshall that night walked
Speaker 1: in and with a whole bunch of papers, gave me
Speaker 1: a set, and he a set, and my son and
Speaker 1: his wife, we each got a whole bunch of papers,
Speaker 1: said we were living on government property. They gave us
Speaker 1: ninety days to get off. He said, had you heard
Speaker 1: about them taking other people's land? They hadn't taken anybody's
Speaker 1: land over there at that time. We was the first
Speaker 1: ones that they moved in on. Did you ever see
Speaker 1: this plan in the paper or anything like that? No,
Speaker 1: did you ever hear of any meetings? They didn't have
Speaker 1: any over in here, nothing until after they took our place,
Speaker 1: and then the people got to get in together. Do
Speaker 1: you think people saw what happened to you and got together,
Speaker 1: and Katie answered, yeah, did they give you specific reasons
Speaker 1: to why you had the leave your land? They said
Speaker 1: they were going to take that land for everybody to
Speaker 1: enjoy and not just us. I thought it was and
Speaker 1: then they have redacted something there. Well, what did you do?
Speaker 1: We tried to fight. Yeah, we had to go to
Speaker 1: court to get our money. They wouldn't give us nothing
Speaker 1: until after they gave us the ninety days to do something.
Speaker 1: They didn't. We didn't get a penny of money until
Speaker 1: that after the ninety days.
Speaker 2: Was that I had?
Speaker 1: They had to lead.
Speaker 2: They had to fund themselves to yes, go live somewhere else.
Speaker 1: Their move, their repurchase everything, and earlier in this interview
Speaker 1: the house that they're interviewing them in and she said
Speaker 1: this ain't no home where they're at now. So they
Speaker 1: spent the later years of their life with her saying
Speaker 1: this ain't no home. And they said. We tried to fight.
Speaker 1: We had to take them to court to get our money.
Speaker 1: They didn't give us nothing. Was it a fair price? No,
Speaker 1: we had to take them to court. And then of
Speaker 1: course after that the attorney takes half half of it,
Speaker 1: so we still didn't get very much after that was
Speaker 1: the law they used to get your land, more specific
Speaker 1: than eminent domain. I don't remember. They said they had
Speaker 1: right to do it, and that was it. The judge
Speaker 1: told us that they have the right to take it
Speaker 1: at any time they wanted, but they didn't have the
Speaker 1: right to tell you how much they're going to pay
Speaker 1: for it. That was up to the jury, you know.
Speaker 1: And they took them to court, and I don't remember
Speaker 1: what they were given at first. I know it was
Speaker 1: poultry that they won one hundred and sixty three thousand
Speaker 1: dollars settlement from court. I mean that kind of goes
Speaker 1: to show how small of an amount, because in the
Speaker 1: eighties one hundred and sixty three thousand would be a
Speaker 1: pretty good windfall. Yeah, And that was making up the gap,
Speaker 1: you know, that was making up what they was, That
Speaker 1: was making up the fair price.
Speaker 2: That they took it. And they went back to court,
Speaker 2: they said you owe them and sees exactly. Oh gosh,
Speaker 2: so they must have just paid them nothing. Nothing. Here's
Speaker 2: the bottom line on paper in the halls of Congress,
Speaker 2: reading public Law ninety two Dash two thirty seven, which
Speaker 2: instituted the National River, which detailed how land would be acquired.
Speaker 2: I've read it. It looks tolerable, just unfortunate for the landowners.
Speaker 2: But on the ground in the backwoods of Arkansas in
Speaker 2: the early nineteen seventies, it wasn't pretty. And I can't
Speaker 2: even begin to tell on this podcast all these stories.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm just cherry picking a couple, and I'm sure,
Speaker 2: as stories do, some of them get exaggerated in the
Speaker 2: community over the years. But where there is smoke, there's fire,
Speaker 2: and in this case, the fire was visible to everyone.
Speaker 2: I want to talk to doctor Brooks. Blevin's prolific author,
Speaker 2: friend of this podcast and an authority in ozark history.
Speaker 2: I've got a peculiar question as it relates to the
Speaker 2: time period in the long arm of this freedom love
Speaker 2: and American government and the word communism. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 2: there's a sentence into your essay where it says there
Speaker 2: were those who condemned the creation of our national rivers
Speaker 2: as communism. That's interesting. Can you can you explain why
Speaker 2: people would have thought that?
Speaker 7: Well, you think about the era when this, when this happens,
Speaker 7: you get the Buffalo National River in seventy two, we're
Speaker 7: in the Cold War, and it's it's natural that a
Speaker 7: lot of people would have seen any kind of big
Speaker 7: government intrusion in the everyday lives of people and in
Speaker 7: the in the property rights of Americans as a communistic
Speaker 7: type move And I've seen not just with a buffalo story,
Speaker 7: but this is such a vast story that takes in
Speaker 7: so much of the of the US story from the
Speaker 7: from the mid twentieth century. I've seen a lot of
Speaker 7: letters to congressmen and senators and stuff where they bring
Speaker 7: up the C word, it's communism. And so it would
Speaker 7: have been a natural reaction for a lot of people,
Speaker 7: especially a lot of conservative people, who put a lot
Speaker 7: of value in the primacy of property rights. This is
Speaker 7: also the era when you're starting to have kind of
Speaker 7: the infant movement of the hard right of kind of
Speaker 7: ultra conservative people. And if you go back to kind
Speaker 7: of the beginnings of the libertarian movement and stuff like that,
Speaker 7: a lot of those folks, if property rights is not
Speaker 7: at the top, it's on the mount rushmore of rights
Speaker 7: of Americans that are or should be inviolable for those people,
Speaker 7: this becomes a property rights issue. Is there a justification?
Speaker 7: Is there enough of an American national interest in aiding
Speaker 7: the Buffalo National River to justify the taking of private
Speaker 7: property from these citizens. Can you make can you make
Speaker 7: a case that there's a justific constitutional justification for that.
Speaker 7: Of course it holds up under under our laws, But
Speaker 7: there were a lot of people who who saw this
Speaker 7: as getting close to kind of breaching that, you know,
Speaker 7: that constitutional directive that we live under.
Speaker 2: The commies. I knew it, and now I want to
Speaker 2: turn the throttle up just a bit. If you remember,
Speaker 2: in the first episode, I mentioned doctor Neil Compton, who's
Speaker 2: considered the father of the Buffalo National Park, kind of
Speaker 2: like John Muir is of Yosemite. And after talking with
Speaker 2: the people here, I'm feeling conflicted about this man who
Speaker 2: is so influential and turning this into a national park.
Speaker 2: I want to ask doctor Blevins about it, and I'll
Speaker 2: trust what he tells me. Until I started doing this research,
Speaker 2: the name Neil Compton would have in my mind, not
Speaker 2: knowing a lot about the Buffalo River, but I would
Speaker 2: have said he's the guy that saved the Buffalo River.
Speaker 2: I would have said he's a hero. When you get
Speaker 2: over into Newton County, he is not a hero. I'm
Speaker 2: struggling to try to decide if he's a hero or
Speaker 2: a villain. But I'm kind of conflicted because it feels
Speaker 2: like those are in society minimized, this marginal, disenfranchised group
Speaker 2: of people, did not hear them and just kind of
Speaker 2: did what they wanted to do. And in Compton's book,
Speaker 2: you see you see little threads of that. And one
Speaker 2: thing that stood out to me in his book, which
Speaker 2: was a great book. He did a great job. He
Speaker 2: was a good writer, but his reports to the world
Speaker 2: was that basically this one hundred and thirty five miles
Speaker 2: of river was uninhabited. He said, it's basically uninhabited, you know,
Speaker 2: given the illusion that these people they want to leave.
Speaker 2: Not to put words in his mouth, but just the
Speaker 2: idea that I have as I read that and then
Speaker 2: know also what was going on behind the scenes, as
Speaker 2: he was saying, these folks don't have any power, these
Speaker 2: folks don't have any pool, They don't know what they've
Speaker 2: got in a way, and maybe this is villainizing him
Speaker 2: too much, but I'd be willing to step on the
Speaker 2: line to say, you know, almost just saying these people
Speaker 2: don't deserve, they don't know what they've got, and they
Speaker 2: don't deserve it, and that's probably pretty harsh. What do
Speaker 2: you think about that? Am I being too hard on him?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 7: I think Neil Compton. I think he realized, Now you
Speaker 7: don't see this in his book. The book stops in
Speaker 7: nineteen seventy two. The battle has been won, We've nationalized
Speaker 7: the river. The rest of the story goes untold, you know,
Speaker 7: the land Act position and all that kind of stuff
Speaker 7: after nineteen seventy two. But even in that book, I
Speaker 7: can fish out evidence that Compton realized that one of
Speaker 7: the things that most fascinated him in those early days,
Speaker 7: and he says this in his book, was these little
Speaker 7: farmsteads and the people who lived in that valley that
Speaker 7: was fascinating to him. It was that human community there
Speaker 7: that to him would have seemed like they were living
Speaker 7: fifty years behind the times, and they might have been
Speaker 7: probably would have been compared to somebody from New York
Speaker 7: or Chicago or something like that, and maybe even to
Speaker 7: somebody from Bentonville.
Speaker 2: So would your perception of him wouldn't be like what
Speaker 2: I just described.
Speaker 7: No part of it would be. I think Compton would
Speaker 7: have had a more conflicted attitude on what eventually happened
Speaker 7: because we don't really know. He never really talks about
Speaker 7: the loss of land of a lot of these people
Speaker 7: that he knew personally. Yeah, I mean that's not part
Speaker 7: of his book, The Battle for the Buffalo. And maybe
Speaker 7: why it's not part of the book it may have
Speaker 7: been something a little too difficult, too personal to deal with.
Speaker 7: But I think by and large, the group of people
Speaker 7: he represented the recreational canoeists and you know people and
Speaker 7: campers and stuff like that. I don't think you're wrong
Speaker 7: in saying that they probably approached the people of the
Speaker 7: Buffalo Valley with a with a kind of a condescending
Speaker 7: outsider attitude that these people they don't know what they
Speaker 7: have and therefore they can't take care of it the
Speaker 7: way that the government could take care.
Speaker 2: Of it now.
Speaker 7: And a lot of that again goes back to self interest.
Speaker 7: If you're a canoeist from Kansas City, your interest is
Speaker 7: making sure that river stays undamned and that you have
Speaker 7: access to it. If the National Park Service takes it over,
Speaker 7: you're going to have even more seamless access. So for them,
Speaker 7: definitely that's in their set he interest to favor that
Speaker 7: and to argue the greatest good for the for the
Speaker 7: greatest number, and we humans have a powerful capacity to
Speaker 7: rationalize whatever it is that we want into being something
Speaker 7: that almost seems altruistic.
Speaker 2: I never knew doctor Compton nor his family, and I
Speaker 2: hope that this segment isn't interpreted as personally disparaging. However,
Speaker 2: I think the point is that it's not black and white,
Speaker 2: and I'd like to correct something that I said in
Speaker 2: that segment. Not everybody in Newton County dislikes Compton, because
Speaker 2: today the region is full of new people who wouldn't
Speaker 2: be there without his influence. There is little doubt to
Speaker 2: the people on the river Compton was an elite, politically
Speaker 2: connected outsider, and when the dams were defeated, they could
Speaker 2: have just walked away. More on that later in the
Speaker 2: foreword of Compton's book, written by a man named Ken Smith,
Speaker 2: a very well respected man. My eyebrows raised when I
Speaker 2: read this statement, and I quote from the book from
Speaker 2: the foreword. Other battles were being fought and won in
Speaker 2: the sixties to creator expand national parks in Arizona's Grand Canyon,
Speaker 2: among California's Redwoods Washington's Cascades. In each case, the Buffalo
Speaker 2: River and all the rest. The battle has been between
Speaker 2: those who saw the area's natural resources to be used
Speaker 2: for material gain, often to the benefit of local interest,
Speaker 2: and those who saw the resources as having intangible, even
Speaker 2: spiritual benefits, with park advocates usually living outside the immediate area.
Speaker 2: In simplest terms, locals versus outsiders, exploiters versus presentationist. End
Speaker 2: of quote. Hmm, that's an interesting quote. And I'll give
Speaker 2: the man the benefit of the doubt because he was
Speaker 2: partly talking about those who are wanting to damn the river,
Speaker 2: but where Granny and Misty's families local exploiters looking for
Speaker 2: material gain by simply wanting to stay on their own land.
Speaker 2: Without a doubt, Doctor Compton appreciated at some level the
Speaker 2: rural Ozarkian people so different from him that he encountered
Speaker 2: in his early trips to the Buffalo. In his book,
Speaker 2: he gave one of the best description of the ozark
Speaker 2: people that I've heard, and I'd like to read what
Speaker 2: he wrote. A quote from his book, This Journey to
Speaker 2: the Unknown Buffalo did, however, and plant the seed of
Speaker 2: interest in our native land, so that for me, then,
Speaker 2: on honest compared prison was sought between our rivers, forests, mountains,
Speaker 2: and prairies and those in other parts of America and
Speaker 2: the world, and for our people a feeling not so
Speaker 2: much of pride, but of sympathy and understanding for their
Speaker 2: unpretentious manner, their honest approach to the uncertainties of life,
Speaker 2: and their rye and whimsical method of expression, and their
Speaker 2: tried and true moral values. End of quote. That was
Speaker 2: incredibly good insight in writing. But I hadn't forgotten that
Speaker 2: those commies still took Granny's land. And again, in doctor
Speaker 2: Compton's defense, there were vocal landowners on the river who
Speaker 2: wanted the river damned, and some who wanted the park.
Speaker 2: In the book, he cites Homer Blyth, who had seven
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty three acres on the river, and he
Speaker 2: said that the river dried up each summer, wasn't worthy
Speaker 2: of a park and should be damned. Larry Potter owned
Speaker 2: fifteen hundred acres and six miles of river frontage on
Speaker 2: the Lower Buffalo and support of damning one hundred percent
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty nine or fe of duty. A lifelong Boxley
Speaker 2: resident went to Washington to petition for the National Park,
Speaker 2: but her land was in the residential zone, but many
Speaker 2: people who were deeply connected to the land didn't want
Speaker 2: it damned or a park. Here's doctor Blevins. If that
Speaker 2: was not a national river, I probably wouldn't know that
Speaker 2: much about it, you know, I wouldn't have gone over
Speaker 2: there and hiked and seen the bluffs. And with our
Speaker 2: water low, you know, I guess you could still float it,
Speaker 2: but it would all be private land, you know, inside
Speaker 2: the high water mark. But so here I am someone
Speaker 2: who's partaken to the Buffalo River, taking pride in the
Speaker 2: Buffalo River, take it, love it. But then now when
Speaker 2: I hear the story, I don't know if I should
Speaker 2: be mad, or should be happy, or should just be man.
Speaker 2: The human existence is pretty conflicted.
Speaker 7: It's the great, great area that most history, at least
Speaker 7: most interesting history, falls into. It's one of these things
Speaker 7: where our own individual perspectives is a lot of times
Speaker 7: will dictate how we view this story. And the vast,
Speaker 7: vast majority of people in the world, and even in
Speaker 7: the White River Valley and even in Newton County don't
Speaker 7: have any connection with that little strip of land along
Speaker 7: the Buffalo River, and we're more likely to view that
Speaker 7: in that sort of outsider black and white way with
Speaker 7: this was this was one hundred percent a good thing,
Speaker 7: nationalizing the river and not damning the river. But that's
Speaker 7: what you know, that's what makes this such an intriguing
Speaker 7: stories that there are other elements to this that remind
Speaker 7: us that, you know, most of these stories are not
Speaker 7: just simple. They're not black and white. Yeah, good and
Speaker 7: bad stories. And and Neil Compton is you know, he's
Speaker 7: not He's not all good and he's not all bad.
Speaker 7: And and it's hard to figure out what to do
Speaker 7: with some of these characters.
Speaker 2: Right in the middle of this conversation on ethics, I
Speaker 2: want to step back in time for a minute onto
Speaker 2: Granny Henderson's porch and hear her tell about the best
Speaker 2: dog she ever owned. That's right, But first you'll hear
Speaker 2: her refer to her favorite gun.
Speaker 5: So he's killed later bombings.
Speaker 4: Okay, I guess you need a good gun out here.
Speaker 5: I've cared that mimb He used to have a dog.
Speaker 5: He was he looked quite a bit like a dobby
Speaker 5: color and he was a real squirrel dog where he was.
Speaker 5: He was good about the stock what he knows, but
Speaker 5: he never he wasn't a natural hater or some dogs
Speaker 5: you know, just don't never just go to the hill.
Speaker 5: He's the best dog I ever owner of the will
Speaker 5: of course never expect. But I went thousand dollars Bobby.
Speaker 5: He watches it, not think of moves, not move had
Speaker 5: let you know, and a good dog's worth helo after
Speaker 5: these barns.
Speaker 4: Yes, basically out here you need a good dog.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Bobby is the dog that was sitting right there
Speaker 2: with them. He's in several of the photos in National Geographic.
Speaker 2: But she said she wouldn't take a thousand dollars for him,
Speaker 2: which in seventy four was a lot. But the best
Speaker 2: dog she ever owned was that squirrel dog healer. I
Speaker 2: want to ask Jane Kilgore what her grandmother would have
Speaker 2: thought about this park. So, I mean she would have
Speaker 2: been against this area becoming a national park.
Speaker 3: Oh absolutely, yes, yeah, yes.
Speaker 2: As were everybody most people on the.
Speaker 3: River right just past her house down there, you go
Speaker 3: across thirty jim Bluff, go across the creek. That's where
Speaker 3: we had our cane patches and corn patches.
Speaker 2: Over there.
Speaker 3: Now there's not even a you can't tell where it's
Speaker 3: just a big back of sand and rocks.
Speaker 2: Do you ever go down there, Oh, yeah, to your
Speaker 2: old home place.
Speaker 4: What is it?
Speaker 2: Is it nostalgic for you to go there? I mean,
Speaker 2: does it make you sad? Does it make you happy?
Speaker 3: I'm proud I live in a place where I've got
Speaker 3: electricity now, but you don't. I told Hillary one time,
Speaker 3: my husband, I said, I wouldn't mind being back down there.
Speaker 3: He said, about the time you couldn't turn the TV
Speaker 3: on or you change your mind. Yeah, but then we
Speaker 3: were sad when they moved us out there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we were. Yeah, Granny was again the park and
Speaker 2: I think we already knew that. And Jane's old home place,
Speaker 2: half a mile from Granny's is still standing today too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I wouldn't like to be able to drive
Speaker 3: back down there and just you know, spend the night
Speaker 3: and not of the chim bluff.
Speaker 2: Would you have felt like they minimize the locals, This
Speaker 2: kind of walked over people that they felt like they could, right.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I know they had. Yeah, and they don't
Speaker 3: pay attention to the tourists. They would like the tourists
Speaker 3: to be down there. I think it just became a
Speaker 3: tourist attraction and people go down there and look at
Speaker 3: my old home place or my grandma said, it don't
Speaker 3: mean anything to them. And I even called Washington d C.
Speaker 2: One time.
Speaker 3: My mother had crypt an arthritis. She lived to be
Speaker 3: ninety six. We would take her in a raft to
Speaker 3: down to the old home place when she was able.
Speaker 3: She got to where she wasn't, so I asked one
Speaker 3: of the park rangers about taking her on the full whidder,
Speaker 3: and he said, you can't do that, and I said,
Speaker 3: well why not. She's the only one left that's home.
Speaker 3: Said that, and she can't write. He put her on
Speaker 3: a mule. She's ninety six year old, she's crippled with arthritis.
Speaker 3: She can't write a mule and so he gave me
Speaker 3: the number of Washington d SEEING. I called and no.
Speaker 3: I said, well if I take her anyway, and I said,
Speaker 3: you'll get a ticket, okay, But I was going to
Speaker 3: chance it and take.
Speaker 2: Her on the full wheeler.
Speaker 3: Who used to be the park ranger down here, the
Speaker 3: real nice guy. Huh yeah, yeah, he told me. He said,
Speaker 3: if it was up to me, miss Kilgore, I would
Speaker 3: tell you go right ahead and take her. But he said,
Speaker 3: now they're big wigs ahead of me, so I can't
Speaker 3: tell you that because I'd get in trouble, i'd.
Speaker 2: Lose my job. But I was.
Speaker 3: I almost took her once to just chance it because
Speaker 3: she wanted to go. Yeah, they don't care. They don't
Speaker 3: care if if you're if you have lots of memories down,
Speaker 3: I want to go back. They don't care.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, the more people that runs up down the river
Speaker 3: and brings beer and throws it in the river, and
Speaker 3: that's what they'd like. No, I don't like them. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm just like my Grandma'm playing spoken. I don't know,
Speaker 3: I don't I don't them.
Speaker 2: It's clear to see that Jane has a unique and
Speaker 2: personal connection to the Buffalo River, and she's one of
Speaker 2: those people that feels like they've had something taken that
Speaker 2: they can't get back. But don't get the wrong idea
Speaker 2: about her. She's not a victim. She's lived a wonderful
Speaker 2: life full of hard work and joy and family. She's
Speaker 2: deeply respected in her community, and I have incredible respect
Speaker 2: for Jane Kilgore. I'd probably drove that four wheeler down. Therefore,
Speaker 2: I want to get back to doctor Blevin's for a
Speaker 2: big question, and it's this, did they have to nationalize
Speaker 2: the River to completely save it from being damned. If
Speaker 2: they had just walked away with the place have stayed
Speaker 2: in private hands, and then really the bigger question is
Speaker 2: would that have been the best thing.
Speaker 7: If the Buffalo River nationalization weall hadn't been passed in
Speaker 7: seventy two, if we'd waited another year or another two years,
Speaker 7: it never would have happened. There would be no Buffalo
Speaker 7: national River. This happened right on the cusp or right
Speaker 7: at the very end of what we might call the
Speaker 7: the New Deal Coalition or like the progressive New Deal
Speaker 7: Coalition of American history and American politics. This long era,
Speaker 7: at least from the thirties through the sixties, where there
Speaker 7: was this kind of consensus. I mean, there was always
Speaker 7: political division, but there was this kind of consensus, whether
Speaker 7: you were on the right or the left, whether you
Speaker 7: were a Republican or Democrat, that the government had a
Speaker 7: had a right and even a responsibility to plan things out.
Speaker 7: You know, planning was a big that was a big
Speaker 7: catch word in the twentieth century, that there were university
Speaker 7: trained technocrats and experts who knew better how the world
Speaker 7: should work than your average Joe. And for roughly a
Speaker 7: generation or more. That's that's how our national government operated.
Speaker 7: We went from the New Deal into World War Two
Speaker 7: and in the into the Cold War after that, and
Speaker 7: it's during that era that you have this great era
Speaker 7: of damn building. It's from it's really from the thirties
Speaker 7: into the end of the sixties and a little bit
Speaker 7: into the seventies, and by the by the end of
Speaker 7: the sixties, that political philosophy is starting to go away,
Speaker 7: and it's doing it. Vietnam is exposing some of the
Speaker 7: weaknesses of our government. There are people in both the
Speaker 7: right and the left who are beginning to distrust things
Speaker 7: that the federal government does. There's the civil rights movement,
Speaker 7: which stirs a lot of people on the right side
Speaker 7: of the political spectrum. You've got a lot of things
Speaker 7: that are chipping away at this traditional kind of teflne
Speaker 7: government that we had that what are you know, where
Speaker 7: the government did must be right. And this explodes in
Speaker 7: the seventies and by the end of the seventies, this
Speaker 7: isn't going to go anymore, you know.
Speaker 2: So if it hadn't happened, right then you don't think.
Speaker 7: I don't think it would. And the reason I say that,
Speaker 7: at the very moment that this Buffalo stuff has been
Speaker 7: finalized in seventy one. In early seventy two, at that
Speaker 7: very moment, there's an effort in the state of Missouri
Speaker 7: to enact a statewide scenic rivers program and it's over
Speaker 7: eight hundred miles of rivers they're going to be part of.
Speaker 7: This would have been part of this state Scenic.
Speaker 2: Rivers program, and there was this.
Speaker 7: Massive uproar, I mean, just this grassroots anti government uproar
Speaker 7: that just just takes over. And it's all in the ozars.
Speaker 7: It's all in the Missouri ozars. It's a state wide system.
Speaker 7: But it goes away. That fight ends in seventy one,
Speaker 7: and I think that was that was a signal of
Speaker 7: what was going on nationally.
Speaker 2: Like the states were saying, we don't want the federal
Speaker 2: guarn coming in here. Well, are just.
Speaker 7: Any government, right, But at the same time they're fighting
Speaker 7: in Missouri, people are fighting against you know that. In
Speaker 7: sixty eight, the federal government passes the National Wild and
Speaker 7: Scenic Rivers Act, and this is something separate from the
Speaker 7: Buffalo and those are National Scenic Riverways, but there are
Speaker 7: you know, a bunch of rivers around the nation that
Speaker 7: are classified as federal wild or scenic rivers, and by
Speaker 7: the seventies it gets harder and harder to get rivers
Speaker 7: designated as wild and scenic rivers because people don't want
Speaker 7: it anymore. They see it as a federal A lot
Speaker 7: of them dismiss it as a federal land grab, or
Speaker 7: it's just federal intrusion, it's just people who are again.
Speaker 7: Or you know that old motto that might as well
Speaker 7: have existed leave us alone. That becomes kind of the.
Speaker 2: Motto, Wow, that is really interesting. It would have been
Speaker 2: hard to but the thirty year damn building era of
Speaker 2: the Army Corps of Engineers was ending, and it's likely
Speaker 2: the Buffalo River dams would have never happened if the
Speaker 2: park people had also gone away. But as we get
Speaker 2: to the end of this story, I'm terribly conflicted because
Speaker 2: I love the Buffalo National River. I do enjoy that
Speaker 2: it is public land, and if it was still private,
Speaker 2: I doubt I'd know much about it. I've got a
Speaker 2: question for Misty. Can you see the Is it hard
Speaker 2: to see the bigger picture when you're right in the
Speaker 2: middle of it.
Speaker 1: It's not for me, and I feel kind of like
Speaker 1: a trader when I even say that I'm glad that
Speaker 1: it's protected in some way, but I am I'm glad
Speaker 1: that we do have some protections of it. If not,
Speaker 1: it would be nothing but condos and strip malls already,
Speaker 1: it would I feel like that the thing that they
Speaker 1: were trying their hardest to protect the river from is
Speaker 1: where we're at now, that we're at a tipping point where, well,
Speaker 1: we could do we could make a lot of money
Speaker 1: if we added, if we changed the park, and we
Speaker 1: did this, this and this, and then we're right back
Speaker 1: to the beginning of, you know, commercialization of the river.
Speaker 1: And that's the part that really and that's the part
Speaker 1: that makes me furious.
Speaker 2: What I haven't told you yet is that last year
Speaker 2: there was talk of redesignating the park from a National
Speaker 2: River to a National Park and Preserve. The Details of
Speaker 2: the change are substantial and complicated, but it comes at
Speaker 2: the heels of a statewide tourism push in Arkansas, and
Speaker 2: many people in Newton County view it as a repeat
Speaker 2: of what happened in seventy two, which is outside influences
Speaker 2: essentially commercializing the river through the redesignation, which would recruit
Speaker 2: more people to come here. And in the name of
Speaker 2: economic development of the state, get them to spend more
Speaker 2: money in Arkansas.
Speaker 1: Because if we're going to protect this from the people
Speaker 1: who loved it as much as they loved their family,
Speaker 1: and that was everything to them. That land was all
Speaker 1: they had besides their family. If we're going to take
Speaker 1: that from them and preserve it, let's do that. You
Speaker 1: treat it everybody awful. You ought to be ashamed of that,
Speaker 1: But that's done and gone. Let's go from where we're at.
Speaker 1: Let's try to be good neighbors to one another. I
Speaker 1: feel like that we're I feel like I'm a pretty
Speaker 1: good neighbor to the park, and I try to be.
Speaker 1: But that thing of turning it into what you're trying
Speaker 1: to avoid it turning into why you know, I think,
Speaker 1: in my simplest form of what I'm against about the
Speaker 1: river is a bunch of rich people, corporations, politicians who
Speaker 1: are wanting to come in and turn our protected, our
Speaker 1: federally protected public land into something that just fits their
Speaker 1: business model. That is infuriating to me. If you want
Speaker 1: to give it back to somebody, line up the descendants
Speaker 1: of the people who you took it from and let
Speaker 1: them have it and let them farm it if you're done,
Speaker 1: you know, protecting it and worrying about water quality and
Speaker 1: this and that. And I don't think that the park
Speaker 1: is I do not think at all. I think that
Speaker 1: the park is doing the best that they can.
Speaker 2: Do right now.
Speaker 1: They are under budget, they are understaffed, and I have
Speaker 1: a lot of friends that work at the park, and
Speaker 1: I like a lot of people that are there, and
Speaker 1: I think they are good, good people.
Speaker 2: But I think that.
Speaker 1: They are protecting it the best that they can with
Speaker 1: the budgeting that they've got.
Speaker 2: Some sources say the redesignation would bring more federal money.
Speaker 2: Others say additional funding is no guarantee, but without a doubt,
Speaker 2: it would bring more people. And that's good if you're
Speaker 2: a merchant, speculator or a politician. It's not good if
Speaker 2: you're trying to raise a family here. There's a strong
Speaker 2: case to be made that many of the families will
Speaker 2: be gentrified out of this area when land values just
Speaker 2: get too high, taxes too high, and the pressure to
Speaker 2: sell too great.
Speaker 9: Our boards raggers here came together and we do all
Speaker 9: of the information that has made along. It's is you
Speaker 9: and grew a deep inside and really the look in
Speaker 9: every potential.
Speaker 4: Wish heard walker.
Speaker 9: Here we ame through the conclusion that there is no
Speaker 9: benefits and no thingies anywhere that we could see for agriculture,
Speaker 9: for the people in Lindon County, and for our way
Speaker 9: of life under this hole change in deination.
Speaker 2: With murmurs spreading about the redesignation, last fall, Misty called
Speaker 2: a public meeting in the small town of Jasper, which
Speaker 2: has a population of five hundred, and over eleven hundred
Speaker 2: people showed up, and all but about seven of them
Speaker 2: were against the redesignation. That little clip you just heard
Speaker 2: was one of the board of directors of the local
Speaker 2: farm Bureau. There was another meeting down the river with
Speaker 2: almost the exact same results. The overarching theme of the
Speaker 2: community was leave us alone. We made our peace with
Speaker 2: the world fifty years ago, and that's enough for one community.
Speaker 2: I want to listen to one last clip from the
Speaker 2: historic Granny Henderson interview as she expresses her doctrine on
Speaker 2: hard and old times and yeah, the roosters are still there.
Speaker 4: Did the depression have much of effect down in here
Speaker 4: for the thirties.
Speaker 5: The thirties, so I said, has come up the hill
Speaker 5: today turned out wather. I said, shoot, we keep a hollering,
Speaker 5: holler and holler about the heat and what we're going
Speaker 5: to do. Some of them says, if we were doing
Speaker 5: what we're going to do, and I said, we'll do
Speaker 5: just like we' did. Somebody said they didn't. What this's
Speaker 5: going to do is cattle going down, hogs going down.
Speaker 5: I said, they're just like we did in the thirties. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I said, you think bigger count our cow I've got
Speaker 5: on this place. I guess we sold some seven dollars apiece.
Speaker 5: I'll be done glad to get it.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, we didn't have.
Speaker 5: Money to snap a letter. Why and it only took
Speaker 5: two cents while Yeah, and I'll hear it so minutes
Speaker 5: so we can live all the days back. I don't
Speaker 5: want to see it in the thirties. Yeah, time is
Speaker 5: two two pinchy.
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy four, times were hard, especially for her,
Speaker 2: and she said we'll do just like we did. She'd
Speaker 2: been through a lot of hard stuff, and then she
Speaker 2: ended by saying that time is pinchy. I think I
Speaker 2: know what she meant by that, but I'm not entirely sure.
Speaker 2: In this next and final clip, it's the only time
Speaker 2: in the whole interview that she addresses that the park
Speaker 2: is trying to buy her land. And remember, from this
Speaker 2: moment she'll hold out for another five years until the
Speaker 2: spring of nineteen seventy nine. And in this clip she
Speaker 2: really doesn't give us much.
Speaker 6: Well, having lived so many years though here, what what
Speaker 6: stands out in your mind? Is cause anything the years
Speaker 6: past or is there anything that any period of time
Speaker 6: or the the people or the the the way of
Speaker 6: life down here that stands out more than any others?
Speaker 5: Well, I don't know. Yeah, it's part of that. I
Speaker 5: pretty over part of it.
Speaker 4: I would yeah, Well that's like.
Speaker 5: That's right thing, Yeah, that's.
Speaker 2: That you you you wanna live it all here?
Speaker 4: An Yeah, wouldn't want to go in here, no one.
Speaker 5: I just assume spen the rest of my daysis in horl.
Speaker 4: And it's feasible.
Speaker 1: People don't.
Speaker 5: And they have me a house build. That's the politics
Speaker 5: takes some close has me to get out.
Speaker 2: The interview with Granny Henderson kind of leaves me wanting more.
Speaker 2: But even at the end, in the heat of the
Speaker 2: land battle, she was kind. The park would build her
Speaker 2: that house and she would leave the land that her
Speaker 2: mother bought in nineteen oh five. She'd spend one night
Speaker 2: in the new place before moving in with her grandson.
Speaker 2: She'd only live there three months before passing away on
Speaker 2: July tenth, nineteen seventy nine, from what her family says
Speaker 2: was of a broken heart. At the end of this story,
Speaker 2: I remained deeply conflicted, as my heart holy sides with
Speaker 2: the landowners whose rooms ran deep in this land, and
Speaker 2: they have lost something that they'll never get back. However,
Speaker 2: I don't think the National Park Service or Neil Compton
Speaker 2: were bad people, and in many ways they are both heroes.
Speaker 2: This is a celebration that this river isn't damned and
Speaker 2: is protected as is in perpetuity. My conclusion is that
Speaker 2: this mortal realm just isn't fair, and a person would
Speaker 2: do well to deal humbly with the circumstances they're dealt
Speaker 2: and pray for wisdom to know when to fight for
Speaker 2: that which can be one, when to compromise, and even
Speaker 2: when to sell. And I think the message is clear
Speaker 2: that this redesignation of the river is not something that's
Speaker 2: good for that community. I can't thank you enough for
Speaker 2: listening to bear grease and Brent's this Country life podcast.
Speaker 2: Please let us know what you think of these episodes.
Speaker 2: Remember you can email us at beargreaseat themetor dot com.
Speaker 2: You can't wait to talk to everybody on the render
Speaker 2: next week, and we're gonna try to put together a
Speaker 2: way to give money to help restore Granny Henderson's house.
Speaker 2: Stay tuned for that