August 21, 2024 • 72 mins
In this episode, Clay Newcomb shines a deeper light on the land acquisition for the Buffalo National River in 1972, including a rare glimpse of the woman who was the face of the resistance, none other than icon of the Buffalo River, Eva Barnes "Granny" Henderson. In an original recording, "Granny" describes life on the Buff'lo in her own words, including a historical-turned-modern conversation with her granddaughter, Jane Kilgore. The discussion goes on with accounts of pressure and intimidation tactics used on landowners to force them to vacate their property.
Misty Langdon of the Remnants Project and Dr. Brooks Blevins return and provide context on the surrounding events that transpired to keep the river from being dammed, while at the same time affecting so many lives.
Connect with Clay and MeatEater
Clay on Instagram
MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips
MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube
Shop Bear Grease Merch
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
She put a face on it that nobody else could
put a face on. If they were going to do
that to a little old woman who never did anything
to hurt anybody, who only help people. You know, if
they would do that to her, they'd just do it
to anybody. And in our culture, the one thing you
don't do is trample around on older folks. That's a
(00:28):
real good way to get a really bad reputation.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Today we'll learn the personal story of a true Ozark
legend as we listen to bits and pieces of a
historic interview with Ava Barnes Henderson from nineteen seventy four,
who was one of the last private landowner holdouts in
the ninety five thousand acre Buffalo National River in Arkansas.
She didn't want to sell. It's a fascinating biopiece as
(00:55):
we continue to explore this American doctrine of utilitarian conservation,
the greatest good for the greatest number, and the injustice
of it at times. On the last episode, we learned
about the political state of America and how it informed
the battle for the Buffalo River and the Ozarks between
the pro damn pro park and pro leave us Alone landowners. Today,
(01:17):
we'll hear words like communism, martyrdom, and displacement, which are
unexpected themes in a conversation about a beautiful stretch of
Pristine river. But we're telling a side of this story
that's rarely told. And hang around till the dead gum
plot twist at the end, when we'll learn there are
people trying to redesignate the rivers standing with the National Park.
(01:41):
It's very complicated, folks, and I really doubt that you're
gonna want to miss this one.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
She lived three months after they moved out of it.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Moved her out for three months.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Yes, she did. She'd died at eighty seven. She spent
one night in her new house that they built her,
and then my brother Howard took her to his house,
which was just a the field from him where she
was where they built her house. She lived three months.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
What do you make of that?
Speaker 3 (02:07):
I make it they took her life away from her.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
The Ava Barnes Henderson interview credits that we're about to
hear go to Texas Tech University's Southwest Collections Special Collections
Library courtesy of Jane Kilgore. My name is Klay Nukem,
(02:33):
and this is the Bear Grease Podcast where we'll explore
things forgotten but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places,
and where we'll tell the story of Americans who lived
their lives close to the land. Presented by FHF gear,
American made purpose built hunting and fishing gear as designed
(02:55):
to be as rugged as the place as we explore.
Speaker 4 (03:06):
You were born around here? Where were you born?
Speaker 5 (03:09):
I was born right down this river about and the
Lord and just below Prood.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
When was that eighteen nine to eighteen ninety two? Then
you moved your parents moved up here.
Speaker 5 (03:21):
Yeah. My daddy home stood a depth there booth. Well
it joins Gertie.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
Out there, Oh yeah, by Compton.
Speaker 5 (03:28):
Yeah, and I was just fourteen months old. My dad died,
of course, I don't remember your brother.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
What were your parents' names?
Speaker 5 (03:37):
My mother was a Buchanan, that's right.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
Yeah, you see now your mother was the great.
Speaker 5 (03:43):
Niece niece of President Buchanan.
Speaker 4 (03:46):
Yeah, yeah, the great.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
My dear bear, Grease, brothers and sisters. You have just
been granted access behind culture Vail, into the very heart
of the Ozarks, the place that few get to hear. See.
That was the voice of Eva Henderson, known to her
community as Ev and Since her global debut in National
(04:16):
Geographic in March nineteen seventy seven, she's been known to
the world as Granny Henderson. She would become an Ozarkian legend.
The incredible portraits of her on her Newton County, Arkansas
farm with her cattle, hogs, and chickens and dogs, taken
when she was eighty five years old, would become iconic
(04:37):
emblems of standing against government intrusion, self sufficiency, and the
gritty backwoods way of life on the Buffalo River. This
interview took place on July twenty second, nineteen seventy four.
And like Memphis is proud of Elvis and Illinois is
proud of Abe Lincoln, in Arkansas, we're proud of Grannie
(05:02):
Henderson in a way she was a martyr.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
Would be a great great niece.
Speaker 6 (05:11):
Did you keep up with the presidents in your youth
and through your life?
Speaker 5 (05:15):
Well, I used to.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
Yeah. Did you have a favorite.
Speaker 5 (05:20):
Well, I don't know. We all sawt pretty well. Roosevelt.
Speaker 6 (05:26):
Yeah, oh, did you do you remember Teddy Roosevelt.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
That's what I'm talking about, That's the what you're talking about. Yeah, yeah,
he must have been quite a guy.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yeah, I find it interesting that Grannie Henderson's favorite president
was Teddy Roosevelt, one of the core authors of the
doctrine of utilitarian conservation, The greatest good for the greatest number.
Here's more from Ev Henderson.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
And you married to Henderson?
Speaker 5 (05:53):
Yeah, yeah, Henderson.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
Where'd you live after you married? Down here?
Speaker 5 (06:00):
Well? Yeah, my mother bought this place, oh, when I
was thirteen. Yeah, so my husband up to for the
scene about two years after we were married. You down
this place?
Speaker 2 (06:16):
The Henderson Farm, bisected by the Buffalo River, was one
hundred and sixty seven acres just upriver from what they
call the Goat Bluff, which is on an inside bend
as the river sweep south, carved from ancient sandstone and
limestone towering three hundred and fifty feet above the water.
(06:37):
The park and most outsiders call it the Big Bluff.
EV's mother, Ira, bought the land in nineteen oh five.
Ev married Frank Henderson when she was sixteen and nineteen
oh nine, and they moved on to the land two
years later and built a house around nineteen thirteen. She
would live there until the spring of nineteen seventy nine.
(06:59):
I was thrilled when I learned that there was actual
audio of Granny Henderson, and aside from the roosters, the
quality is pretty good. The interviewer is Dwight Pitt Kathley,
a respected historian for the National Park Service, and the
interview is an hour and fifteen minutes long. It's truly fascinating,
(07:20):
and in the Ozarks we don't apologize for roosters making
incredible rackets. The interview continues and directly you can hear
the rumble of a motor getting closer and closer, and
there's an impromptu visitor that shows up, Yes.
Speaker 5 (07:40):
Visitors, Yeah, Robbie, Yeah, how you do? And just sitting here,
how you all right?
Speaker 2 (07:49):
It's EV's granddaughter, twenty nine year old Jane Kilgore, Hiller's brother.
Speaker 5 (07:56):
His wife is coming down here. I'm going down Upsuckholm
camp through two whore they get some water.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
She's asked her grandmother where a spring is to get water.
It was a Sunday afternoon and there's a group of
them going camping. Granny gets fired up as she gives
instructions to the spring. You can hear her voice change, no, I.
Speaker 5 (08:18):
Can you or that spring is over there? I grand
mama hunted for that. Well, I'll tell you, Jane, you
go right over that before you know, Honey, at that
second forward you go right down the edge of the
creek on the far side, and you can't keep them
finding well.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
And when heard all up now that creek, mate, and
I never could find it too, Hillard, I said, and
I forgot what it.
Speaker 5 (08:39):
Springs say, Well, it's plenty when you want to hunt Ford,
I'm the with you old day.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
A while will. The improptu moment ends with Granny offering
to help find the spring after the interview. The reason
the National Park historian was interviewing her was that on
March first, nineteen seventy two, the government had authorized the
formation of the Buffalo National River, known as America's first
(09:04):
National River. The land her family had owned since nineteen
oh five was quickly en route to being owned by
the United States government by whatever means necessary. Eva Henderson
would be the last private holdout in the whole ninety
five thousand acre National Park. That's why National Geographic came.
(09:28):
Her husband, Frank worked in the logwoods, and Ev worked
on the farm. They essentially were subsistence farmers, living not
much different than the first white pioneers who came to
this region in the eighteen thirties. They never had running water, electricity,
or a phone. Frank bought his first truck in the
nineteen fifties, but he died in nineteen fifty six. Ev
(09:52):
never learned to drive a car and remained on her
remote farm as a widow for twenty three years until
nineteen seventy nine, but she would be close to family
just down the river. EV's only daughter, Arby, lived with
her husband and children. One of those children was Jane Kilgore.
She's the one who asked about the spring. She was
(10:13):
twenty nine years old in that audio clip. Today Jane
Kilgore is seventy six, and I'd like to introduce you
to her my whole life. Have heard about your grandmother.
So what year were you born?
Speaker 3 (10:34):
I was born in forty eight, born down there at
Malwahome Place Town.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Yeah, yep. How long did you live there?
Speaker 3 (10:40):
Till I was thirteen? You'll have figure that's the difference there. Yeah,
we moved to come to a point when was thirteen.
The park brought us up.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
Two.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Now did y'all move because the park bought your land? Yes?
Jane has invited me into her home. She lives high
on the mountain now above the river, on what some
say is the prettiest farm in Newton County. Her home
is tidy and comfortable and full of pictures of family.
She made a coconut cream pie when she heard that
(11:09):
I was coming by. About a dozen whitetail racks, four
of which her shoulder mounted adorned the walls of her
living room. The big eight point in the center her
late husband, Hillard killed, but the other three shoulder mountain
bucks or Jane's. I'm trying to pry from her everything
I can about her life on the river and her grandmother.
(11:32):
I asked her what her childhood was like. She answered quickly, wonderful.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
No electricity, We had running water, and we spend a
lot of time with grandma, me and my sister.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Did How far did she live from you?
Speaker 3 (11:46):
Probably half a mile? You don't where that big flat
rock he is just down the creek from that?
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Yeah, I mean you knew your grandmother?
Speaker 3 (11:53):
Well, oh, yes, yes, my grandpa Frank. Here was her
husband's name, Frank Henderson. I helped him pick his tobacco patch.
He chewed tobacco, and we'd have picked the worms off
of it, and then I'd help him twist it. When
we cut it off, we twisted it and then hung
in the barn. And I remember that so well. Yeah,
(12:13):
he gave me a little heap for calf.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
What was your grandmother like?
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Very tough woman. There'll never be another woman as tough
as she was. I'm just not saying that because she's
my grandma.
Speaker 4 (12:23):
She was.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
She lived three months after they moved out of it.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Moved her out three months.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
Yes, she did. She died at eighty seven. She lived
three months. She spent one night in her new house
that they built her, and then my brother Howard took
her to his house, which was just up the field
from him where she was when they built her house.
She lived three months.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
What do you make of that?
Speaker 3 (12:47):
I make it. They took her life away from her.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
I said earlier that Granny was a martyr, and that's
really the way that we view her. The river nationalized
in seventy two, but she was able to hold out
into the spring of seventy nine when she sold to
the park. They had built her modern house and as
the crow flies, it was only two point eight miles away,
and she spent one night in her new house and
(13:25):
told her son that she couldn't do it, so she
moved in with him, and within three months, on July tenth,
nineteen seventy nine, Grannie Henderson passed away. I asked Jane
how she was able to stay there seven years after
the area was designated a national park.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
She had her lawyer and she thought it as long
as she could. They I think they were pretty lenient
with her, I mean in a way, but then they
were people over them too say, and she didn't talk
about too much. She just said, I will leave. We're
gonna get ready. Well they know you won't, you know,
but she did. She thought, I think that's reached him
(14:08):
so long. They in a way felt sorry for her
and didn't want to do it. But there were people
in Washington, d C. Giving them a limited amount of
time to do what they had to do.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
You know.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
I don't know all about the how the government worked
that in that way, but I think that had a
lot to do with it. She kept telling them she
wasn't going. She told them she wasn't leaving, and she
run one off that came down when talk to her
more that she didn't recognize him because it was a
different one than what had been there before, and she said,
you might as well hit the trail. That's what she stuted. Oh,
(14:39):
by here's something. Oh she was something else.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Grannie was not a wealthy woman, but you know, many
people like her saved every penny they ever made. I
suspect that's how she could afford a local lawyer to
fight against the behemoth of the National Park Service. Many
sold right away, but not Grannie Henderson. I suspected did
buy her some time. But that's about it. I asked
(15:04):
Jane about the house the park built her.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Yeah, they built her a house with electric running water, worshiper, dryer,
bath inside bathroom. She never knew nothing about stuff like that.
She didn't even know how to start a worship driyer.
She works in the creek on the rubboard.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
Yeah, I feel like they just I feel like she
would have lived a lot longer. She was eighty seven,
and I always held it against them because how much
lower would she have lived? And she would have lived
a happy life. She might have lived to be a hundred,
I don't know, and she would she would have lived
longer than she did, Yes, but no, Grandma was a
(15:44):
she was a tough woman. I wish I would have
paid more attention because we were just me and Rosie
played the creek most of the time if we wasn't working.
She had a lot of old Indian remedies for like
snake bites, bee stings, whatever, you know, just being kids,
we didn't pay a lot of attention to her. Yeah,
I know of three times she got copperheadbit and she
(16:07):
never even went to the doctor. Is that right, that's right,
that's absolutely right.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
And forgetting seed ticks and stuff on her, she would
tie kerosene ragar and her ankles and she'd never get
any text her checkers on her. I don't know what
she did for the snake bites. I remember she told
me one time that she mixed up turpe tine and
sugar and stove soot for a cut. Now, that would
stop the bleeding. But as far as the sneak bates,
(16:32):
I don't know what she does.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
But I know of.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Three times she got compreheaded bedow and she killed them
and throwed them in with the hogs and they ate them.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
I remember.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
Oh, yeah, I'll never forget my grandma.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
That's a pretty gangster move to feed the copperhead. That
just bit you to the hogs and then whip up
an herbal remedy, avoiding the lines that the er. If
you want to get Clay Nucomb's attention, tell me how
many times you've been bitten by venomous snakes, unless you're
just fooling around like Brent was when he got bit.
But the number of times you've been bit is a
(17:05):
direct correlation to your exposure to gritty close to the
land living. And if Granny was out of her bed,
she was in some serious snake country. As I sit
with my back to these four big ozark bucks on
(17:26):
the wall, Jane pulls out the March nineteen seventy seven
issue of National Geographic. I'm flipping through the pages looking
at the incredible images of Granny on her farm. Tell
me about when National Geographic came and did that peace
on her.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
I didn't know anything about that until I got that
through the mail. I didn't know anything about him. Even
you know, she had lots of company that she didn't
say too much about it to anybody.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
So she was in National Geographic, which in the seventies was, yeah,
probably even bigger than it is today. I mean a magazine,
a premiere print magazine. She was a national geographic and
never told it. Just didn't think it was that big
a deal.
Speaker 6 (18:10):
Right.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
No, But when they first started coming down and talking
to her about where she lived, I guess it's some
part people out.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
She said.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
There were some strange people come down here, and she said,
I answered some of their questions, and some of them
I told there wasn't another business. But I thought that
was such a god. Have you saw this?
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (18:28):
I have? I have?
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Yeah, I had it hunted for that wall ago and
I had in a toad in my closet.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
That is probably that's the really famous picture of her
right there.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
It is she's something. She was something else. Yeah, tough.
She was ever a bit four foot seven and she
would get up on top of a five gallon bucket
and drive a wooden post with a sledge hammer. They
didn't have tea posts back then.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
She was tough.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
She carried the water from and she had her some
big tubs down there. But the fance she carried water
from Buffalo, carried the water at Turkey Hoose in that tib.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
Did she always wear the camouflage.
Speaker 5 (19:10):
Old, yes, oh yes.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
On time we ever seen her with that is when
she's getting ready to go to bed.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
She wore that specific canfula yes, yes, sir, Do you
still have that?
Speaker 5 (19:21):
No?
Speaker 3 (19:22):
The sad thing of it is is when I go
back down to her home place, all the windows are out,
the riffs falling in. The purservice was supposed to have
kept that up as a historical side. It's pitiful.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
I wonder why they're not keeping it up.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Grannie Henderson always wore an old school camo patterned bonnet,
and that ended kind of on a downer note. You see,
Grannie's house is still standing. It's a several mile hike
or mule ride down there, but it's just a matter
of time before the earth reclaims it. I do know
that the park has done some work on it since
(19:57):
she left, but the family isn't too happy about it.
And I do know that there's currently a group called
the Buffalo River Partners trying to raise money to help
restore Grannie's house. And since we started researching for this podcast,
the park has publicly stated new interest in maintaining the
historic structures, but some say it's a day late and
(20:21):
a dollar short. I visited Grannie's old home place many
times as we hear this emotional story of Granny giving
up her land, It's important to understand that the park
did give every landowner the right of a life of state,
which means they could live there until they died, and
upon the death of the deed holder, the land would
(20:43):
go into the possession of the park. It was kind
of confusing when I learned that, because I'd have thought
she would have taken them up on that deal. But
for where she lived, the life of States had heavy
restrictions on livestock and land use that she couldn't tolerate.
And as I understand it, after a long battle and
her being the last one on the river, all her
(21:06):
neighbors and family had moved away, the family thought it
was best that she should sell and move. She'd held
out for so long. But even with this option of
the life estate, it didn't soften the sting of the cold,
stiff arm of the government. To an unbiased observer, it
might be easy to say, well, that's fair. If they
(21:28):
want to make a park for our nation to enjoy,
at least they gave the option for folks to live
there until they died. Then it's their choice. Well, it
wasn't their choice, and the other option would have been
the government never coming to buy your land. In the
upper part of the Buffalo River watershed sits the small
community of Boxley, and in nineteen seventy two it contained
(21:49):
twenty seven occupied homes and approximately eighty people. And in
the original National Park Service survey documentation in nineteen sixty one,
they know Boxley and suggested a private use zone, stating, quote,
areas possessing high agricultural values, such as those around Boxley
(22:10):
and along Richland Creek, might be protected by acquiring partial
rights or scenic easements only end of quote. Boxley was
also along a prominent roadway into the park, and so
Boxley was given kind of a special unique deal. But
Granny's Place was truly in the backwoods and wasn't in
(22:32):
a private use zone. They would follow through with this
in the nineteen seventy two legislation, and it meant that
the land at Boxley could remain in private ownership quote
except for the rights purchased by the government to prevent
unsightly changes in the pastoral setting end of quote. People
could remain living there, but they couldn't as much as
dig a hole in the ground without the Park's permission.
(22:56):
This is still enacted today and many of the families
in Boxley Valley still live there and it's beautiful. Unfortunately,
most of the ninety thousand acres of private land acquired
weren't in the private land use zones. And even with
all this looking really good on paper, what many of
the locals say and what isn't written in the books
(23:17):
by the Park Service, is that people were bullied and
intimidated by the park and they were unorganized and unclear
on communicating the new land acquisition laws. And you've got
to remember this was way before the Internet and some
folks like Granny didn't even have phones. You'll remember Misty
(23:39):
Langdon from the last episode. She's kind of a grassroots
spokesperson for the locals and runs the Remnant Project, designed
to document the history of Newton County. People like her
are really important and gutsy. She invited me to her home,
which is a gorgeous multi generational cattle farm. You really
(24:00):
want to hear how people feel, you go and talk
to Misty.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
You know ev Henderson. Everybody calls her Granny Henderson. She
was treated pretty pretty terribly, you know, as an older person.
A lot of the you know, just the hatred and
the you know, furre at the park was because of
the treatment of her. She put a face on it
(24:28):
that nobody else could put a face on. If they
were going to do that to a little old woman
who never you know, did anything to hurt anybody, who
only help people. You know, if they would do that
to her, they'd just do it to anybody. And in
our culture, the one thing you don't do is trample
around on older folks. That's a real good way to
(24:51):
get a really bad reputation. People hurt, people are still
so hurt.
Speaker 7 (25:06):
You know.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
There are so many families that I deal with, and
I'll call them up and say, hey, I thought you
might have some pictures or some documents that you want
to share with with the Remnants project, And do you
want to tell me a few stories about growing up?
You bet, come on, honey. But when you would get
around and I knew to wait, I knew to get
(25:28):
what I knew to save the park question for last.
That is a subject that would be like if somebody
in your family had some deep, dark secret and you
didn't want anybody to know, and you were out in
them publicly on the town square. That's the attitude that
they have about talking about the park.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
It's just too it is too dark, too bad of
a scenario. It's just we're just erasing that.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
From It's too painful, I think is one it was.
I think it was probably one of the most painful
periods for people here because everybody was scared. I asked
my mom when all this came about, how do we
keep our land? How did we not lose a bunch.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
Of going The land that we're on right now is
the border of the park.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Yeah, and about three quarters of our land is all
surrounded by park. They are our neighbor and we're most
of the time, we're really good neighbors with one another,
you know. But with mom, when when the town hall
meeting and stuff got called and for the redesignation stuff,
and that's jumping a little ahead, but she came to
me and she said she kind of had tears in
(26:39):
her eyes and a lump in her throat, and she said,
you're going to keep fooling around until you get this
place took from us, because the park is liable to
not like you doing this and take that. And I said, Mama,
I don't think the park, you know, I think the
park is done with their you know, acquisition, land acquisition,
(27:00):
and I think we're all right. But fifty years later,
she is still absolutely attitude like she she's set fear.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
She grew up thinking that these people had ultimate sovereign
power and could just kind of do what they want.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
And that is exactly what happened. They did have sovereign power,
and they did do whatever they wanted.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
As far as so how did how did Your original
statement was how did we keep this land? Because it's
three sides bordered by a national park? And as I
understand it, I mean it was kind of I mean
they were just drawing lines on a map just to
say where this park was right, and I mean they
could have they wanted exactly.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
They prayed. That was it. There was no Our family
had no political pool. There were some families in Boxley
that had some political allies, and I think that helped.
But for us, it was Coove Lines was a preacher
and so many people around here knew him. That's my
great grandfather. And I reckon it was prayer and fasting,
(28:04):
you know, it was on their face, you know, praying NonStop.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
But it was that imminent of a threat. Yes, that
they took it serious like that, and it felt like
it was so far beyond their control.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
Right there was nothing they could do. Yeah, I know,
for me, it kind of felt like if a tornado's
coming through the house and you all huddle up and
you start praying, and but a you mean business. I
kind of that's the image that I had in my mind.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
I thought the analogy of praying that a tornado wouldn't
hit your home was a good descriptor. You get a
sense of the helplessness, the fear, the random nature of
the threat. It may hit us or skip us, but
it's beyond our power. The shape of geographic boundaries are
interesting data points that often indicate the type of authority
(28:53):
that the boundary drawer had. Typically, indigenous peoples had boundaries
based on rivers, mountains, valleys, and natural features, and even
historical use patterns, which are rarely straight lines. The last
couple thousand years, governments and specifically colonizers began drawing straight boundaries,
(29:14):
meaning someone from somewhere else who didn't understand the way
this place works, wanting to keep things simple, was drawing
the geometric boundaries. This is highly simplified, but I think
you get the point. And for the record, we tried
to get the National Park Service to be on this podcast,
(29:37):
but they declined the interview. We tried local and national
channels and they said it was a funding issue. Whatever
the reason, I can't help but think that it was
a strategic error. And it's a shame because the vast
majority of people that work for the National Park Service
are wonderful, hard working, well meaning people, and here I
(29:57):
am trying to interpret their law and their story, and
I'm certain that I've got some of their side of
the story wrong. It's possible, but this story is intentionally
focused on the people who haven't had much of a
voice in this now fifty year process. And this is
no way designed to be a hit piece on our
(30:18):
national parks, because I am a fan and a partaker.
After the park was established in seventy two, the biggest
shock in the community came when the first people were
served papers requiring them to sell. Word of the encounter
spread like wildfire. Here's misty on the perception of the
(30:38):
park's process of acquisition of land.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
It was just so underhanded, and then the amounts that
they would give people were all over the board. One
person might get something that seemed like a fair price,
and then somebody else like Roy Keaton, would absolutely get nothing.
And I mean Roy and Katie for me Keaton, they
(31:04):
had some of the harshest treatment that I know of
in our area. Going through the notes and the transcripts
and everything that I have seen, I don't know how
anybody made it out of that without a shooting.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
I mean it was me. Kay House is a lifelong
resident of the Buffalo River. Her family home seted here
early and never left. She remembers when the Keaton family,
Misty just spoke about the served papers and the acquisition
of their land.
Speaker 8 (31:33):
My first memory of when the Park Service came in
and took over We had a little grocery store there
in Ponka's where a trailer's sitting now. But my first
memory was whenever they came in and they took it
(31:54):
Roy Keaton's property, which is the property up at Los Valley.
That was my first memory, because the US Marshals came
in that night, stopped there at the store and ask about,
you know, where Roy Keaton lived. That was my first
real memory. I mean, all the talk and everything.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
You remember, what did you how did you feel about that?
Speaker 1 (32:20):
I scared to death.
Speaker 8 (32:21):
I mean, you know, we just you just couldn't imagine
things like that happening around here, you know, because it's
such a quiet, family oriented place to live.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
And all of a sudden, everybody was like, this is real.
Speaker 8 (32:37):
Yeah right, that's I believe, if I'm not mistaken, that's
the very first real action that was taken.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
How did how did the people that you knew respond
to that?
Speaker 3 (32:52):
Curious?
Speaker 2 (32:54):
Really?
Speaker 8 (32:54):
Yeah, I mean they were very, very upset at the time.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Yeah, the community was scared, and it's hard to blame them.
There's actually a recorded interview with Roy and Katie Keaton.
In the early nineteen eighties, the park Service, recognizing an
issue and an effort to restore and build relationships with
the community, commissioned an outreach to gather oral history from
(33:18):
the people who sold land. The Keatons lived in Boxley
Valley in the residential zone. I listened to the entire interview,
which is over two hours, and unfortunately the audio quality
isn't great, especially when they talk about the park. But
the Keatons described in detail how things transpired. Here's Misty
(33:39):
reading just a small part of that transcript.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
This is Katie and Roy Keaton being interviewed by the
Center for Ozark Studies June the ninth of eighty three,
and the interviewer says, when did you first hear about
the park? Katie answered, well, we've heard a long time
about the park, but we never did hear a thing
that they'd want to take our house till they brought
(34:03):
us the papers. Really, they never confronted you, Oh no, nothing,
never said nothing until this us Marshall that night walked
in and with a whole bunch of papers, gave me
a set, and he a set, and my son and
his wife, we each got a whole bunch of papers,
said we were living on government property. They gave us
(34:24):
ninety days to get off. He said, had you heard
about them taking other people's land? They hadn't taken anybody's
land over there at that time. We was the first
ones that they moved in on. Did you ever see
this plan in the paper or anything like that? No,
did you ever hear of any meetings? They didn't have
(34:45):
any over in here, nothing until after they took our place,
and then the people got to get in together. Do
you think people saw what happened to you and got together,
and Katie answered, yeah, did they give you specific reasons
to why you had the leave your land? They said
they were going to take that land for everybody to
enjoy and not just us. I thought it was and
(35:08):
then they have redacted something there. Well, what did you do?
We tried to fight. Yeah, we had to go to
court to get our money. They wouldn't give us nothing
until after they gave us the ninety days to do something.
They didn't. We didn't get a penny of money until
that after the ninety days.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
Was that I had?
Speaker 1 (35:25):
They had to lead.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
They had to fund themselves to yes, go live somewhere else.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
Their move, their repurchase everything, and earlier in this interview
the house that they're interviewing them in and she said
this ain't no home where they're at now. So they
spent the later years of their life with her saying
this ain't no home. And they said. We tried to fight.
We had to take them to court to get our money.
(35:52):
They didn't give us nothing. Was it a fair price? No,
we had to take them to court. And then of
course after that the attorney takes half half of it,
so we still didn't get very much after that was
the law they used to get your land, more specific
than eminent domain. I don't remember. They said they had
right to do it, and that was it. The judge
told us that they have the right to take it
(36:15):
at any time they wanted, but they didn't have the
right to tell you how much they're going to pay
for it. That was up to the jury, you know.
And they took them to court, and I don't remember
what they were given at first. I know it was
poultry that they won one hundred and sixty three thousand
dollars settlement from court. I mean that kind of goes
(36:36):
to show how small of an amount, because in the
eighties one hundred and sixty three thousand would be a
pretty good windfall. Yeah, And that was making up the gap,
you know, that was making up what they was, That
was making up the fair price.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
That they took it. And they went back to court,
they said you owe them and sees exactly. Oh gosh,
so they must have just paid them nothing. Nothing. Here's
the bottom line on paper in the halls of Congress,
reading public Law ninety two Dash two thirty seven, which
instituted the National River, which detailed how land would be acquired.
(37:13):
I've read it. It looks tolerable, just unfortunate for the landowners.
But on the ground in the backwoods of Arkansas in
the early nineteen seventies, it wasn't pretty. And I can't
even begin to tell on this podcast all these stories.
I mean, I'm just cherry picking a couple, and I'm sure,
(37:33):
as stories do, some of them get exaggerated in the
community over the years. But where there is smoke, there's fire,
and in this case, the fire was visible to everyone.
I want to talk to doctor Brooks. Blevin's prolific author,
friend of this podcast and an authority in ozark history.
(37:56):
I've got a peculiar question as it relates to the
time period in the long arm of this freedom love
and American government and the word communism. Yeah, there's a
there's a sentence into your essay where it says there
were those who condemned the creation of our national rivers
as communism. That's interesting. Can you can you explain why
(38:19):
people would have thought that?
Speaker 7 (38:20):
Well, you think about the era when this, when this happens,
you get the Buffalo National River in seventy two, we're
in the Cold War, and it's it's natural that a
lot of people would have seen any kind of big
government intrusion in the everyday lives of people and in
the in the property rights of Americans as a communistic
(38:45):
type move And I've seen not just with a buffalo story,
but this is such a vast story that takes in
so much of the of the US story from the
from the mid twentieth century. I've seen a lot of
letters to congressmen and senators and stuff where they bring
up the C word, it's communism. And so it would
(39:07):
have been a natural reaction for a lot of people,
especially a lot of conservative people, who put a lot
of value in the primacy of property rights. This is
also the era when you're starting to have kind of
the infant movement of the hard right of kind of
ultra conservative people. And if you go back to kind
(39:31):
of the beginnings of the libertarian movement and stuff like that,
a lot of those folks, if property rights is not
at the top, it's on the mount rushmore of rights
of Americans that are or should be inviolable for those people,
this becomes a property rights issue. Is there a justification?
(39:55):
Is there enough of an American national interest in aiding
the Buffalo National River to justify the taking of private
property from these citizens. Can you make can you make
a case that there's a justific constitutional justification for that.
(40:15):
Of course it holds up under under our laws, But
there were a lot of people who who saw this
as getting close to kind of breaching that, you know,
that constitutional directive that we live under.
Speaker 2 (40:28):
The commies. I knew it, and now I want to
turn the throttle up just a bit. If you remember,
in the first episode, I mentioned doctor Neil Compton, who's
considered the father of the Buffalo National Park, kind of
(40:50):
like John Muir is of Yosemite. And after talking with
the people here, I'm feeling conflicted about this man who
is so influential and turning this into a national park.
I want to ask doctor Blevins about it, and I'll
trust what he tells me. Until I started doing this research,
the name Neil Compton would have in my mind, not
(41:15):
knowing a lot about the Buffalo River, but I would
have said he's the guy that saved the Buffalo River.
I would have said he's a hero. When you get
over into Newton County, he is not a hero. I'm
struggling to try to decide if he's a hero or
a villain. But I'm kind of conflicted because it feels
like those are in society minimized, this marginal, disenfranchised group
(41:39):
of people, did not hear them and just kind of
did what they wanted to do. And in Compton's book,
you see you see little threads of that. And one
thing that stood out to me in his book, which
was a great book. He did a great job. He
was a good writer, but his reports to the world
was that basically this one hundred and thirty five miles
(42:01):
of river was uninhabited. He said, it's basically uninhabited, you know,
given the illusion that these people they want to leave.
Not to put words in his mouth, but just the
idea that I have as I read that and then
know also what was going on behind the scenes, as
he was saying, these folks don't have any power, these
(42:23):
folks don't have any pool, They don't know what they've
got in a way, and maybe this is villainizing him
too much, but I'd be willing to step on the
line to say, you know, almost just saying these people
don't deserve, they don't know what they've got, and they
don't deserve it, and that's probably pretty harsh. What do
you think about that? Am I being too hard on him?
Speaker 4 (42:43):
Well?
Speaker 7 (42:43):
I think Neil Compton. I think he realized, Now you
don't see this in his book. The book stops in
nineteen seventy two. The battle has been won, We've nationalized
the river. The rest of the story goes untold, you know,
the land Act position and all that kind of stuff
after nineteen seventy two. But even in that book, I
(43:04):
can fish out evidence that Compton realized that one of
the things that most fascinated him in those early days,
and he says this in his book, was these little
farmsteads and the people who lived in that valley that
was fascinating to him. It was that human community there
(43:25):
that to him would have seemed like they were living
fifty years behind the times, and they might have been
probably would have been compared to somebody from New York
or Chicago or something like that, and maybe even to
somebody from Bentonville.
Speaker 2 (43:39):
So would your perception of him wouldn't be like what
I just described.
Speaker 7 (43:42):
No part of it would be. I think Compton would
have had a more conflicted attitude on what eventually happened
because we don't really know. He never really talks about
the loss of land of a lot of these people
that he knew personally. Yeah, I mean that's not part
of his book, The Battle for the Buffalo. And maybe
(44:02):
why it's not part of the book it may have
been something a little too difficult, too personal to deal with.
But I think by and large, the group of people
he represented the recreational canoeists and you know people and
campers and stuff like that. I don't think you're wrong
in saying that they probably approached the people of the
(44:24):
Buffalo Valley with a with a kind of a condescending
outsider attitude that these people they don't know what they
have and therefore they can't take care of it the
way that the government could take care.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
Of it now.
Speaker 7 (44:38):
And a lot of that again goes back to self interest.
If you're a canoeist from Kansas City, your interest is
making sure that river stays undamned and that you have
access to it. If the National Park Service takes it over,
you're going to have even more seamless access. So for them,
(44:58):
definitely that's in their set he interest to favor that
and to argue the greatest good for the for the
greatest number, and we humans have a powerful capacity to
rationalize whatever it is that we want into being something
that almost seems altruistic.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
I never knew doctor Compton nor his family, and I
hope that this segment isn't interpreted as personally disparaging. However,
I think the point is that it's not black and white,
and I'd like to correct something that I said in
that segment. Not everybody in Newton County dislikes Compton, because
(45:40):
today the region is full of new people who wouldn't
be there without his influence. There is little doubt to
the people on the river Compton was an elite, politically
connected outsider, and when the dams were defeated, they could
have just walked away. More on that later in the
(46:01):
foreword of Compton's book, written by a man named Ken Smith,
a very well respected man. My eyebrows raised when I
read this statement, and I quote from the book from
the foreword. Other battles were being fought and won in
the sixties to creator expand national parks in Arizona's Grand Canyon,
(46:22):
among California's Redwoods Washington's Cascades. In each case, the Buffalo
River and all the rest. The battle has been between
those who saw the area's natural resources to be used
for material gain, often to the benefit of local interest,
and those who saw the resources as having intangible, even
(46:45):
spiritual benefits, with park advocates usually living outside the immediate area.
In simplest terms, locals versus outsiders, exploiters versus presentationist. End
of quote. Hmm, that's an interesting quote. And I'll give
(47:09):
the man the benefit of the doubt because he was
partly talking about those who are wanting to damn the river,
but where Granny and Misty's families local exploiters looking for
material gain by simply wanting to stay on their own land.
(47:30):
Without a doubt, Doctor Compton appreciated at some level the
rural Ozarkian people so different from him that he encountered
in his early trips to the Buffalo. In his book,
he gave one of the best description of the ozark
people that I've heard, and I'd like to read what
he wrote. A quote from his book, This Journey to
(47:52):
the Unknown Buffalo did, however, and plant the seed of
interest in our native land, so that for me, then,
on honest compared prison was sought between our rivers, forests, mountains,
and prairies and those in other parts of America and
the world, and for our people a feeling not so
much of pride, but of sympathy and understanding for their
(48:12):
unpretentious manner, their honest approach to the uncertainties of life,
and their rye and whimsical method of expression, and their
tried and true moral values. End of quote. That was
incredibly good insight in writing. But I hadn't forgotten that
those commies still took Granny's land. And again, in doctor
(48:37):
Compton's defense, there were vocal landowners on the river who
wanted the river damned, and some who wanted the park.
In the book, he cites Homer Blyth, who had seven
hundred and twenty three acres on the river, and he
said that the river dried up each summer, wasn't worthy
of a park and should be damned. Larry Potter owned
fifteen hundred acres and six miles of river frontage on
(48:59):
the Lower Buffalo and support of damning one hundred percent
nineteen sixty nine or fe of duty. A lifelong Boxley
resident went to Washington to petition for the National Park,
but her land was in the residential zone, but many
people who were deeply connected to the land didn't want
(49:20):
it damned or a park. Here's doctor Blevins. If that
was not a national river, I probably wouldn't know that
much about it, you know, I wouldn't have gone over
there and hiked and seen the bluffs. And with our
water low, you know, I guess you could still float it,
but it would all be private land, you know, inside
the high water mark. But so here I am someone
(49:43):
who's partaken to the Buffalo River, taking pride in the
Buffalo River, take it, love it. But then now when
I hear the story, I don't know if I should
be mad, or should be happy, or should just be man.
The human existence is pretty conflicted.
Speaker 7 (49:58):
It's the great, great area that most history, at least
most interesting history, falls into. It's one of these things
where our own individual perspectives is a lot of times
will dictate how we view this story. And the vast,
vast majority of people in the world, and even in
(50:18):
the White River Valley and even in Newton County don't
have any connection with that little strip of land along
the Buffalo River, and we're more likely to view that
in that sort of outsider black and white way with
this was this was one hundred percent a good thing,
nationalizing the river and not damning the river. But that's
(50:41):
what you know, that's what makes this such an intriguing
stories that there are other elements to this that remind
us that, you know, most of these stories are not
just simple. They're not black and white. Yeah, good and
bad stories. And and Neil Compton is you know, he's
not He's not all good and he's not all bad.
And and it's hard to figure out what to do
(51:02):
with some of these characters.
Speaker 2 (51:04):
Right in the middle of this conversation on ethics, I
want to step back in time for a minute onto
Granny Henderson's porch and hear her tell about the best
dog she ever owned. That's right, But first you'll hear
her refer to her favorite gun.
Speaker 5 (51:24):
So he's killed later bombings.
Speaker 4 (51:27):
Okay, I guess you need a good gun out here.
Speaker 5 (51:31):
I've cared that mimb He used to have a dog.
He was he looked quite a bit like a dobby
color and he was a real squirrel dog where he was.
He was good about the stock what he knows, but
he never he wasn't a natural hater or some dogs
you know, just don't never just go to the hill.
(51:54):
He's the best dog I ever owner of the will
of course never expect. But I went thousand dollars Bobby.
He watches it, not think of moves, not move had
let you know, and a good dog's worth helo after
(52:17):
these barns.
Speaker 4 (52:18):
Yes, basically out here you need a good dog.
Speaker 2 (52:20):
Yeah, Bobby is the dog that was sitting right there
with them. He's in several of the photos in National Geographic.
But she said she wouldn't take a thousand dollars for him,
which in seventy four was a lot. But the best
dog she ever owned was that squirrel dog healer. I
want to ask Jane Kilgore what her grandmother would have
(52:42):
thought about this park. So, I mean she would have
been against this area becoming a national park.
Speaker 3 (52:50):
Oh absolutely, yes, yeah, yes.
Speaker 2 (52:54):
As were everybody most people on the.
Speaker 3 (52:57):
River right just past her house down there, you go
across thirty jim Bluff, go across the creek. That's where
we had our cane patches and corn patches.
Speaker 2 (53:07):
Over there.
Speaker 3 (53:08):
Now there's not even a you can't tell where it's
just a big back of sand and rocks.
Speaker 2 (53:14):
Do you ever go down there, Oh, yeah, to your
old home place.
Speaker 4 (53:19):
What is it?
Speaker 2 (53:19):
Is it nostalgic for you to go there? I mean,
does it make you sad? Does it make you happy?
Speaker 3 (53:24):
I'm proud I live in a place where I've got
electricity now, but you don't. I told Hillary one time,
my husband, I said, I wouldn't mind being back down there.
He said, about the time you couldn't turn the TV
on or you change your mind. Yeah, but then we
were sad when they moved us out there.
Speaker 2 (53:40):
Yeah, we were. Yeah, Granny was again the park and
I think we already knew that. And Jane's old home place,
half a mile from Granny's is still standing today too.
Speaker 3 (53:56):
Yeah, but I wouldn't like to be able to drive
back down there and just you know, spend the night
and not of the chim bluff.
Speaker 2 (54:02):
Would you have felt like they minimize the locals, This
kind of walked over people that they felt like they could, right.
Speaker 3 (54:12):
Oh yeah, I know they had. Yeah, and they don't
pay attention to the tourists. They would like the tourists
to be down there. I think it just became a
tourist attraction and people go down there and look at
my old home place or my grandma said, it don't
mean anything to them. And I even called Washington d C.
Speaker 2 (54:29):
One time.
Speaker 3 (54:29):
My mother had crypt an arthritis. She lived to be
ninety six. We would take her in a raft to
down to the old home place when she was able.
She got to where she wasn't, so I asked one
of the park rangers about taking her on the full whidder,
and he said, you can't do that, and I said,
well why not. She's the only one left that's home.
Said that, and she can't write. He put her on
(54:51):
a mule. She's ninety six year old, she's crippled with arthritis.
She can't write a mule and so he gave me
the number of Washington d SEEING. I called and no.
I said, well if I take her anyway, and I said,
you'll get a ticket, okay, But I was going to
chance it and take.
Speaker 2 (55:10):
Her on the full wheeler.
Speaker 3 (55:13):
Who used to be the park ranger down here, the
real nice guy. Huh yeah, yeah, he told me. He said,
if it was up to me, miss Kilgore, I would
tell you go right ahead and take her. But he said,
now they're big wigs ahead of me, so I can't
tell you that because I'd get in trouble, i'd.
Speaker 2 (55:29):
Lose my job. But I was.
Speaker 3 (55:31):
I almost took her once to just chance it because
she wanted to go. Yeah, they don't care. They don't
care if if you're if you have lots of memories down,
I want to go back. They don't care.
Speaker 2 (55:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (55:45):
No, the more people that runs up down the river
and brings beer and throws it in the river, and
that's what they'd like. No, I don't like them. Yeah, yeah,
I'm just like my Grandma'm playing spoken. I don't know,
I don't I don't them.
Speaker 2 (56:01):
It's clear to see that Jane has a unique and
personal connection to the Buffalo River, and she's one of
those people that feels like they've had something taken that
they can't get back. But don't get the wrong idea
about her. She's not a victim. She's lived a wonderful
life full of hard work and joy and family. She's
(56:21):
deeply respected in her community, and I have incredible respect
for Jane Kilgore. I'd probably drove that four wheeler down. Therefore,
I want to get back to doctor Blevin's for a
big question, and it's this, did they have to nationalize
the River to completely save it from being damned. If
(56:42):
they had just walked away with the place have stayed
in private hands, and then really the bigger question is
would that have been the best thing.
Speaker 7 (56:51):
If the Buffalo River nationalization weall hadn't been passed in
seventy two, if we'd waited another year or another two years,
it never would have happened. There would be no Buffalo
national River. This happened right on the cusp or right
at the very end of what we might call the
(57:14):
the New Deal Coalition or like the progressive New Deal
Coalition of American history and American politics. This long era,
at least from the thirties through the sixties, where there
was this kind of consensus. I mean, there was always
political division, but there was this kind of consensus, whether
you were on the right or the left, whether you
(57:35):
were a Republican or Democrat, that the government had a
had a right and even a responsibility to plan things out.
You know, planning was a big that was a big
catch word in the twentieth century, that there were university
trained technocrats and experts who knew better how the world
should work than your average Joe. And for roughly a
(58:00):
generation or more. That's that's how our national government operated.
We went from the New Deal into World War Two
and in the into the Cold War after that, and
it's during that era that you have this great era
of damn building. It's from it's really from the thirties
into the end of the sixties and a little bit
(58:21):
into the seventies, and by the by the end of
the sixties, that political philosophy is starting to go away,
and it's doing it. Vietnam is exposing some of the
weaknesses of our government. There are people in both the
right and the left who are beginning to distrust things
that the federal government does. There's the civil rights movement,
(58:44):
which stirs a lot of people on the right side
of the political spectrum. You've got a lot of things
that are chipping away at this traditional kind of teflne
government that we had that what are you know, where
the government did must be right. And this explodes in
the seventies and by the end of the seventies, this
(59:05):
isn't going to go anymore, you know.
Speaker 2 (59:07):
So if it hadn't happened, right then you don't think.
Speaker 7 (59:09):
I don't think it would. And the reason I say that,
at the very moment that this Buffalo stuff has been
finalized in seventy one. In early seventy two, at that
very moment, there's an effort in the state of Missouri
to enact a statewide scenic rivers program and it's over
eight hundred miles of rivers they're going to be part of.
(59:32):
This would have been part of this state Scenic.
Speaker 2 (59:35):
Rivers program, and there was this.
Speaker 7 (59:37):
Massive uproar, I mean, just this grassroots anti government uproar
that just just takes over. And it's all in the ozars.
It's all in the Missouri ozars. It's a state wide system.
But it goes away. That fight ends in seventy one,
and I think that was that was a signal of
(59:59):
what was going on nationally.
Speaker 2 (01:00:01):
Like the states were saying, we don't want the federal
guarn coming in here. Well, are just.
Speaker 7 (01:00:05):
Any government, right, But at the same time they're fighting
in Missouri, people are fighting against you know that. In
sixty eight, the federal government passes the National Wild and
Scenic Rivers Act, and this is something separate from the
Buffalo and those are National Scenic Riverways, but there are
you know, a bunch of rivers around the nation that
are classified as federal wild or scenic rivers, and by
(01:00:29):
the seventies it gets harder and harder to get rivers
designated as wild and scenic rivers because people don't want
it anymore. They see it as a federal A lot
of them dismiss it as a federal land grab, or
it's just federal intrusion, it's just people who are again.
Or you know that old motto that might as well
(01:00:49):
have existed leave us alone. That becomes kind of the.
Speaker 2 (01:00:52):
Motto, Wow, that is really interesting. It would have been
hard to but the thirty year damn building era of
the Army Corps of Engineers was ending, and it's likely
the Buffalo River dams would have never happened if the
park people had also gone away. But as we get
(01:01:15):
to the end of this story, I'm terribly conflicted because
I love the Buffalo National River. I do enjoy that
it is public land, and if it was still private,
I doubt I'd know much about it. I've got a
question for Misty. Can you see the Is it hard
to see the bigger picture when you're right in the
(01:01:37):
middle of it.
Speaker 1 (01:01:38):
It's not for me, and I feel kind of like
a trader when I even say that I'm glad that
it's protected in some way, but I am I'm glad
that we do have some protections of it. If not,
it would be nothing but condos and strip malls already,
it would I feel like that the thing that they
(01:01:59):
were trying their hardest to protect the river from is
where we're at now, that we're at a tipping point where, well,
we could do we could make a lot of money
if we added, if we changed the park, and we
did this, this and this, and then we're right back
to the beginning of, you know, commercialization of the river.
(01:02:22):
And that's the part that really and that's the part
that makes me furious.
Speaker 2 (01:02:28):
What I haven't told you yet is that last year
there was talk of redesignating the park from a National
River to a National Park and Preserve. The Details of
the change are substantial and complicated, but it comes at
the heels of a statewide tourism push in Arkansas, and
many people in Newton County view it as a repeat
(01:02:50):
of what happened in seventy two, which is outside influences
essentially commercializing the river through the redesignation, which would recruit
more people to come here. And in the name of
economic development of the state, get them to spend more
money in Arkansas.
Speaker 1 (01:03:09):
Because if we're going to protect this from the people
who loved it as much as they loved their family,
and that was everything to them. That land was all
they had besides their family. If we're going to take
that from them and preserve it, let's do that. You
treat it everybody awful. You ought to be ashamed of that,
(01:03:30):
But that's done and gone. Let's go from where we're at.
Let's try to be good neighbors to one another. I
feel like that we're I feel like I'm a pretty
good neighbor to the park, and I try to be.
But that thing of turning it into what you're trying
to avoid it turning into why you know, I think,
(01:03:51):
in my simplest form of what I'm against about the
river is a bunch of rich people, corporations, politicians who
are wanting to come in and turn our protected, our
federally protected public land into something that just fits their
(01:04:12):
business model. That is infuriating to me. If you want
to give it back to somebody, line up the descendants
of the people who you took it from and let
them have it and let them farm it if you're done,
(01:04:35):
you know, protecting it and worrying about water quality and
this and that. And I don't think that the park
is I do not think at all. I think that
the park is doing the best that they can.
Speaker 2 (01:04:45):
Do right now.
Speaker 1 (01:04:47):
They are under budget, they are understaffed, and I have
a lot of friends that work at the park, and
I like a lot of people that are there, and
I think they are good, good people.
Speaker 2 (01:04:57):
But I think that.
Speaker 1 (01:04:58):
They are protecting it the best that they can with
the budgeting that they've got.
Speaker 2 (01:05:15):
Some sources say the redesignation would bring more federal money.
Others say additional funding is no guarantee, but without a doubt,
it would bring more people. And that's good if you're
a merchant, speculator or a politician. It's not good if
you're trying to raise a family here. There's a strong
case to be made that many of the families will
(01:05:37):
be gentrified out of this area when land values just
get too high, taxes too high, and the pressure to
sell too great.
Speaker 9 (01:05:47):
Our boards raggers here came together and we do all
of the information that has made along. It's is you
and grew a deep inside and really the look in
every potential.
Speaker 4 (01:06:02):
Wish heard walker.
Speaker 9 (01:06:04):
Here we ame through the conclusion that there is no
benefits and no thingies anywhere that we could see for agriculture,
for the people in Lindon County, and for our way
of life under this hole change in deination.
Speaker 2 (01:06:29):
With murmurs spreading about the redesignation, last fall, Misty called
a public meeting in the small town of Jasper, which
has a population of five hundred, and over eleven hundred
people showed up, and all but about seven of them
were against the redesignation. That little clip you just heard
was one of the board of directors of the local
(01:06:50):
farm Bureau. There was another meeting down the river with
almost the exact same results. The overarching theme of the
community was leave us alone. We made our peace with
the world fifty years ago, and that's enough for one community.
I want to listen to one last clip from the
(01:07:11):
historic Granny Henderson interview as she expresses her doctrine on
hard and old times and yeah, the roosters are still there.
Speaker 4 (01:07:23):
Did the depression have much of effect down in here
for the thirties.
Speaker 5 (01:07:28):
The thirties, so I said, has come up the hill
today turned out wather. I said, shoot, we keep a hollering,
holler and holler about the heat and what we're going
to do. Some of them says, if we were doing
what we're going to do, and I said, we'll do
just like we' did. Somebody said they didn't. What this's
going to do is cattle going down, hogs going down.
I said, they're just like we did in the thirties. Yeah,
(01:07:51):
I said, you think bigger count our cow I've got
on this place. I guess we sold some seven dollars apiece.
I'll be done glad to get it.
Speaker 4 (01:08:00):
Yeah. Yeah, we didn't have.
Speaker 5 (01:08:02):
Money to snap a letter. Why and it only took
two cents while Yeah, and I'll hear it so minutes
so we can live all the days back. I don't
want to see it in the thirties. Yeah, time is
two two pinchy.
Speaker 2 (01:08:18):
In nineteen seventy four, times were hard, especially for her,
and she said we'll do just like we did. She'd
been through a lot of hard stuff, and then she
ended by saying that time is pinchy. I think I
know what she meant by that, but I'm not entirely sure.
(01:08:38):
In this next and final clip, it's the only time
in the whole interview that she addresses that the park
is trying to buy her land. And remember, from this
moment she'll hold out for another five years until the
spring of nineteen seventy nine. And in this clip she
really doesn't give us much.
Speaker 6 (01:09:00):
Well, having lived so many years though here, what what
stands out in your mind? Is cause anything the years
past or is there anything that any period of time
or the the people or the the the way of
life down here that stands out more than any others?
Speaker 5 (01:09:19):
Well, I don't know. Yeah, it's part of that. I
pretty over part of it.
Speaker 4 (01:09:25):
I would yeah, Well that's like.
Speaker 5 (01:09:28):
That's right thing, Yeah, that's.
Speaker 2 (01:09:34):
That you you you wanna live it all here?
Speaker 4 (01:09:36):
An Yeah, wouldn't want to go in here, no one.
Speaker 5 (01:09:40):
I just assume spen the rest of my daysis in horl.
Speaker 4 (01:09:47):
And it's feasible.
Speaker 1 (01:09:50):
People don't.
Speaker 5 (01:09:53):
And they have me a house build. That's the politics
takes some close has me to get out.
Speaker 2 (01:10:20):
The interview with Granny Henderson kind of leaves me wanting more.
But even at the end, in the heat of the
land battle, she was kind. The park would build her
that house and she would leave the land that her
mother bought in nineteen oh five. She'd spend one night
in the new place before moving in with her grandson.
She'd only live there three months before passing away on
(01:10:43):
July tenth, nineteen seventy nine, from what her family says
was of a broken heart. At the end of this story,
I remained deeply conflicted, as my heart holy sides with
the landowners whose rooms ran deep in this land, and
they have lost something that they'll never get back. However,
(01:11:06):
I don't think the National Park Service or Neil Compton
were bad people, and in many ways they are both heroes.
This is a celebration that this river isn't damned and
is protected as is in perpetuity. My conclusion is that
this mortal realm just isn't fair, and a person would
(01:11:27):
do well to deal humbly with the circumstances they're dealt
and pray for wisdom to know when to fight for
that which can be one, when to compromise, and even
when to sell. And I think the message is clear
that this redesignation of the river is not something that's
good for that community. I can't thank you enough for
(01:11:52):
listening to bear grease and Brent's this Country life podcast.
Please let us know what you think of these episodes.
Remember you can email us at beargreaseat themetor dot com.
You can't wait to talk to everybody on the render
next week, and we're gonna try to put together a
way to give money to help restore Granny Henderson's house.
(01:12:17):
Stay tuned for that
She put a face on it that nobody else could
put a face on. If they were going to do
that to a little old woman who never did anything
to hurt anybody, who only help people. You know, if
they would do that to her, they'd just do it
to anybody. And in our culture, the one thing you
don't do is trample around on older folks. That's a
(00:28):
real good way to get a really bad reputation.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Today we'll learn the personal story of a true Ozark
legend as we listen to bits and pieces of a
historic interview with Ava Barnes Henderson from nineteen seventy four,
who was one of the last private landowner holdouts in
the ninety five thousand acre Buffalo National River in Arkansas.
She didn't want to sell. It's a fascinating biopiece as
(00:55):
we continue to explore this American doctrine of utilitarian conservation,
the greatest good for the greatest number, and the injustice
of it at times. On the last episode, we learned
about the political state of America and how it informed
the battle for the Buffalo River and the Ozarks between
the pro damn pro park and pro leave us Alone landowners. Today,
(01:17):
we'll hear words like communism, martyrdom, and displacement, which are
unexpected themes in a conversation about a beautiful stretch of
Pristine river. But we're telling a side of this story
that's rarely told. And hang around till the dead gum
plot twist at the end, when we'll learn there are
people trying to redesignate the rivers standing with the National Park.
(01:41):
It's very complicated, folks, and I really doubt that you're
gonna want to miss this one.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
She lived three months after they moved out of it.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Moved her out for three months.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Yes, she did. She'd died at eighty seven. She spent
one night in her new house that they built her,
and then my brother Howard took her to his house,
which was just a the field from him where she
was where they built her house. She lived three months.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
What do you make of that?
Speaker 3 (02:07):
I make it they took her life away from her.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
The Ava Barnes Henderson interview credits that we're about to
hear go to Texas Tech University's Southwest Collections Special Collections
Library courtesy of Jane Kilgore. My name is Klay Nukem,
(02:33):
and this is the Bear Grease Podcast where we'll explore
things forgotten but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places,
and where we'll tell the story of Americans who lived
their lives close to the land. Presented by FHF gear,
American made purpose built hunting and fishing gear as designed
(02:55):
to be as rugged as the place as we explore.
Speaker 4 (03:06):
You were born around here? Where were you born?
Speaker 5 (03:09):
I was born right down this river about and the
Lord and just below Prood.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
When was that eighteen nine to eighteen ninety two? Then
you moved your parents moved up here.
Speaker 5 (03:21):
Yeah. My daddy home stood a depth there booth. Well
it joins Gertie.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
Out there, Oh yeah, by Compton.
Speaker 5 (03:28):
Yeah, and I was just fourteen months old. My dad died,
of course, I don't remember your brother.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
What were your parents' names?
Speaker 5 (03:37):
My mother was a Buchanan, that's right.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
Yeah, you see now your mother was the great.
Speaker 5 (03:43):
Niece niece of President Buchanan.
Speaker 4 (03:46):
Yeah, yeah, the great.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
My dear bear, Grease, brothers and sisters. You have just
been granted access behind culture Vail, into the very heart
of the Ozarks, the place that few get to hear. See.
That was the voice of Eva Henderson, known to her
community as Ev and Since her global debut in National
(04:16):
Geographic in March nineteen seventy seven, she's been known to
the world as Granny Henderson. She would become an Ozarkian legend.
The incredible portraits of her on her Newton County, Arkansas
farm with her cattle, hogs, and chickens and dogs, taken
when she was eighty five years old, would become iconic
(04:37):
emblems of standing against government intrusion, self sufficiency, and the
gritty backwoods way of life on the Buffalo River. This
interview took place on July twenty second, nineteen seventy four.
And like Memphis is proud of Elvis and Illinois is
proud of Abe Lincoln, in Arkansas, we're proud of Grannie
(05:02):
Henderson in a way she was a martyr.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
Would be a great great niece.
Speaker 6 (05:11):
Did you keep up with the presidents in your youth
and through your life?
Speaker 5 (05:15):
Well, I used to.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
Yeah. Did you have a favorite.
Speaker 5 (05:20):
Well, I don't know. We all sawt pretty well. Roosevelt.
Speaker 6 (05:26):
Yeah, oh, did you do you remember Teddy Roosevelt.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
That's what I'm talking about, That's the what you're talking about. Yeah, yeah,
he must have been quite a guy.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yeah, I find it interesting that Grannie Henderson's favorite president
was Teddy Roosevelt, one of the core authors of the
doctrine of utilitarian conservation, The greatest good for the greatest number.
Here's more from Ev Henderson.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
And you married to Henderson?
Speaker 5 (05:53):
Yeah, yeah, Henderson.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
Where'd you live after you married? Down here?
Speaker 5 (06:00):
Well? Yeah, my mother bought this place, oh, when I
was thirteen. Yeah, so my husband up to for the
scene about two years after we were married. You down
this place?
Speaker 2 (06:16):
The Henderson Farm, bisected by the Buffalo River, was one
hundred and sixty seven acres just upriver from what they
call the Goat Bluff, which is on an inside bend
as the river sweep south, carved from ancient sandstone and
limestone towering three hundred and fifty feet above the water.
(06:37):
The park and most outsiders call it the Big Bluff.
EV's mother, Ira, bought the land in nineteen oh five.
Ev married Frank Henderson when she was sixteen and nineteen
oh nine, and they moved on to the land two
years later and built a house around nineteen thirteen. She
would live there until the spring of nineteen seventy nine.
(06:59):
I was thrilled when I learned that there was actual
audio of Granny Henderson, and aside from the roosters, the
quality is pretty good. The interviewer is Dwight Pitt Kathley,
a respected historian for the National Park Service, and the
interview is an hour and fifteen minutes long. It's truly fascinating,
(07:20):
and in the Ozarks we don't apologize for roosters making
incredible rackets. The interview continues and directly you can hear
the rumble of a motor getting closer and closer, and
there's an impromptu visitor that shows up, Yes.
Speaker 5 (07:40):
Visitors, Yeah, Robbie, Yeah, how you do? And just sitting here,
how you all right?
Speaker 2 (07:49):
It's EV's granddaughter, twenty nine year old Jane Kilgore, Hiller's brother.
Speaker 5 (07:56):
His wife is coming down here. I'm going down Upsuckholm
camp through two whore they get some water.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
She's asked her grandmother where a spring is to get water.
It was a Sunday afternoon and there's a group of
them going camping. Granny gets fired up as she gives
instructions to the spring. You can hear her voice change, no, I.
Speaker 5 (08:18):
Can you or that spring is over there? I grand
mama hunted for that. Well, I'll tell you, Jane, you
go right over that before you know, Honey, at that
second forward you go right down the edge of the
creek on the far side, and you can't keep them
finding well.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
And when heard all up now that creek, mate, and
I never could find it too, Hillard, I said, and
I forgot what it.
Speaker 5 (08:39):
Springs say, Well, it's plenty when you want to hunt Ford,
I'm the with you old day.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
A while will. The improptu moment ends with Granny offering
to help find the spring after the interview. The reason
the National Park historian was interviewing her was that on
March first, nineteen seventy two, the government had authorized the
formation of the Buffalo National River, known as America's first
(09:04):
National River. The land her family had owned since nineteen
oh five was quickly en route to being owned by
the United States government by whatever means necessary. Eva Henderson
would be the last private holdout in the whole ninety
five thousand acre National Park. That's why National Geographic came.
(09:28):
Her husband, Frank worked in the logwoods, and Ev worked
on the farm. They essentially were subsistence farmers, living not
much different than the first white pioneers who came to
this region in the eighteen thirties. They never had running water, electricity,
or a phone. Frank bought his first truck in the
nineteen fifties, but he died in nineteen fifty six. Ev
(09:52):
never learned to drive a car and remained on her
remote farm as a widow for twenty three years until
nineteen seventy nine, but she would be close to family
just down the river. EV's only daughter, Arby, lived with
her husband and children. One of those children was Jane Kilgore.
She's the one who asked about the spring. She was
(10:13):
twenty nine years old in that audio clip. Today Jane
Kilgore is seventy six, and I'd like to introduce you
to her my whole life. Have heard about your grandmother.
So what year were you born?
Speaker 3 (10:34):
I was born in forty eight, born down there at
Malwahome Place Town.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Yeah, yep. How long did you live there?
Speaker 3 (10:40):
Till I was thirteen? You'll have figure that's the difference there. Yeah,
we moved to come to a point when was thirteen.
The park brought us up.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
Two.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Now did y'all move because the park bought your land? Yes?
Jane has invited me into her home. She lives high
on the mountain now above the river, on what some
say is the prettiest farm in Newton County. Her home
is tidy and comfortable and full of pictures of family.
She made a coconut cream pie when she heard that
(11:09):
I was coming by. About a dozen whitetail racks, four
of which her shoulder mounted adorned the walls of her
living room. The big eight point in the center her
late husband, Hillard killed, but the other three shoulder mountain
bucks or Jane's. I'm trying to pry from her everything
I can about her life on the river and her grandmother.
(11:32):
I asked her what her childhood was like. She answered quickly, wonderful.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
No electricity, We had running water, and we spend a
lot of time with grandma, me and my sister.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Did How far did she live from you?
Speaker 3 (11:46):
Probably half a mile? You don't where that big flat
rock he is just down the creek from that?
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Yeah, I mean you knew your grandmother?
Speaker 3 (11:53):
Well, oh, yes, yes, my grandpa Frank. Here was her
husband's name, Frank Henderson. I helped him pick his tobacco patch.
He chewed tobacco, and we'd have picked the worms off
of it, and then I'd help him twist it. When
we cut it off, we twisted it and then hung
in the barn. And I remember that so well. Yeah,
(12:13):
he gave me a little heap for calf.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
What was your grandmother like?
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Very tough woman. There'll never be another woman as tough
as she was. I'm just not saying that because she's
my grandma.
Speaker 4 (12:23):
She was.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
She lived three months after they moved out of it.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Moved her out three months.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
Yes, she did. She died at eighty seven. She lived
three months. She spent one night in her new house
that they built her, and then my brother Howard took
her to his house, which was just up the field
from him where she was when they built her house.
She lived three months.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
What do you make of that?
Speaker 3 (12:47):
I make it. They took her life away from her.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
I said earlier that Granny was a martyr, and that's
really the way that we view her. The river nationalized
in seventy two, but she was able to hold out
into the spring of seventy nine when she sold to
the park. They had built her modern house and as
the crow flies, it was only two point eight miles away,
and she spent one night in her new house and
(13:25):
told her son that she couldn't do it, so she
moved in with him, and within three months, on July tenth,
nineteen seventy nine, Grannie Henderson passed away. I asked Jane
how she was able to stay there seven years after
the area was designated a national park.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
She had her lawyer and she thought it as long
as she could. They I think they were pretty lenient
with her, I mean in a way, but then they
were people over them too say, and she didn't talk
about too much. She just said, I will leave. We're
gonna get ready. Well they know you won't, you know,
but she did. She thought, I think that's reached him
(14:08):
so long. They in a way felt sorry for her
and didn't want to do it. But there were people
in Washington, d C. Giving them a limited amount of
time to do what they had to do.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
You know.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
I don't know all about the how the government worked
that in that way, but I think that had a
lot to do with it. She kept telling them she
wasn't going. She told them she wasn't leaving, and she
run one off that came down when talk to her
more that she didn't recognize him because it was a
different one than what had been there before, and she said,
you might as well hit the trail. That's what she stuted. Oh,
(14:39):
by here's something. Oh she was something else.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Grannie was not a wealthy woman, but you know, many
people like her saved every penny they ever made. I
suspect that's how she could afford a local lawyer to
fight against the behemoth of the National Park Service. Many
sold right away, but not Grannie Henderson. I suspected did
buy her some time. But that's about it. I asked
(15:04):
Jane about the house the park built her.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Yeah, they built her a house with electric running water, worshiper, dryer,
bath inside bathroom. She never knew nothing about stuff like that.
She didn't even know how to start a worship driyer.
She works in the creek on the rubboard.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
Yeah, I feel like they just I feel like she
would have lived a lot longer. She was eighty seven,
and I always held it against them because how much
lower would she have lived? And she would have lived
a happy life. She might have lived to be a hundred,
I don't know, and she would she would have lived
longer than she did, Yes, but no, Grandma was a
(15:44):
she was a tough woman. I wish I would have
paid more attention because we were just me and Rosie
played the creek most of the time if we wasn't working.
She had a lot of old Indian remedies for like
snake bites, bee stings, whatever, you know, just being kids,
we didn't pay a lot of attention to her. Yeah,
I know of three times she got copperheadbit and she
(16:07):
never even went to the doctor. Is that right, that's right,
that's absolutely right.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
And forgetting seed ticks and stuff on her, she would
tie kerosene ragar and her ankles and she'd never get
any text her checkers on her. I don't know what
she did for the snake bites. I remember she told
me one time that she mixed up turpe tine and
sugar and stove soot for a cut. Now, that would
stop the bleeding. But as far as the sneak bates,
(16:32):
I don't know what she does.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
But I know of.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Three times she got compreheaded bedow and she killed them
and throwed them in with the hogs and they ate them.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
I remember.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
Oh, yeah, I'll never forget my grandma.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
That's a pretty gangster move to feed the copperhead. That
just bit you to the hogs and then whip up
an herbal remedy, avoiding the lines that the er. If
you want to get Clay Nucomb's attention, tell me how
many times you've been bitten by venomous snakes, unless you're
just fooling around like Brent was when he got bit.
But the number of times you've been bit is a
(17:05):
direct correlation to your exposure to gritty close to the
land living. And if Granny was out of her bed,
she was in some serious snake country. As I sit
with my back to these four big ozark bucks on
(17:26):
the wall, Jane pulls out the March nineteen seventy seven
issue of National Geographic. I'm flipping through the pages looking
at the incredible images of Granny on her farm. Tell
me about when National Geographic came and did that peace
on her.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
I didn't know anything about that until I got that
through the mail. I didn't know anything about him. Even
you know, she had lots of company that she didn't
say too much about it to anybody.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
So she was in National Geographic, which in the seventies was, yeah,
probably even bigger than it is today. I mean a magazine,
a premiere print magazine. She was a national geographic and
never told it. Just didn't think it was that big
a deal.
Speaker 6 (18:10):
Right.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
No, But when they first started coming down and talking
to her about where she lived, I guess it's some
part people out.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
She said.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
There were some strange people come down here, and she said,
I answered some of their questions, and some of them
I told there wasn't another business. But I thought that
was such a god. Have you saw this?
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (18:28):
I have? I have?
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Yeah, I had it hunted for that wall ago and
I had in a toad in my closet.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
That is probably that's the really famous picture of her
right there.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
It is she's something. She was something else. Yeah, tough.
She was ever a bit four foot seven and she
would get up on top of a five gallon bucket
and drive a wooden post with a sledge hammer. They
didn't have tea posts back then.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
She was tough.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
She carried the water from and she had her some
big tubs down there. But the fance she carried water
from Buffalo, carried the water at Turkey Hoose in that tib.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
Did she always wear the camouflage.
Speaker 5 (19:10):
Old, yes, oh yes.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
On time we ever seen her with that is when
she's getting ready to go to bed.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
She wore that specific canfula yes, yes, sir, Do you
still have that?
Speaker 5 (19:21):
No?
Speaker 3 (19:22):
The sad thing of it is is when I go
back down to her home place, all the windows are out,
the riffs falling in. The purservice was supposed to have
kept that up as a historical side. It's pitiful.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
I wonder why they're not keeping it up.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Grannie Henderson always wore an old school camo patterned bonnet,
and that ended kind of on a downer note. You see,
Grannie's house is still standing. It's a several mile hike
or mule ride down there, but it's just a matter
of time before the earth reclaims it. I do know
that the park has done some work on it since
(19:57):
she left, but the family isn't too happy about it.
And I do know that there's currently a group called
the Buffalo River Partners trying to raise money to help
restore Grannie's house. And since we started researching for this podcast,
the park has publicly stated new interest in maintaining the
historic structures, but some say it's a day late and
(20:21):
a dollar short. I visited Grannie's old home place many
times as we hear this emotional story of Granny giving
up her land, It's important to understand that the park
did give every landowner the right of a life of state,
which means they could live there until they died, and
upon the death of the deed holder, the land would
(20:43):
go into the possession of the park. It was kind
of confusing when I learned that, because I'd have thought
she would have taken them up on that deal. But
for where she lived, the life of States had heavy
restrictions on livestock and land use that she couldn't tolerate.
And as I understand it, after a long battle and
her being the last one on the river, all her
(21:06):
neighbors and family had moved away, the family thought it
was best that she should sell and move. She'd held
out for so long. But even with this option of
the life estate, it didn't soften the sting of the cold,
stiff arm of the government. To an unbiased observer, it
might be easy to say, well, that's fair. If they
(21:28):
want to make a park for our nation to enjoy,
at least they gave the option for folks to live
there until they died. Then it's their choice. Well, it
wasn't their choice, and the other option would have been
the government never coming to buy your land. In the
upper part of the Buffalo River watershed sits the small
community of Boxley, and in nineteen seventy two it contained
(21:49):
twenty seven occupied homes and approximately eighty people. And in
the original National Park Service survey documentation in nineteen sixty one,
they know Boxley and suggested a private use zone, stating, quote,
areas possessing high agricultural values, such as those around Boxley
(22:10):
and along Richland Creek, might be protected by acquiring partial
rights or scenic easements only end of quote. Boxley was
also along a prominent roadway into the park, and so
Boxley was given kind of a special unique deal. But
Granny's Place was truly in the backwoods and wasn't in
(22:32):
a private use zone. They would follow through with this
in the nineteen seventy two legislation, and it meant that
the land at Boxley could remain in private ownership quote
except for the rights purchased by the government to prevent
unsightly changes in the pastoral setting end of quote. People
could remain living there, but they couldn't as much as
dig a hole in the ground without the Park's permission.
(22:56):
This is still enacted today and many of the families
in Boxley Valley still live there and it's beautiful. Unfortunately,
most of the ninety thousand acres of private land acquired
weren't in the private land use zones. And even with
all this looking really good on paper, what many of
the locals say and what isn't written in the books
(23:17):
by the Park Service, is that people were bullied and
intimidated by the park and they were unorganized and unclear
on communicating the new land acquisition laws. And you've got
to remember this was way before the Internet and some
folks like Granny didn't even have phones. You'll remember Misty
(23:39):
Langdon from the last episode. She's kind of a grassroots
spokesperson for the locals and runs the Remnant Project, designed
to document the history of Newton County. People like her
are really important and gutsy. She invited me to her home,
which is a gorgeous multi generational cattle farm. You really
(24:00):
want to hear how people feel, you go and talk
to Misty.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
You know ev Henderson. Everybody calls her Granny Henderson. She
was treated pretty pretty terribly, you know, as an older person.
A lot of the you know, just the hatred and
the you know, furre at the park was because of
the treatment of her. She put a face on it
(24:28):
that nobody else could put a face on. If they
were going to do that to a little old woman
who never you know, did anything to hurt anybody, who
only help people. You know, if they would do that
to her, they'd just do it to anybody. And in
our culture, the one thing you don't do is trample
around on older folks. That's a real good way to
(24:51):
get a really bad reputation. People hurt, people are still
so hurt.
Speaker 7 (25:06):
You know.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
There are so many families that I deal with, and
I'll call them up and say, hey, I thought you
might have some pictures or some documents that you want
to share with with the Remnants project, And do you
want to tell me a few stories about growing up?
You bet, come on, honey. But when you would get
around and I knew to wait, I knew to get
(25:28):
what I knew to save the park question for last.
That is a subject that would be like if somebody
in your family had some deep, dark secret and you
didn't want anybody to know, and you were out in
them publicly on the town square. That's the attitude that
they have about talking about the park.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
It's just too it is too dark, too bad of
a scenario. It's just we're just erasing that.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
From It's too painful, I think is one it was.
I think it was probably one of the most painful
periods for people here because everybody was scared. I asked
my mom when all this came about, how do we
keep our land? How did we not lose a bunch.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
Of going The land that we're on right now is
the border of the park.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Yeah, and about three quarters of our land is all
surrounded by park. They are our neighbor and we're most
of the time, we're really good neighbors with one another,
you know. But with mom, when when the town hall
meeting and stuff got called and for the redesignation stuff,
and that's jumping a little ahead, but she came to
me and she said she kind of had tears in
(26:39):
her eyes and a lump in her throat, and she said,
you're going to keep fooling around until you get this
place took from us, because the park is liable to
not like you doing this and take that. And I said, Mama,
I don't think the park, you know, I think the
park is done with their you know, acquisition, land acquisition,
(27:00):
and I think we're all right. But fifty years later,
she is still absolutely attitude like she she's set fear.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
She grew up thinking that these people had ultimate sovereign
power and could just kind of do what they want.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
And that is exactly what happened. They did have sovereign power,
and they did do whatever they wanted.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
As far as so how did how did Your original
statement was how did we keep this land? Because it's
three sides bordered by a national park? And as I
understand it, I mean it was kind of I mean
they were just drawing lines on a map just to
say where this park was right, and I mean they
could have they wanted exactly.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
They prayed. That was it. There was no Our family
had no political pool. There were some families in Boxley
that had some political allies, and I think that helped.
But for us, it was Coove Lines was a preacher
and so many people around here knew him. That's my
great grandfather. And I reckon it was prayer and fasting,
(28:04):
you know, it was on their face, you know, praying NonStop.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
But it was that imminent of a threat. Yes, that
they took it serious like that, and it felt like
it was so far beyond their control.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
Right there was nothing they could do. Yeah, I know,
for me, it kind of felt like if a tornado's
coming through the house and you all huddle up and
you start praying, and but a you mean business. I
kind of that's the image that I had in my mind.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
I thought the analogy of praying that a tornado wouldn't
hit your home was a good descriptor. You get a
sense of the helplessness, the fear, the random nature of
the threat. It may hit us or skip us, but
it's beyond our power. The shape of geographic boundaries are
interesting data points that often indicate the type of authority
(28:53):
that the boundary drawer had. Typically, indigenous peoples had boundaries
based on rivers, mountains, valleys, and natural features, and even
historical use patterns, which are rarely straight lines. The last
couple thousand years, governments and specifically colonizers began drawing straight boundaries,
(29:14):
meaning someone from somewhere else who didn't understand the way
this place works, wanting to keep things simple, was drawing
the geometric boundaries. This is highly simplified, but I think
you get the point. And for the record, we tried
to get the National Park Service to be on this podcast,
(29:37):
but they declined the interview. We tried local and national
channels and they said it was a funding issue. Whatever
the reason, I can't help but think that it was
a strategic error. And it's a shame because the vast
majority of people that work for the National Park Service
are wonderful, hard working, well meaning people, and here I
(29:57):
am trying to interpret their law and their story, and
I'm certain that I've got some of their side of
the story wrong. It's possible, but this story is intentionally
focused on the people who haven't had much of a
voice in this now fifty year process. And this is
no way designed to be a hit piece on our
(30:18):
national parks, because I am a fan and a partaker.
After the park was established in seventy two, the biggest
shock in the community came when the first people were
served papers requiring them to sell. Word of the encounter
spread like wildfire. Here's misty on the perception of the
(30:38):
park's process of acquisition of land.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
It was just so underhanded, and then the amounts that
they would give people were all over the board. One
person might get something that seemed like a fair price,
and then somebody else like Roy Keaton, would absolutely get nothing.
And I mean Roy and Katie for me Keaton, they
(31:04):
had some of the harshest treatment that I know of
in our area. Going through the notes and the transcripts
and everything that I have seen, I don't know how
anybody made it out of that without a shooting.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
I mean it was me. Kay House is a lifelong
resident of the Buffalo River. Her family home seted here
early and never left. She remembers when the Keaton family,
Misty just spoke about the served papers and the acquisition
of their land.
Speaker 8 (31:33):
My first memory of when the Park Service came in
and took over We had a little grocery store there
in Ponka's where a trailer's sitting now. But my first
memory was whenever they came in and they took it
(31:54):
Roy Keaton's property, which is the property up at Los Valley.
That was my first memory, because the US Marshals came
in that night, stopped there at the store and ask about,
you know, where Roy Keaton lived. That was my first
real memory. I mean, all the talk and everything.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
You remember, what did you how did you feel about that?
Speaker 1 (32:20):
I scared to death.
Speaker 8 (32:21):
I mean, you know, we just you just couldn't imagine
things like that happening around here, you know, because it's
such a quiet, family oriented place to live.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
And all of a sudden, everybody was like, this is real.
Speaker 8 (32:37):
Yeah right, that's I believe, if I'm not mistaken, that's
the very first real action that was taken.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
How did how did the people that you knew respond
to that?
Speaker 3 (32:52):
Curious?
Speaker 2 (32:54):
Really?
Speaker 8 (32:54):
Yeah, I mean they were very, very upset at the time.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Yeah, the community was scared, and it's hard to blame them.
There's actually a recorded interview with Roy and Katie Keaton.
In the early nineteen eighties, the park Service, recognizing an
issue and an effort to restore and build relationships with
the community, commissioned an outreach to gather oral history from
(33:18):
the people who sold land. The Keatons lived in Boxley
Valley in the residential zone. I listened to the entire interview,
which is over two hours, and unfortunately the audio quality
isn't great, especially when they talk about the park. But
the Keatons described in detail how things transpired. Here's Misty
(33:39):
reading just a small part of that transcript.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
This is Katie and Roy Keaton being interviewed by the
Center for Ozark Studies June the ninth of eighty three,
and the interviewer says, when did you first hear about
the park? Katie answered, well, we've heard a long time
about the park, but we never did hear a thing
that they'd want to take our house till they brought
(34:03):
us the papers. Really, they never confronted you, Oh no, nothing,
never said nothing until this us Marshall that night walked
in and with a whole bunch of papers, gave me
a set, and he a set, and my son and
his wife, we each got a whole bunch of papers,
said we were living on government property. They gave us
(34:24):
ninety days to get off. He said, had you heard
about them taking other people's land? They hadn't taken anybody's
land over there at that time. We was the first
ones that they moved in on. Did you ever see
this plan in the paper or anything like that? No,
did you ever hear of any meetings? They didn't have
(34:45):
any over in here, nothing until after they took our place,
and then the people got to get in together. Do
you think people saw what happened to you and got together,
and Katie answered, yeah, did they give you specific reasons
to why you had the leave your land? They said
they were going to take that land for everybody to
enjoy and not just us. I thought it was and
(35:08):
then they have redacted something there. Well, what did you do?
We tried to fight. Yeah, we had to go to
court to get our money. They wouldn't give us nothing
until after they gave us the ninety days to do something.
They didn't. We didn't get a penny of money until
that after the ninety days.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
Was that I had?
Speaker 1 (35:25):
They had to lead.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
They had to fund themselves to yes, go live somewhere else.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
Their move, their repurchase everything, and earlier in this interview
the house that they're interviewing them in and she said
this ain't no home where they're at now. So they
spent the later years of their life with her saying
this ain't no home. And they said. We tried to fight.
We had to take them to court to get our money.
(35:52):
They didn't give us nothing. Was it a fair price? No,
we had to take them to court. And then of
course after that the attorney takes half half of it,
so we still didn't get very much after that was
the law they used to get your land, more specific
than eminent domain. I don't remember. They said they had
right to do it, and that was it. The judge
told us that they have the right to take it
(36:15):
at any time they wanted, but they didn't have the
right to tell you how much they're going to pay
for it. That was up to the jury, you know.
And they took them to court, and I don't remember
what they were given at first. I know it was
poultry that they won one hundred and sixty three thousand
dollars settlement from court. I mean that kind of goes
(36:36):
to show how small of an amount, because in the
eighties one hundred and sixty three thousand would be a
pretty good windfall. Yeah, And that was making up the gap,
you know, that was making up what they was, That
was making up the fair price.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
That they took it. And they went back to court,
they said you owe them and sees exactly. Oh gosh,
so they must have just paid them nothing. Nothing. Here's
the bottom line on paper in the halls of Congress,
reading public Law ninety two Dash two thirty seven, which
instituted the National River, which detailed how land would be acquired.
(37:13):
I've read it. It looks tolerable, just unfortunate for the landowners.
But on the ground in the backwoods of Arkansas in
the early nineteen seventies, it wasn't pretty. And I can't
even begin to tell on this podcast all these stories.
I mean, I'm just cherry picking a couple, and I'm sure,
(37:33):
as stories do, some of them get exaggerated in the
community over the years. But where there is smoke, there's fire,
and in this case, the fire was visible to everyone.
I want to talk to doctor Brooks. Blevin's prolific author,
friend of this podcast and an authority in ozark history.
(37:56):
I've got a peculiar question as it relates to the
time period in the long arm of this freedom love
and American government and the word communism. Yeah, there's a
there's a sentence into your essay where it says there
were those who condemned the creation of our national rivers
as communism. That's interesting. Can you can you explain why
(38:19):
people would have thought that?
Speaker 7 (38:20):
Well, you think about the era when this, when this happens,
you get the Buffalo National River in seventy two, we're
in the Cold War, and it's it's natural that a
lot of people would have seen any kind of big
government intrusion in the everyday lives of people and in
the in the property rights of Americans as a communistic
(38:45):
type move And I've seen not just with a buffalo story,
but this is such a vast story that takes in
so much of the of the US story from the
from the mid twentieth century. I've seen a lot of
letters to congressmen and senators and stuff where they bring
up the C word, it's communism. And so it would
(39:07):
have been a natural reaction for a lot of people,
especially a lot of conservative people, who put a lot
of value in the primacy of property rights. This is
also the era when you're starting to have kind of
the infant movement of the hard right of kind of
ultra conservative people. And if you go back to kind
(39:31):
of the beginnings of the libertarian movement and stuff like that,
a lot of those folks, if property rights is not
at the top, it's on the mount rushmore of rights
of Americans that are or should be inviolable for those people,
this becomes a property rights issue. Is there a justification?
(39:55):
Is there enough of an American national interest in aiding
the Buffalo National River to justify the taking of private
property from these citizens. Can you make can you make
a case that there's a justific constitutional justification for that.
(40:15):
Of course it holds up under under our laws, But
there were a lot of people who who saw this
as getting close to kind of breaching that, you know,
that constitutional directive that we live under.
Speaker 2 (40:28):
The commies. I knew it, and now I want to
turn the throttle up just a bit. If you remember,
in the first episode, I mentioned doctor Neil Compton, who's
considered the father of the Buffalo National Park, kind of
(40:50):
like John Muir is of Yosemite. And after talking with
the people here, I'm feeling conflicted about this man who
is so influential and turning this into a national park.
I want to ask doctor Blevins about it, and I'll
trust what he tells me. Until I started doing this research,
the name Neil Compton would have in my mind, not
(41:15):
knowing a lot about the Buffalo River, but I would
have said he's the guy that saved the Buffalo River.
I would have said he's a hero. When you get
over into Newton County, he is not a hero. I'm
struggling to try to decide if he's a hero or
a villain. But I'm kind of conflicted because it feels
like those are in society minimized, this marginal, disenfranchised group
(41:39):
of people, did not hear them and just kind of
did what they wanted to do. And in Compton's book,
you see you see little threads of that. And one
thing that stood out to me in his book, which
was a great book. He did a great job. He
was a good writer, but his reports to the world
was that basically this one hundred and thirty five miles
(42:01):
of river was uninhabited. He said, it's basically uninhabited, you know,
given the illusion that these people they want to leave.
Not to put words in his mouth, but just the
idea that I have as I read that and then
know also what was going on behind the scenes, as
he was saying, these folks don't have any power, these
(42:23):
folks don't have any pool, They don't know what they've
got in a way, and maybe this is villainizing him
too much, but I'd be willing to step on the
line to say, you know, almost just saying these people
don't deserve, they don't know what they've got, and they
don't deserve it, and that's probably pretty harsh. What do
you think about that? Am I being too hard on him?
Speaker 4 (42:43):
Well?
Speaker 7 (42:43):
I think Neil Compton. I think he realized, Now you
don't see this in his book. The book stops in
nineteen seventy two. The battle has been won, We've nationalized
the river. The rest of the story goes untold, you know,
the land Act position and all that kind of stuff
after nineteen seventy two. But even in that book, I
(43:04):
can fish out evidence that Compton realized that one of
the things that most fascinated him in those early days,
and he says this in his book, was these little
farmsteads and the people who lived in that valley that
was fascinating to him. It was that human community there
(43:25):
that to him would have seemed like they were living
fifty years behind the times, and they might have been
probably would have been compared to somebody from New York
or Chicago or something like that, and maybe even to
somebody from Bentonville.
Speaker 2 (43:39):
So would your perception of him wouldn't be like what
I just described.
Speaker 7 (43:42):
No part of it would be. I think Compton would
have had a more conflicted attitude on what eventually happened
because we don't really know. He never really talks about
the loss of land of a lot of these people
that he knew personally. Yeah, I mean that's not part
of his book, The Battle for the Buffalo. And maybe
(44:02):
why it's not part of the book it may have
been something a little too difficult, too personal to deal with.
But I think by and large, the group of people
he represented the recreational canoeists and you know people and
campers and stuff like that. I don't think you're wrong
in saying that they probably approached the people of the
(44:24):
Buffalo Valley with a with a kind of a condescending
outsider attitude that these people they don't know what they
have and therefore they can't take care of it the
way that the government could take care.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
Of it now.
Speaker 7 (44:38):
And a lot of that again goes back to self interest.
If you're a canoeist from Kansas City, your interest is
making sure that river stays undamned and that you have
access to it. If the National Park Service takes it over,
you're going to have even more seamless access. So for them,
(44:58):
definitely that's in their set he interest to favor that
and to argue the greatest good for the for the
greatest number, and we humans have a powerful capacity to
rationalize whatever it is that we want into being something
that almost seems altruistic.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
I never knew doctor Compton nor his family, and I
hope that this segment isn't interpreted as personally disparaging. However,
I think the point is that it's not black and white,
and I'd like to correct something that I said in
that segment. Not everybody in Newton County dislikes Compton, because
(45:40):
today the region is full of new people who wouldn't
be there without his influence. There is little doubt to
the people on the river Compton was an elite, politically
connected outsider, and when the dams were defeated, they could
have just walked away. More on that later in the
(46:01):
foreword of Compton's book, written by a man named Ken Smith,
a very well respected man. My eyebrows raised when I
read this statement, and I quote from the book from
the foreword. Other battles were being fought and won in
the sixties to creator expand national parks in Arizona's Grand Canyon,
(46:22):
among California's Redwoods Washington's Cascades. In each case, the Buffalo
River and all the rest. The battle has been between
those who saw the area's natural resources to be used
for material gain, often to the benefit of local interest,
and those who saw the resources as having intangible, even
(46:45):
spiritual benefits, with park advocates usually living outside the immediate area.
In simplest terms, locals versus outsiders, exploiters versus presentationist. End
of quote. Hmm, that's an interesting quote. And I'll give
(47:09):
the man the benefit of the doubt because he was
partly talking about those who are wanting to damn the river,
but where Granny and Misty's families local exploiters looking for
material gain by simply wanting to stay on their own land.
(47:30):
Without a doubt, Doctor Compton appreciated at some level the
rural Ozarkian people so different from him that he encountered
in his early trips to the Buffalo. In his book,
he gave one of the best description of the ozark
people that I've heard, and I'd like to read what
he wrote. A quote from his book, This Journey to
(47:52):
the Unknown Buffalo did, however, and plant the seed of
interest in our native land, so that for me, then,
on honest compared prison was sought between our rivers, forests, mountains,
and prairies and those in other parts of America and
the world, and for our people a feeling not so
much of pride, but of sympathy and understanding for their
(48:12):
unpretentious manner, their honest approach to the uncertainties of life,
and their rye and whimsical method of expression, and their
tried and true moral values. End of quote. That was
incredibly good insight in writing. But I hadn't forgotten that
those commies still took Granny's land. And again, in doctor
(48:37):
Compton's defense, there were vocal landowners on the river who
wanted the river damned, and some who wanted the park.
In the book, he cites Homer Blyth, who had seven
hundred and twenty three acres on the river, and he
said that the river dried up each summer, wasn't worthy
of a park and should be damned. Larry Potter owned
fifteen hundred acres and six miles of river frontage on
(48:59):
the Lower Buffalo and support of damning one hundred percent
nineteen sixty nine or fe of duty. A lifelong Boxley
resident went to Washington to petition for the National Park,
but her land was in the residential zone, but many
people who were deeply connected to the land didn't want
(49:20):
it damned or a park. Here's doctor Blevins. If that
was not a national river, I probably wouldn't know that
much about it, you know, I wouldn't have gone over
there and hiked and seen the bluffs. And with our
water low, you know, I guess you could still float it,
but it would all be private land, you know, inside
the high water mark. But so here I am someone
(49:43):
who's partaken to the Buffalo River, taking pride in the
Buffalo River, take it, love it. But then now when
I hear the story, I don't know if I should
be mad, or should be happy, or should just be man.
The human existence is pretty conflicted.
Speaker 7 (49:58):
It's the great, great area that most history, at least
most interesting history, falls into. It's one of these things
where our own individual perspectives is a lot of times
will dictate how we view this story. And the vast,
vast majority of people in the world, and even in
(50:18):
the White River Valley and even in Newton County don't
have any connection with that little strip of land along
the Buffalo River, and we're more likely to view that
in that sort of outsider black and white way with
this was this was one hundred percent a good thing,
nationalizing the river and not damning the river. But that's
(50:41):
what you know, that's what makes this such an intriguing
stories that there are other elements to this that remind
us that, you know, most of these stories are not
just simple. They're not black and white. Yeah, good and
bad stories. And and Neil Compton is you know, he's
not He's not all good and he's not all bad.
And and it's hard to figure out what to do
(51:02):
with some of these characters.
Speaker 2 (51:04):
Right in the middle of this conversation on ethics, I
want to step back in time for a minute onto
Granny Henderson's porch and hear her tell about the best
dog she ever owned. That's right, But first you'll hear
her refer to her favorite gun.
Speaker 5 (51:24):
So he's killed later bombings.
Speaker 4 (51:27):
Okay, I guess you need a good gun out here.
Speaker 5 (51:31):
I've cared that mimb He used to have a dog.
He was he looked quite a bit like a dobby
color and he was a real squirrel dog where he was.
He was good about the stock what he knows, but
he never he wasn't a natural hater or some dogs
you know, just don't never just go to the hill.
(51:54):
He's the best dog I ever owner of the will
of course never expect. But I went thousand dollars Bobby.
He watches it, not think of moves, not move had
let you know, and a good dog's worth helo after
(52:17):
these barns.
Speaker 4 (52:18):
Yes, basically out here you need a good dog.
Speaker 2 (52:20):
Yeah, Bobby is the dog that was sitting right there
with them. He's in several of the photos in National Geographic.
But she said she wouldn't take a thousand dollars for him,
which in seventy four was a lot. But the best
dog she ever owned was that squirrel dog healer. I
want to ask Jane Kilgore what her grandmother would have
(52:42):
thought about this park. So, I mean she would have
been against this area becoming a national park.
Speaker 3 (52:50):
Oh absolutely, yes, yeah, yes.
Speaker 2 (52:54):
As were everybody most people on the.
Speaker 3 (52:57):
River right just past her house down there, you go
across thirty jim Bluff, go across the creek. That's where
we had our cane patches and corn patches.
Speaker 2 (53:07):
Over there.
Speaker 3 (53:08):
Now there's not even a you can't tell where it's
just a big back of sand and rocks.
Speaker 2 (53:14):
Do you ever go down there, Oh, yeah, to your
old home place.
Speaker 4 (53:19):
What is it?
Speaker 2 (53:19):
Is it nostalgic for you to go there? I mean,
does it make you sad? Does it make you happy?
Speaker 3 (53:24):
I'm proud I live in a place where I've got
electricity now, but you don't. I told Hillary one time,
my husband, I said, I wouldn't mind being back down there.
He said, about the time you couldn't turn the TV
on or you change your mind. Yeah, but then we
were sad when they moved us out there.
Speaker 2 (53:40):
Yeah, we were. Yeah, Granny was again the park and
I think we already knew that. And Jane's old home place,
half a mile from Granny's is still standing today too.
Speaker 3 (53:56):
Yeah, but I wouldn't like to be able to drive
back down there and just you know, spend the night
and not of the chim bluff.
Speaker 2 (54:02):
Would you have felt like they minimize the locals, This
kind of walked over people that they felt like they could, right.
Speaker 3 (54:12):
Oh yeah, I know they had. Yeah, and they don't
pay attention to the tourists. They would like the tourists
to be down there. I think it just became a
tourist attraction and people go down there and look at
my old home place or my grandma said, it don't
mean anything to them. And I even called Washington d C.
Speaker 2 (54:29):
One time.
Speaker 3 (54:29):
My mother had crypt an arthritis. She lived to be
ninety six. We would take her in a raft to
down to the old home place when she was able.
She got to where she wasn't, so I asked one
of the park rangers about taking her on the full whidder,
and he said, you can't do that, and I said,
well why not. She's the only one left that's home.
Said that, and she can't write. He put her on
(54:51):
a mule. She's ninety six year old, she's crippled with arthritis.
She can't write a mule and so he gave me
the number of Washington d SEEING. I called and no.
I said, well if I take her anyway, and I said,
you'll get a ticket, okay, But I was going to
chance it and take.
Speaker 2 (55:10):
Her on the full wheeler.
Speaker 3 (55:13):
Who used to be the park ranger down here, the
real nice guy. Huh yeah, yeah, he told me. He said,
if it was up to me, miss Kilgore, I would
tell you go right ahead and take her. But he said,
now they're big wigs ahead of me, so I can't
tell you that because I'd get in trouble, i'd.
Speaker 2 (55:29):
Lose my job. But I was.
Speaker 3 (55:31):
I almost took her once to just chance it because
she wanted to go. Yeah, they don't care. They don't
care if if you're if you have lots of memories down,
I want to go back. They don't care.
Speaker 2 (55:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (55:45):
No, the more people that runs up down the river
and brings beer and throws it in the river, and
that's what they'd like. No, I don't like them. Yeah, yeah,
I'm just like my Grandma'm playing spoken. I don't know,
I don't I don't them.
Speaker 2 (56:01):
It's clear to see that Jane has a unique and
personal connection to the Buffalo River, and she's one of
those people that feels like they've had something taken that
they can't get back. But don't get the wrong idea
about her. She's not a victim. She's lived a wonderful
life full of hard work and joy and family. She's
(56:21):
deeply respected in her community, and I have incredible respect
for Jane Kilgore. I'd probably drove that four wheeler down. Therefore,
I want to get back to doctor Blevin's for a
big question, and it's this, did they have to nationalize
the River to completely save it from being damned. If
(56:42):
they had just walked away with the place have stayed
in private hands, and then really the bigger question is
would that have been the best thing.
Speaker 7 (56:51):
If the Buffalo River nationalization weall hadn't been passed in
seventy two, if we'd waited another year or another two years,
it never would have happened. There would be no Buffalo
national River. This happened right on the cusp or right
at the very end of what we might call the
(57:14):
the New Deal Coalition or like the progressive New Deal
Coalition of American history and American politics. This long era,
at least from the thirties through the sixties, where there
was this kind of consensus. I mean, there was always
political division, but there was this kind of consensus, whether
you were on the right or the left, whether you
(57:35):
were a Republican or Democrat, that the government had a
had a right and even a responsibility to plan things out.
You know, planning was a big that was a big
catch word in the twentieth century, that there were university
trained technocrats and experts who knew better how the world
should work than your average Joe. And for roughly a
(58:00):
generation or more. That's that's how our national government operated.
We went from the New Deal into World War Two
and in the into the Cold War after that, and
it's during that era that you have this great era
of damn building. It's from it's really from the thirties
into the end of the sixties and a little bit
(58:21):
into the seventies, and by the by the end of
the sixties, that political philosophy is starting to go away,
and it's doing it. Vietnam is exposing some of the
weaknesses of our government. There are people in both the
right and the left who are beginning to distrust things
that the federal government does. There's the civil rights movement,
(58:44):
which stirs a lot of people on the right side
of the political spectrum. You've got a lot of things
that are chipping away at this traditional kind of teflne
government that we had that what are you know, where
the government did must be right. And this explodes in
the seventies and by the end of the seventies, this
(59:05):
isn't going to go anymore, you know.
Speaker 2 (59:07):
So if it hadn't happened, right then you don't think.
Speaker 7 (59:09):
I don't think it would. And the reason I say that,
at the very moment that this Buffalo stuff has been
finalized in seventy one. In early seventy two, at that
very moment, there's an effort in the state of Missouri
to enact a statewide scenic rivers program and it's over
eight hundred miles of rivers they're going to be part of.
(59:32):
This would have been part of this state Scenic.
Speaker 2 (59:35):
Rivers program, and there was this.
Speaker 7 (59:37):
Massive uproar, I mean, just this grassroots anti government uproar
that just just takes over. And it's all in the ozars.
It's all in the Missouri ozars. It's a state wide system.
But it goes away. That fight ends in seventy one,
and I think that was that was a signal of
(59:59):
what was going on nationally.
Speaker 2 (01:00:01):
Like the states were saying, we don't want the federal
guarn coming in here. Well, are just.
Speaker 7 (01:00:05):
Any government, right, But at the same time they're fighting
in Missouri, people are fighting against you know that. In
sixty eight, the federal government passes the National Wild and
Scenic Rivers Act, and this is something separate from the
Buffalo and those are National Scenic Riverways, but there are
you know, a bunch of rivers around the nation that
are classified as federal wild or scenic rivers, and by
(01:00:29):
the seventies it gets harder and harder to get rivers
designated as wild and scenic rivers because people don't want
it anymore. They see it as a federal A lot
of them dismiss it as a federal land grab, or
it's just federal intrusion, it's just people who are again.
Or you know that old motto that might as well
(01:00:49):
have existed leave us alone. That becomes kind of the.
Speaker 2 (01:00:52):
Motto, Wow, that is really interesting. It would have been
hard to but the thirty year damn building era of
the Army Corps of Engineers was ending, and it's likely
the Buffalo River dams would have never happened if the
park people had also gone away. But as we get
(01:01:15):
to the end of this story, I'm terribly conflicted because
I love the Buffalo National River. I do enjoy that
it is public land, and if it was still private,
I doubt I'd know much about it. I've got a
question for Misty. Can you see the Is it hard
to see the bigger picture when you're right in the
(01:01:37):
middle of it.
Speaker 1 (01:01:38):
It's not for me, and I feel kind of like
a trader when I even say that I'm glad that
it's protected in some way, but I am I'm glad
that we do have some protections of it. If not,
it would be nothing but condos and strip malls already,
it would I feel like that the thing that they
(01:01:59):
were trying their hardest to protect the river from is
where we're at now, that we're at a tipping point where, well,
we could do we could make a lot of money
if we added, if we changed the park, and we
did this, this and this, and then we're right back
to the beginning of, you know, commercialization of the river.
(01:02:22):
And that's the part that really and that's the part
that makes me furious.
Speaker 2 (01:02:28):
What I haven't told you yet is that last year
there was talk of redesignating the park from a National
River to a National Park and Preserve. The Details of
the change are substantial and complicated, but it comes at
the heels of a statewide tourism push in Arkansas, and
many people in Newton County view it as a repeat
(01:02:50):
of what happened in seventy two, which is outside influences
essentially commercializing the river through the redesignation, which would recruit
more people to come here. And in the name of
economic development of the state, get them to spend more
money in Arkansas.
Speaker 1 (01:03:09):
Because if we're going to protect this from the people
who loved it as much as they loved their family,
and that was everything to them. That land was all
they had besides their family. If we're going to take
that from them and preserve it, let's do that. You
treat it everybody awful. You ought to be ashamed of that,
(01:03:30):
But that's done and gone. Let's go from where we're at.
Let's try to be good neighbors to one another. I
feel like that we're I feel like I'm a pretty
good neighbor to the park, and I try to be.
But that thing of turning it into what you're trying
to avoid it turning into why you know, I think,
(01:03:51):
in my simplest form of what I'm against about the
river is a bunch of rich people, corporations, politicians who
are wanting to come in and turn our protected, our
federally protected public land into something that just fits their
(01:04:12):
business model. That is infuriating to me. If you want
to give it back to somebody, line up the descendants
of the people who you took it from and let
them have it and let them farm it if you're done,
(01:04:35):
you know, protecting it and worrying about water quality and
this and that. And I don't think that the park
is I do not think at all. I think that
the park is doing the best that they can.
Speaker 2 (01:04:45):
Do right now.
Speaker 1 (01:04:47):
They are under budget, they are understaffed, and I have
a lot of friends that work at the park, and
I like a lot of people that are there, and
I think they are good, good people.
Speaker 2 (01:04:57):
But I think that.
Speaker 1 (01:04:58):
They are protecting it the best that they can with
the budgeting that they've got.
Speaker 2 (01:05:15):
Some sources say the redesignation would bring more federal money.
Others say additional funding is no guarantee, but without a doubt,
it would bring more people. And that's good if you're
a merchant, speculator or a politician. It's not good if
you're trying to raise a family here. There's a strong
case to be made that many of the families will
(01:05:37):
be gentrified out of this area when land values just
get too high, taxes too high, and the pressure to
sell too great.
Speaker 9 (01:05:47):
Our boards raggers here came together and we do all
of the information that has made along. It's is you
and grew a deep inside and really the look in
every potential.
Speaker 4 (01:06:02):
Wish heard walker.
Speaker 9 (01:06:04):
Here we ame through the conclusion that there is no
benefits and no thingies anywhere that we could see for agriculture,
for the people in Lindon County, and for our way
of life under this hole change in deination.
Speaker 2 (01:06:29):
With murmurs spreading about the redesignation, last fall, Misty called
a public meeting in the small town of Jasper, which
has a population of five hundred, and over eleven hundred
people showed up, and all but about seven of them
were against the redesignation. That little clip you just heard
was one of the board of directors of the local
(01:06:50):
farm Bureau. There was another meeting down the river with
almost the exact same results. The overarching theme of the
community was leave us alone. We made our peace with
the world fifty years ago, and that's enough for one community.
I want to listen to one last clip from the
(01:07:11):
historic Granny Henderson interview as she expresses her doctrine on
hard and old times and yeah, the roosters are still there.
Speaker 4 (01:07:23):
Did the depression have much of effect down in here
for the thirties.
Speaker 5 (01:07:28):
The thirties, so I said, has come up the hill
today turned out wather. I said, shoot, we keep a hollering,
holler and holler about the heat and what we're going
to do. Some of them says, if we were doing
what we're going to do, and I said, we'll do
just like we' did. Somebody said they didn't. What this's
going to do is cattle going down, hogs going down.
I said, they're just like we did in the thirties. Yeah,
(01:07:51):
I said, you think bigger count our cow I've got
on this place. I guess we sold some seven dollars apiece.
I'll be done glad to get it.
Speaker 4 (01:08:00):
Yeah. Yeah, we didn't have.
Speaker 5 (01:08:02):
Money to snap a letter. Why and it only took
two cents while Yeah, and I'll hear it so minutes
so we can live all the days back. I don't
want to see it in the thirties. Yeah, time is
two two pinchy.
Speaker 2 (01:08:18):
In nineteen seventy four, times were hard, especially for her,
and she said we'll do just like we did. She'd
been through a lot of hard stuff, and then she
ended by saying that time is pinchy. I think I
know what she meant by that, but I'm not entirely sure.
(01:08:38):
In this next and final clip, it's the only time
in the whole interview that she addresses that the park
is trying to buy her land. And remember, from this
moment she'll hold out for another five years until the
spring of nineteen seventy nine. And in this clip she
really doesn't give us much.
Speaker 6 (01:09:00):
Well, having lived so many years though here, what what
stands out in your mind? Is cause anything the years
past or is there anything that any period of time
or the the people or the the the way of
life down here that stands out more than any others?
Speaker 5 (01:09:19):
Well, I don't know. Yeah, it's part of that. I
pretty over part of it.
Speaker 4 (01:09:25):
I would yeah, Well that's like.
Speaker 5 (01:09:28):
That's right thing, Yeah, that's.
Speaker 2 (01:09:34):
That you you you wanna live it all here?
Speaker 4 (01:09:36):
An Yeah, wouldn't want to go in here, no one.
Speaker 5 (01:09:40):
I just assume spen the rest of my daysis in horl.
Speaker 4 (01:09:47):
And it's feasible.
Speaker 1 (01:09:50):
People don't.
Speaker 5 (01:09:53):
And they have me a house build. That's the politics
takes some close has me to get out.
Speaker 2 (01:10:20):
The interview with Granny Henderson kind of leaves me wanting more.
But even at the end, in the heat of the
land battle, she was kind. The park would build her
that house and she would leave the land that her
mother bought in nineteen oh five. She'd spend one night
in the new place before moving in with her grandson.
She'd only live there three months before passing away on
(01:10:43):
July tenth, nineteen seventy nine, from what her family says
was of a broken heart. At the end of this story,
I remained deeply conflicted, as my heart holy sides with
the landowners whose rooms ran deep in this land, and
they have lost something that they'll never get back. However,
(01:11:06):
I don't think the National Park Service or Neil Compton
were bad people, and in many ways they are both heroes.
This is a celebration that this river isn't damned and
is protected as is in perpetuity. My conclusion is that
this mortal realm just isn't fair, and a person would
(01:11:27):
do well to deal humbly with the circumstances they're dealt
and pray for wisdom to know when to fight for
that which can be one, when to compromise, and even
when to sell. And I think the message is clear
that this redesignation of the river is not something that's
good for that community. I can't thank you enough for
(01:11:52):
listening to bear grease and Brent's this Country life podcast.
Please let us know what you think of these episodes.
Remember you can email us at beargreaseat themetor dot com.
You can't wait to talk to everybody on the render
next week, and we're gonna try to put together a
way to give money to help restore Granny Henderson's house.
(01:12:17):
Stay tuned for that
Popular Podcasts
1. Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
2. Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
3. Crime Junkie
If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people.