In the past three years, posts here have been sporadic at best. This site and my interest in photography started in a blur and kept pace for a pretty good stretch of time. I’d post stuff here several times a week. Sometimes daily. Being single and bored will generally allow for that kind of frequency and devotion on most any semi-creative endeavor. So, who knows what will become of all of this. I seem to always be putting photos on Flickr however, just because flickr is easy and quick. Below is a little something I’ve whipped up that will pull the 20 most recent flickr photos from my account.

Be warned, for I’ve entered a phase of life where all my photos involve household pets and infant children:

Nice spur of the moment overnight float trip. Good weather. Small fish. Great time.

Panorama from our campsite: 36°4′ 40″ N, 92°33′ 35″ W

from Shorpy:
Children of rehabilitation client, Maria Plantation, Arkansas. October 1935. View full size. Farm Security Administration photograph by Ben Shahn.

From Shorpy:
August 1936. Family between Dallas and Austin, Texas. The people have left their home and connections in South Texas, and hope to reach the Arkansas Delta for work in the cotton fields. Penniless people. No food and three gallons of gas in the tank. The father is trying to repair a tire. Three children. Father says, “It’s tough but life’s tough anyway you take it.” View full size. Photo by Dorothea Lange.

From the University of Arkansas Special Collections website: The Sanborn Insurance Maps, comprising more than four thousand items, depict structures in Arkansas towns and cities between the 1880s and the 1930s. Some maps indicate the rise and fall of railroads in the state, while others show highways, political, topographic, or geologic features, tourist attractions or places of literary or historical interest.”

The maps are pretty interesting, and even more interesting to me are the old highly decorated cover pages. Somehow a few months back I was able to get at the collection without a login, but now, evidently you can’t. Good thing I saved a few pdf’s while I had the opportunity!

For people who don’t really have a grasp of what it took back in those days to sketch, pen, and print these intricate patterns, I’ve included a zoomed-in cross-section:

Below are more from Hot Springs:

Zoomed detail on this one:

While searching for more information about these maps, I learned a little more about the U of A Collections. They’ve got alot of stuff stashed away up there:

“Special Collections is the largest academic archives in the state, housing more than 1,600 manuscript collections, more than 200,000 photographic images, and more than 1,000 historic maps of Arkansas. The department houses the only complete set of Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps for Arkansas, a collection containing more than 4,000 maps depicting structures in Arkansas towns and cities between the 1880s and the 1930s.”

A workmate of mine clued me in a little-known piece of Arkansas motorsports history that can be viewed via google maps.

“From 1954-57, Memphis-Arkansas Speedway was a regular NASCAR stop. The drivers who would become stock car racing’s first legends tested their grit and machines on the high-banked 11/2 -mile dirt oval located a few miles to the west of West Memphis, near Lehi, Ark.”

“I remember going there a long time ago. We raced there in the summer and I went with Daddy,” seven-time NASCAR champion Richard Petty said about his racing adventures with his father, Lee Petty. “The track had a lot of banking, and I remember that they had two ponds on both ends of the speedway. They used that dirt for the banking.

On June 10, 1956, 28-year-old Iowa-native Clint McHugh died from injuries suffered from a crash during qualifying.

McHugh was driving close to 90 mph when he reached Turn 3. According to accounts from the time, McHugh swerved, flipped and tumbled over a guard rail and into a lake 50 feet below the embankment.

After a 1957 race, track owners Clarence Camp, Harold Woolridge and Nat Epstein ran out of money and sold the land to Clayton Eubanks Sr. in 1958. After the Eubanks family took over the facility, it was folded in as part of the farm.

“We raised catfish in the infield area of the track for a couple of years,” Parker Eubanks said. “Then we leveled out the grade and bedded rice and grew soybeans in it.”

“If the interstate would have been complete, it’s only a mile from Lehi to the off-ramp. They could have gotten onto the interstate and it would have been great”

Old Race results from the Memphis track

On my flickr

In October of 1835, the The New-England Magazine published a letter from Albert Pike. It was titled: “Letters from Arkansas”. Among other things, included is a detailed description of the Arkansas River bottoms.

Below is a scan of the entire article. Here is a bigger version if you don’t like reading small type.

On my flickr

Further interest in Arkansas in the eighteenth century stemmed more from speculation and adventure than it did in economic and political planning. In 1719 French explorer Barnard La Harpe made a trip up the Arkansas River to identify the resources of the region, including the wild animal population. He hoped to establish a center for supplying food to New Orleans.

As La Harpe made his way up the river, he learned about a rumor from the Indians of a giant emerald embedded in a rock somewhere upstream. In anticipation of that, La Harpe eagerly searched the banks of the Mississippi and the Arkansas rivers look for rock formations that might have the desired emerald. Unfortunately, he was unable to find any rock formation from the time he left New Orleans until he ascended the Arkansas River to a point of near present day Little Rock.

La Harpe was so anxious to make this discovery that upon seeing this small outcropping of rock on the south bank of the river, he excitedly recorded in his journey about the “point of rocks” on the Arkansas River”.

Seven miles upstream he encountered a giant cliff on the north side of the river which he named “Big Rock.” In eager expectation of finding the emerald, he and his men went ashore and scaled the rocky cliff to the top, but searched in vain for the precious stone.