Other days

100 YEARS AGO

March 29, 1920

Realizing that all interests of Yell County are suffering from the raising of short staple cotton in that county, T.A. Johnson of Dardanelle has started a movement to improve the quality of the cotton. He has informed H.M. Cottrell, agriculturist of the Arkansas Profitable Farming Bureau of the Little Rock Board of Commerce that he paid $1,070 for enough purebred Bowden seed to plant 230 acres.

50 YEARS AGO

March 29, 1970

Striking Little Rock Waterworks employees and supporters were stopped from parading down Main Street Saturday and arrested by Police Chief Gale F. Weeks and other officers for failing to obey a police officer. Sixty-seven marchers including 12 children were escorted to a large former school bus, a panel truck and patrol cars. The adults were booked at the Police and Courts Building and the youths, ages 8 through 16, were charged at Juvenile Hall.

25 YEARS AGO

March 29, 1995

A statewide crackdown on speeders gave drivers on Interstate 30 something new to worry about Tuesday as three state police troopers lay in wait between Benton and Little Rock. State police warned motorists March 13 that they planned to intensify enforcement of the speed limit. But at least 3,542 drivers weren’t listening. That’s how many vehicles police stopped during the first 10 days of Operation Safe Speed, a get-tough program targeting 14 “hot spots” — most in 55-mph zones near cities — where drivers are most likely to speed. Police cited or arrested nearly all 3,542 drivers after getting orders to turn up the heat on traffic violators.

10 YEARS AGO

March 29, 2010

The Newport School District’s new $14.5 million elementary school will have electronic interactive whiteboards in each classroom, video hookups and 125,000 feet of space. But it won’t have a two lane paved road when it opens in April. Delays in laying a 2-mile connector road between Arkansas 18 and Arkansas 384 will leave the school an island in a sea of cotton and soybean fields. Teachers and staff members will have to use a gravel construction road to get to the school this spring when they begin hauling in furniture and setting up classrooms. If the paved highway to the new building is not ready in August when classes start for the 880 students, the school will stagger the times buses arrive and leave, and the times parents drop off and pick up children to cut down on the number of vehicles on the road. The city can widen the gravel road to accommodate that school traffic.