Community to mark 200th anniversary of frontier trading post

Three-day celebration to showcase life in the 1800s with performaces, exhibits

DODDRIDGE, Ark.—What started out as a meeting back in October of the Southern Miller County Historical Preservation Committee. led to a bicentennial celebration this coming weekend in Doddridge.

The three-day celebration, which will take place in the 9500 block of Arkansas State Highway 160, will commemorate the 1818 founding of the Sulphur Fork Factory and Indian Trading Post on the Sulphur River’s west bank.

The three-day event, which will start Friday and run through Sunday, will commence that first day with a public school field trip for students. This field trip will go from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. The next two days—Saturday and Sunday—the event will be open to the public from 9 a.m to 5 p.m.

There will be Native American dancing, games and cooking as well as pottery demonstrations by members of the Caddo and Choctaw nations.

The event will also feature early 19th-century campsites through which the public can stroll as they meet the people portraying trappers and explorers, whom this American Indian trading post and factory served back in 1818.

“We want everyone to come out and enjoy a great living history event that originated right here in our area,” chairman of the committee Sam Bumgardner said in an earlier interview.

The group hopes “everyone will take away a deeper appreciation of the cultures of the 1800s,” Bumgardner said. There will be demon-

“We want everyone to come out and enjoy a great living history event that originated right here in our area.” —Sam Bumgardner, committee chairman

strations depicting life from the frontier era, including blacksmithing, knife making, flint knapping, quilt making and primitive weapons.

A replica keelboat from the time period will be parked next to the Spring Bank ferry. The long, narrow crafts were first used by explorers and fur traders. The stability of their design made upriver travel possible.

Archaeologist Dr. Carl Dexler will be on hand to discuss artifacts provided by Southern Arkansas University that were discovered at the Sulphur Fork Factory site during a series of digs beginning in the 1980s.

There will be a Sunday service at the park’s gazebo. A number of area churches are expected to participate.

For more information, call Bumgardner at 903-824-3105 or Debbie Chandler at 903278-6723.

Submitted image ■ This 2002 painting by Claude McCrocklin is an interpretation of archaeological evidence found at the Sulphur Fork Factory site in Miller County, Ark.