Museum depicts early days of riverside Des Arc
DES ARC — Standing out as an ingenious work of art at Lower White River State Park Museum is a century-old depiction of Des Arc’s waterfront. It’s not the scene of buildings and boats that amazes, but rather the fact that the artist did the oil painting on a mussel shell.
The 5-by-7-inch shell of a washboard mussel served as the canvas for H.A. Peller, an artist and gunsmith who also operated a floating photography studio on the White River. In the heyday of pearl buttons, from the late 19th century through World War II, harvesting the bivalves and turning their shells into material for the finished product was a major industry here.
Then plastics arrived, eclipsing the pearl-button business along the Mississippi River and its tributaries. It marked another change in fortune for Des Arc and other riparian communities, which continue to face economic challenges in the 21st century.
As the museum’s exhibits testify, plenty of fascinating tales can be spun about life along the lower White since the first European settlers showed up more than two centuries ago. A tableau of life-size figures from times past depicts a steamboat captain, one of his deckhands, a land surveyor and a stylishly garbed woman with a parasol.
Posted narratives report successes but also setbacks, leaving a sense that the best times came
before the river was tamed by Corps of Engineer dams after World War II.
An undated ad for Wilds’ Saloon declared: “I have opened this establishment for the purpose of ‘cheering the inner man,’ and sending residents and wayfarers on their way rejoicing. … Due care will be taken in ‘raising the genius, and mending the heart.’”
A letter written in 1892 by German immigrant Hugo Preller informed his wife: “There’s no money in this country, but we could live off the fat of the land.”
That’s because game was still plentiful here and the fishing spectacular. By 1915, a vibrant riverboat culture of trappers, shellers, fishers and loggers prospered along the lower river’s beautiful shores. Vast quantities of fish and roe were shipped to St. Louis, Chicago and New York. … Sadly, this era began to fade after 1970 due to the ecological changes brought on by the dams upstream.
One brain-spinning exhibit, having to do with erstwhile mindsets rather than economic changes, is a list of 12 “Rules for Teachers” — promulgated here as recently as 1945 but sounding almost medieval. Here are some of them:
■ “You will not marry during the term of your employment.”
■ “You must not loiter downtown in the ice-cream stores.”
■ “You may not travel beyond the city limits unless you have permission of the chairman of the board.”
■ “You may not ride in a carriage or automobile with any man unless he is your father or brother.”
■ “You may not smoke cigarettes.”
■ “You may not dress in bright colors.”
■ “You may under no circumstances dye your hair.”
Next-door to the state-park building, the outdoor Prairie County Log Cabin Museum is owned by the county. Its buildings include a dogtrot log cabin, a wash house, a potato house and an outhouse.
The log cabin, a replica of a late 19th-century structure with a wood-shingle roof, has two rooms with the kitchen and wood cookstove in one room and the living and sleeping quarters in the other. The two rooms are separated by an open breezeway called the dogtrot. The cabin is furnished to show a family’s way of life during early settlement days.
A brochure mapping a driving tour of Des Arc properties on the National Register of Historic Places is available at the state-park museum. Included on the route are Oak Grove Cemetery, where graves dating as far back as 1851 include 20 Confederate soldiers, and the red-brick Prairie County Courthouse, built in 1913 during Des Arc’s period of prosperity.