Conservationist Compton had ties to Bella Vista
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Buffalo River being named the nation’s first national river, thanks to the efforts of the late Dr. Neil Compton of Bentonville, who had ties to Bella Vista.
A story in the Feb. 13, 1999, Morning News in Rogers said the Bentonville physician was “known widely in Arkansas and around the nation as the man who led the fight to save the Buffalo River from being dammed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers into a series of reservoirs.
“The Buffalo became the nation’s first national river in 1972, thanks to Compton and other members of The Ozark Society, which Compton founded to battle the federal government.”
Columnist Marilois Bach, in a column in the Feb. 24, 1999 edition of The Weekly Vista, said of Compton, “As a member of our local historical society, he endeared himself to us. He was familiar with this area long before Cooper Communities was on the scene. It was a playground for the Bentonville folks, and he delighted in showing us his home movies of those people enjoying the swimming pool – they called it The Plunge – and dancing at The Pavilion on Lake Bella Vista.
“He knew all about Bella Vista … every nook, cranny and cave.”
According to an online entry of the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, Neil Ernest Compton was born in 1912 in Falling Springs Flats in Benton County. He graduated from the University of Arkansas and the University of Arkansas School of Medicine at Little Rock, beginning his medical career in 1940. He married Laurene Putman of Bentonville in 1935, and they had three children: Ellen, Edra and Bill. He served in the U.S. Naval Reserve during World War II and afterward in the Ready Reserve until 1972. During the 1960s Compton, an avid hiker and canoeist, became president of the Ozark Society to Save the Buffalo River. The Ozark Society launched a successful campaign to stop the construction of two dams on the Buffalo River proposed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the entry said. On March 1, 1972, President Richard Nixon signed the bill that made the Buffalo River the first national river in the National Parks System.
According to information supplied by Xyta Lucas, co-president of the Bella Vista Historical Society, “Neil met his future wife Laurene at a dance at the Dance Pavilion on Lake Bella Vista, and when the Dance Pavilion burned to the ground in 1998, he came back to share his memories at a special event following the fire. He told the group at that event with the moonlight playing on the water below and Laurene in that red dress, he was smitten. They got married in September 1935. Evidently through his visits to Lake Bella Vista, he and his wife got acquainted with C.A. Linebarger Jr. and his wife Florence, who were also married in 1935. Neil and C.A. Jr. became best friends and their families became very close, sharing lots of fun times together. Neil Compton was the godfather of the Linebargers’ first child, Carole, in 1941. Carole is the same age as Neil’s daughter Edra, and the two girls have been best friends all their lives. Carole was also good friends with Edra’s older sister, Ellen Compton, who died in 2020.
“C.A. Jr. and Neil went to the Buffalo in 1952 and gathered wild azaleas and rhododendrons which they transplanted at the Comptons’ home (now Compton Gardens) and behind the Linebargers’ log house in Bella Vista. They also planted some of them on top of the Wonderland Cave property which the Linebargers owned. C.A. Jr. died at an early age of a heart attack in 1956, and it may be that his early death reminded Neil that one cannot always put off something important, as it was soon after that when he and others formed the Ozark Society.”