Join us October 6-9, 2010 in Fayetteville, Arkansas! The Society of Commercial Archeology’s 2010 Conference will explore automobile tourism in the Ozarks, with tours of Routes 71 and 62 and engaging presentations by noted roadside experts and enthusiasts.

The Conference opens with an evening reception at the beautiful Dickson Street Inn, a restored Victorian Mansion in the heart of Fayetteville’s entertainment district. The following day Bus Tour #1 explores U.S. 62 to historic Eureka Springs, with stops at Dinosaur World, Christ of the Ozarks and the world-renowned architectural masterpiece the Thornecrown Chapel. Lunch will served at the 1886 Crescent Hotel & Spa in Eureka Springs, “a palatial structure that echoes the recuperative splendor of the surrounding Ozark Mountain region.”

The following day, Friday, October 8th, features morning and afternoon paper presentations, SCA business meeting, and “5-minute stories” plus a group lunch.

Bus Tour #2 will traverse U.S. 71 through the Boston Mountains between Fayetteville and Alma in the Arkansas River Valley and a short section of U.S. 64 into Van Buren. Stops  include Our Lady of the Ozarks Shrine, Vista Courts, Sky Vue Cabins, Artist Point, and Kopper Kettle Candies. The conference closes that evening with a dinner at The Powerhouse, a popular Fayetteville restaurant housed in an 1888 structure built by the Electric Light & Power Company over a large spring.

We hope you’ll join us for this exciting and enlightening Conference in Northwestern Arkansas! Early registration extended through September 15th!

• Read more about the conference…

• CLICK HERE TO REGISTER ONLINE, or…

• Click here to download the SCA Conference 2010 Brochure & Registration — print it, fill it out, and send it to:

SCA Conference c/o Carol Ingald
2042 Glendale Ave.
Philadelphia, PA 19152

Please make checks payable to SCA and mail registration
form with payment in full, US funds only.

Odyssey in the Ozarks, the Society for Commercial Archeology’s conference, will include paper sessions and our legendary tours. The symposium and paper session, held Friday, October 6, 2010,  will include morning and afternoon paper presentations, an SCA business meeting, and “5-minute stories” at The Cosmopolitan Hotel.  A group lunch at the offices of the Fayetteville Visitors Center will be included.

Featured speakers will discuss topics exploring how the area’s natural environment has affected tourism and road development, automobile culture in the South, including historic roadside, tourist facilities (restaurants, gas stations and motels) and tourism sites. Here is the schedule of papers:

Revised paper session schedule – August 19, 2010

SESSION A – VISIONS TO ATTRACTIONS

• Maybe Christmas Wasn’t Meant to Last All Year:  The Rise and Fall of Santa Claus, Arizona
Douglas Towne

• Missouri’s Autoscope Theatre:  An Ozarks Love Story
Thomas Gubbels

• Building Arthur Nelson’s Dream
Karen L. Daniels

SESSION B – A JOURNEY ALONG THE ROAD

• Roadside Kansas
Patrick Zollner

• Y’All Come Back Now:  Hillbilly Iconography on the American Roadside
Rick Kilby

• The Longest Road and Richest Legacy:
The Commercial Roadside of US Highway 20
Darrell A. Norris

SESSION C – INTO THE ROADSIDE FUTURE

• Why American Roadside Attractions Will Never Die
Jeffrey Sward

• The Bend in the Road:  A Call for New Directions in Roadside Scholarship
Carol Ahlgren

• Ozark Gothic: The Pilgrimage Chapels of E. Fay Jones
Callie L. Williams

SESSION D – SAVING OUR ROADSIDE

• A Monument to Carl Fisher in Utah
Rollin Southwell

• “Coney Island USA”
Michael Hirsch

The annual business meeting and the traditional “5-minute stories” will follow the paper session.

Don’t miss the Odyssey in the Ozarks and this landmark gathering! For more information about the conference, places to stay, or cool things to see along the way, contact Ralph Wilcox at Ralph@arkansasheritage.org. See you in Arkansas!

In 2008 the SCA met in Albuquerque, New Mexico for its annual conference. In addition to two bus tours and a fantastic paper session, there was great networking, sight-seeing on Rt. 66 and a real sense of camaraderie among all those attended.  To view a short video shot at the conference, click here.

Here’s our shorter video promo.

By Ralph Wilcox

In the early twentieth century, when tourists traveled to Northwest Arkansas, they were greeted by steep mountains and deep valleys that provided ever-changing scenery around each bend, especially in the rural areas of the state. Facilities that catered to motorists capitalized on the natural beauty of the area in their names and in the materials that were used in their construction. Tourist courts with names like the Sky Vue Cabins and Vista Courts sprang up along U.S. 71 south of Fayetteville.  In addition, in Eureka Springs on U.S. 62 other tourist courts, including the Twigg Log Cabin Court and the Rock Cabin Tourist Court, played off of the theme of nature. Even in Fayetteville, the area’s largest city at the time, one could stay at the Mountain Inn, advertising “Comfort Without Extravagance” and touted as “Fayetteville’s newest, largest, and most modern hotel.”

However, it was not just the names for the facilities that reflected the area’s natural beauty – the materials used in their construction also illustrated it.  The rugged topography of the area, and the abundance of stone and timber, meant that local materials were often the easiest to use in construction.  The Hamlin Tourist Court west of Eureka Springs and another tourist court north of Mountainburg, for example, used fieldstone, which is prevalent in the Arkansas Ozarks, in their construction. The area’s restaurants also used natural materials in their construction with the Brentwood Café in Brentwood employing fieldstone while Hunt’s Tavern west of Eureka Springs used log construction.

The SCA Conference in Northwest Arkansas will give you your own opportunity to experience Arkansas’s natural beauty and see for yourself how it influenced the area’s tourist-related facilities. You, too, can see the Vista Courts, Sky Vue Cabins, and Hunt’s Tavern, among other Northwest Arkansas roadside attractions. We hope to see you in Fayetteville October 6-9, 2010, for Odyssey in the Ozarks.

Originally published in the SCA’s Road Notes from Summer 2010

By Ralph Wilcox

Although Arkansas may not come to mind when people think of tourist hot spots, the state still has many excellent resources associated with early auto tourism. The state is crossed by many early highways that are still major routes today, including U.S. 70, U.S. 65, and U.S. 62, among others, which grew out of early routes such as the Bankhead Highway and the Ozark Trail. As the National Register & Survey Coordinator for the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, I have been fortunate enough to be able to explore many of Arkansas’s highways and discover some of our roadside sites, many of which are off the beaten path today. Here are five of my favorite Arkansas roadside treasures from across the state.

When it opened on July 2, 1962, at 1300 South Main Street, McDonald’s Store #433 was the first McDonald’s in Pine Bluff, and one of the first McDonald’s built in Arkansas.  The original building was typical of their restaurants of the period with the large arches at each end.  Although the original restaurant was replaced in the 1970s, the original sign was retained.

The McDonald’s sign is significant in Pine Bluff as a rare surviving example of an early backlit plastic sign, a type of sign that became popular in the late 1950s and 1960s and revolutionized the sign industry after World War II.  It is also the last remaining single-arch McDonald’s sign in Arkansas.  The importance of the sign was recognized by its listing in the National Register of Historic Places on August 21, 2006.

Changing commercial trends in Pine Bluff brought about the closing of the restaurant in 2007 and the construction of a new store at 2801 South Olive Street. However, because of the significance of the sign, it was moved to the new location – while remaining listed on the National Register – and still greets patrons today.

This small gas station, which is believed to have been built around 1935 for the Magnolia Petroleum Company, is located on the original route of U.S. 79 through the small town of Kingsland.  With its polychromatic brick, decorative shingles, and wood detailing, the building is a great example of the charming gas stations that were built in the early twentieth century based on residential styles.  Although the gas pump island remains out front, it has been many years since the building served any motorists.

When it comes to sheer whimsy in gas station design, nothing in Arkansas tops the Roundtop Filling Station in Sherwood.  The station was built in 1936 by local developer Justin Matthews for the Pierce Oil Company, one of the “Baby Standards” that followed the breakup of the Standard Oil Trust in 1911.  Pierce operated in southern Missouri, Arkansas, western Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas, before going out of business in 1940.  The Roundtop Filling Station was also operated for a period of time by the DX Oil Company.

The design of the gas station is dominated by the office, which is topped by the witch’s hat roof, while the rear section contains a small storage room and two restrooms. The station’s location just off of what was U.S. 67, the major highway between Little Rock and St. Louis, meant that it was a landmark for passing motorists.  Although it is still a landmark today, and was listed on the National Register on January 24, 2008, the building is vacant and deteriorating.

The Old U.S. 67 Rest Area in Curtis is one of the more interesting roadside attractions in Arkansas.  This route of U.S. 67, which was originally Arkansas Highway 51, was paved with concrete in 1931. (A four-mile section of the original concrete pavement still survives between Curtis and Gum Springs.)

Once the highway was redesignated U.S. 67 and became the major route through southwest Arkansas, efforts were made to provide services and amenities for motorists traveling the route. This rest area, which was built in 1936, was the result of a partnership between the National Youth Administration and the Arkansas State Highway Department. The facility provided a water well for motorists surrounded by a semi-circular bench.  A stone retaining wall completed the facility.

Once the 1931 alignment of the highway was bypassed in 1965, the rest area was quickly forgotten and became overgrown.  However, a group of local residents uncovered the rest area around 2005 and it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 5, 2006.

Constructed in 1965-1966, Christ of the Ozarks is the most significant work of the sculptor Emmett Sullivan, an apprentice of the noted sculptor Gutzon Borglum, in Arkansas. Christ of the Ozarks was commissioned by Gerald L. K. Smith after he and his wife retired to Eureka Springs in 1964. Before coming to Eureka Springs, Smith was a controversial individual who engaged in several activities beginning in the 1930s to fight communism, liberalism, organized labor, and Jews.

Christ of the Ozarks is constructed out of 24 layers of white mortar spread over an internal steel frame. The statue weighs over two million pounds. Christ of the Ozarks rests on a foundation of 340 tons of concrete that is interlaced with steel and virtually welded into the rock of the mountain. The statue’s arms spread a total of 65 feet from fingertip to fingertip, and each of the sculpture’s hands is seven feet from the wrist to the fingertips.

Christ of the Ozarks singlehandedly helped to turn Eureka Springs into Arkansas’s largest tourist destination beginning in the 1960s. After Christ of the Ozarks was built, restaurants and hotels expanded to handle the crowds that flocked to the area. Even today, Eureka Springs is one of Arkansas’s most popular vacation destinations.

Originally published in the SCA’s Road Notes from Spring 2010

Come join the SCA for our next conference, an “Odyssey in the Ozarks” in northwestern Arkansas in October 2010. Arkansas is nicknamed “The Natural State,” and the conference will give you the opportunity to explore how the area’s natural environment has affected tourism and the roadside’s built environment throughout the late 19th and 20th Centuries. The conference will be headquartered in Fayetteville, a vibrant college town that is home to the University of Arkansas and the area’s cultural center.

In addition to experiencing Fayetteville, conference attendees will have the opportunity to see Arkansas’ rural beauty on two tours. The roadside architecture of Arkansas’ Boston Mountains will be explored as we travel U.S. 71 from Fayetteville to the towns of Alma and Van Buren. A second tour will cross U.S. 62, nicknamed the Ozark Skyway, through the Ozark Mountains from Fayetteville to Eureka Springs, Arkansas’ premier 19th Century resort community where “taking the waters” was all the rage. Eureka Springs also offers fascinating roadside architecture that was built as the community adapted to auto tourism in the first part of the 20th Century. Both tours will offer spectacular views of the area’s natural beauty as they wind, climb, and descend through the rugged topography.

From grand Victorian hotels to kitschy roadside icons like Christ of the Ozarks and modern architectural masterpieces like Thorncrown Chapel, the 2010 SCA conference will offer something for everyone. Come have your own Odyssey in the Ozarks – you won’t believe what’s around the bend…

Stay tuned for more info!