Pocahontas Public Art Guild

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Have you been downtown lately?  Did you notice the new art installations?

The newly formed  has been hard at work, adding to the ambiance and charm of our downtown area.  The Guild has already created a bit of artistic interest and whimsy in a few locations.

Come on down and take a look.  The wall on the Marr Street side of Bella Vita is now graced with life sized silhouettes!  A man dancing on a light pole, children being pulled in a wagon, a ballerina with an umbrella caught in the breeze and a little girl being lifted by balloons…and there are a few more surprise silhouettes still to come, so watch for them!

silhouettes

You will  want to park, get out of your car, and walk around, too.  Guild members, who are local artists and others interested  in art, have some miniature surprises in store for you, if you can find them!  Look down at the sidewalks, in corners, on curbs and down low on the sides of a few buildings…and you might see some stick figures or little animals and birds or scary and funny urchins!  There are currently about 20 tiny “paintings”, but  the guild will be adding more…surreptitiously, of course ….they are fun to find!  The guild members plan to catalog the tiny paintings and prepare a scavenger hunt to help  visitors find them…… and  residents, too!

The Guild has also been working on what will become a “community” art project.  You might have noticed the picnic table  in the flowerbed on the corner of Everett and Marr.  The city placed the table so that people will have a place to gather or eat a picnic meal or soak up some sun and then  asked the Guild to “decorate” it.  In the spring, the Guild will be asking art groups from the community to “re-do” the table, that is, to re-paint it in any artistic style they choose!  Then again in the fall another group will be recruited to re-paint the table.  Each new group that takes on the project will be acknowledged with a sign beside the newly painted table!  If you and your group wants  to go ahead and sign up for this fun project, let us know!

The Guild is open to all  artists and people interested in art,  so if you would like to join the Guild,  contact Linda Bowlin at 892-0087.  We have some great ideas for future projects…and we need your ideas and your talent, too!

The Sky Was Falling In Pocahontas

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Everybody who visits Pocahontas wants to see our famous meteorite!

In the fall of 1858, a bright light streaked across the skies of northeast Arkansas. This visitor from the heavens was the remains of a large meteor that had burned its way through Earth’s atmosphere. It’s fiery presence grew larger as it approached the City of Pocahontas. The meteor fell to Earth with a great explosion of fire and a great bang! It landed in a field just north of what’s today Black River Overlook Park, along the river bank just across Highway 67 from downtown Pocahontas.

The great stony meteorite remained where it fell for forty years, until the town’s railway station master, Oscar Keith, loaded the rock in a wagon and placed it in his front yard on Vance Street north of downtown, where it remained for over a half century. Unprotected, the stone lost over 2/3 of its size as souvenir hunters chipped off many pieces.

The meteorite was more recently moved to a spot on the Randolph County Courthouse lawn (the 1940, art-deco building adjacent to the town square, not the 1872 “old courthouse” in the center of the square). There it can be viewed today, surrounded by a wrought iron fence. The meteorite’s location is near the northeast corner of the courthouse lawn, at the bottom of the large stairway off Broadway Street.

Lewis deMun

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Pocahontas is located in deMun Township.  So, who was deMun (yes, he was a man, not a demon)?  He was a man of national and international importance who lived here in Randolph
County, yet many local residents are unfamiliar with him.

Lewis deMun was a French aristocrat (a Chevalier of France),  Born on his family’s sugar plantation in the French colony of Haiti, deMun was sent by his family to France for his education. While there, he became an aide to the FrenchQueen, Marie Antoinette.  Fleeing the French Revolution, he ended up in Washington D.C.  There he became the right hand man of Benjamin Latrobe–the architect of the U.S Capitol Building.  deMun oversaw the building of the first part of the Capitol–the west wing which houses the House of Representatives.  Later, he built the Baltimore Cathedral in that city.

While in the nation’s capital, deMun became a friend of Thomas Jefferson’s Vice President, Aaron Burr.  When Burr left office, he engaged in some questionable behavior in the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase territory.  History isn’t quite sure what Burr was up to.  Many think he was trying to create a new nation (with him as its leader) out of the territory and perhaps the Spanish territory that became Texas later.  Burr was tried for treason by the U.S., but he was acquitted.  deMun was apparently heavily involved in whatever Burr was up to.

Fearing prosecution for his involvement with Burr, deMun fled to the wilderness–to family land in what became Randolph County, Arkansas.  There were five large plantations owned by Frenchmen along the black River.  The deMun family owned hundreds of acres in what became south central Randolph County–the area where the Spring and Black rivers converge.

In 1813, deMun founded deMun Mills on the Mill Creek along the southern edge of what’s today the City of Pocahontas.  The Mills included a grist mill for grinding grain into flour–the first grist mill in what became Arkansas–and a saw mill.  The remains of deMun’s grist mill dam have been discovered in recent years, still in place after 202 years.

In 1815, Governor of Missouri Territory, William Clark, who made the expedition with Meriweather Lewis exploring U.S. Territory to the Pacific, appointed his friend, Lewis deMun, to head the commission to chose a county seat for the newly formed Lawrence County, Missouri Territory.  The new county consisted of what became 31 counties in Arkansas and 14 in Missouri. It extended east to west from the St. Francis River to west of what today is Razorback Stadium in Fayetteville.

deMun was appointed chief administrator of the new county as well.  He was also head of the militia in this huge territory. For the county seat, deMun chose his property along the Black River eight miles south of what became Pocahontas. He sold 220 acres of his property to Missouri Territory where the Town of Lawrence (renamed Davidsonville the next year) was created as the first planned town in what became Arkansas–a plated town of broad avenues, a public square, and where the first courthouse, U.S. Post Office, and Federal Land Office in Arkansas were established.
A few years later, Lewis deMun relocated permanently to Ste. Genevieve, Mo., where he and his brothers where leading citizens of that town and the nearby city of St. Louis.