The Unfinished Story of North Howard County by Naida TyndallReview by: Russell P. BakerThe Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 42, No. 4 (Winter, 1983), pp. 373-374Published by: Arkansas Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40020782 .

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BOOK REVIEWS 373

a wide range of goods and services at reduced prices - groceries, milk

products, coal, tobacco products, hardware, and life and fire insurance. In his chapter, "Farmers' Railroads," the author relates how farmers,

giving up on the radical approach of public ownership of railroads and of the feckless state railroad-commission idea, embarked upon still a third idea of reform, a program of building and operating their own railroads. Many of these bootstrap projects, Grant says, never got beyond the talking stage; a few got to the grading and track-laying stage but never turned a wheel, some of them to be gobbled up and completed by giant, established railroad companies; though one lone project, the Devils Lake and Northern Railway in North Dakota, triumphed. It did so because it had the backing of two wealthy farmers seeking a depend- able outlet for their large wheat crops, built through a developed farm area, and gained the friendly support of the Great Northern Railroad owner, James J. Hill, who, not surprisingly, soon came to dominate the DL&N as a branch of his own road.

The final self-help scheme, the "Intentional Communities," deals with several Utopian colonies founded in the aftermath of the 1893 panic. They all ended in failure, the one Arkansas colony, "Maple," near Berry- ville, lasting only a year and moving to Kansas to merge with "Freedom"

colony, which also failed.

University of Arkansas Walter L. Brown

The Unfinished Story of North Howard County. Compiled by students of Umpire High School, Naida Tyndall, and countless others, 1971- 1981. (Umpire, Ark.: North Howard County Youth Group, 1982.

Pp. 368. Foreword, prologue, maps, illustrations, and index. $21.00.)

Well written local histories are hard to come by in Arkansas, and yet they are one of the research resources most widely sought after by the

public today. This book could well serve as a model for researching and

writing an outstanding community history. It all began in 1971 when, prompted by their study of Arkansas history, several ninth grade stu- dents at Umpire, a small community in northern Howard County, developed an interest in the history of their area.

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374 ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

They set for themselves the task of collecting information from census records, county records, family histories, and newspaper files.

They conducted oral history interviews and collected old photographs. They enlisted the aid of almost the entire community and organized the North Howard County Youth Group for Historical Research.

This project was completed in 1981. It was edited by Naida Tyndall, a former teacher at Umpire School. This excellent work begins with a short history of western Arkansas and then presents the reader with histories of each of the communities in northern Howard County. This is followed by a section on family history and genealogy and concludes with a chapter entitled "Bits and Pieces." A complete index makes it an even more valuable research tool than it might have been. Lavish use of historic and modern photographs also contribute to the appeal of this work. It is hoped that it is but the forerunner of a whole series of good, readable Arkansas local histories.

Arkansas History Commission Russell P. Baker

Fayetteville: A Pictorial History. By Kent R. Brown. (Norfolk and Vir-

ginia Beach: Donning Co., 1982. Pp. 208. Foreword, preface, bibliog- raphy, illustrations, and index. $29.95.)

Arranged in seven chapters and organized chronologically, with a brief narrative history introducing each chapter, this book offers the readers both a history of Fayetteville and a fine collection of pictures illustrative of her growth from an Ozark frontier village to a modern center of government, business, medicine, and higher education.

The town was founded in 1828 as the seat of government of a brand new Washington County, and by the time of the Civil War was the hub of a network of roads that connected it with Missouri, Kansas, and Indian Territory, and with neighboring towns in Arkansas. It was the site of a United States Land Office, a branch of the Bank of the State of Arkansas (1837-1843), a stop on the Butterfield Stage Line (18584861), an office of the Missouri and Western Telegraph Company after 1860, of several academies, of the Arkansas Industrial University (University of Arkansas) after 1871, and of a station on the St. Louis and San Fran- cisco Railroad (Frisco), after 1881.

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