The Battle for the Buffalo River: The Story of America's First National River

6. The Dry Buffalo

S I X THE DRY BUFFALO The first important event of 1963 was the organization of a chapter of the Ozark Society in Little Rock. As has been mentioned, we had met on a get-acquainted . basis in Bill Apple's office, and H. Charles Johnston, Jr., had taken the lead of the Little Rock people. Evangeline Archer and I drove down to Little Rock on February 12, 1963, for the occasion, which was held in Johnston's place of business, the lobby of the First Federal Savings and Loan Association at 312 Louisiana Street. The evening meeting was well attended by the new members of the Society, recently recruited by Charley Johnston, and by a goodly number of folks who paid their dues that night. In addition to the program we had brought along the provisional map that we (not the National Park Service) had prepared. It was three by four feet and was displayed on a table in the center of the room. The proposed park area was over four hundred thousand acres. After the meeting was well under way, we had some unanticipated and not exactly welcome guests: Jim Tudor, L. R. Winners, and Gib Walsh. Exactly how they knew of the meeting we weren't sure. We, of course, knew who they were from our experience at the hearing. We kept our cool and proceeded with the business at hand, which was better than what they did after they got a good look at the map. After their initial outburst over actually seeing the size of that "land grab" they subsided enough to permit us to proceed. They left before the party was over, but it would not be the last time that they would crash one of our affairs. Throughout the long, drawn-out contest over the river, they never responded to our reminder that the Corps of Engineers required land, lots of it, federally acquired, and totally committed to inundation, with no possibility for inholdings , as in national parks or forests. Before it was over, over five hundred thousand acres of Arkansas's good bottomland would be permanently under water, put there by the BRIA's (they-can-do-no-wrong) Corps of Engineers. 125 S I X THE DRY BUFFALO The first important event of 1963 was the organization of a chapter of the Ozark Society in Little Rock. As has been mentioned, we had met on a get-acquainted basis in Bill Apple's office, and H. Charles Johnston, Jr., had taken the lead of the Little Rock people. Evangeline Archer and I drove down to Little Rock on February 12, 1963, for the occasion, which was held in Johnston's place of business, the lobby of the First Federal Savings and Loan Association at 312 Louisiana Street. The evening meeting was well attended by the new members of the Society, recently recruited by Charley Johnston, and by a goodly number of folks who paid their dues that night. In addition to the program we had brought along the provisional map that we (not the National Park Service) had prepared. It was three by four feet and was displayed on a table in the center of the room. The proposed park area was over four hundred thousand acres. After the meeting was well under way, we had some unanticipated and not exactly welcome guests: Jim Tudor, L. R. Winners, and Gib Walsh. Exactly how they knew of the meeting we weren't sure. We, of course, knew who they were from our experience at the hearing. We kept our cool and proceeded with the business at hand, which was better than what they did after they got a good look at the map. After their initial outburst over actually seeing the size of that "land grab" they subsided enough to permit us to proceed. They left before the party was over, but it would not be the last time that they would crash one of our affairs. Throughout the long, drawn-out contest over the river, they never responded to our reminder that the Corps of Engineers required land, lots of it, federally acquired, and totally committed to inundation, with no possibility for inholdings , as in national parks or forests. Before it was over, over five hundred thousand acres of Arkansas's good bottomland would be permanently under water, put there by the BRIA's (they-can-do-no-wrong) Corps of Engineers. 125 John Heuston reported the meeting in the Arkansas...