"Rice Fever" Changes Landscape, History On Arkansas' Grand Prairie

By Jim Taylor, travel writer
Arkansas Tourism

STUTTGART -- Though trees are always in sight out on the Grand Prairie of east central Arkansas, more often than not the eyes can journey the distance to broad horizons. Likewise, visitors to the region can explore the prairie's historical horizons at various heritage sites.

Like other open flatlands, the Grand Prairie is a place where beauty emerges in transient and seasonal details: a wedge of snow geese flying through the fiery glory of a "big sky" sunset, the luminescent heads of mallard drakes amid tawny stubble in a flooded field, the bright spring green of emerging crops and the aerial ballet of the cropduster.

Almost absent, however, are the native tall grasses and wildflowers responsible for the region's name. Vanished are the once-plentiful prairie chickens, their habitat all but erased. Yet, such ecological losses are only part of the prairie's history.

The Grand Prairie covers much of two counties -- Arkansas and Prairie -- and small portions of western Monroe and eastern Lonoke Counties. It stretches some 70 miles north to south, averages 20 miles in width and is bounded by the bottomlands of four streams: the Arkansas and White Rivers, Bayou Meto and Wattensaw Bayou.

The prairie's existence in Arkansas remains an enigma. According to one theory, the prairies of the Midwest expanded eons ago when the climate became drier. When a wetter climate returned, Arkansas' trees regained their dominance, but not on the Grand Prairie.

The slightly elevated prairie had remained largely free of the recurring floods that had deposited deep, rich soils throughout most of eastern Arkansas. Underlain by a thick layer of clay all but impenetrable to both water and roots, the prairie's thin topsoils allowed only the grasses and wildflowers to thrive.

Trees did return along the prairie's streams and in isolated, low-lying areas that often consisted of hundreds of acres. Early settlers called such places "islands" and used them to navigate through the tall grasses.

Arkansas Post, the earliest permanent European settlement (1686) on the lower Mississippi River, had moved up the Arkansas River to higher ground and lay about three miles from the prairie's southern edge in 1819, when it became the first capital of Arkansas Territory.

That year, the naturalist Thomas Nuttall visited the Post and noted: "Amongst other kinds of grain, rice has been tried on a small scale, and found to answer every expectation." Nuttall saw in the prairie "an invaluable body of land," but 85 years would pass before rice would begin to reveal the accuracy of his assessment.

While the rest of eastern Arkansas was developing with lumbering and cotton farming as major economic activities, settlement on the Grand Prairie -- lacking in trees and with soil inhospitable to cotton -- lagged behind for most of the 19th Century.

Settlers along the streams bordering the prairie used it for grazing cattle and harvesting hay. Once railroads reached the area, the hay was marketed to stockyards as distant as Chicago.

The railroads also spurred new settlements soon after the Civil War, including the towns of Lonoke, Hazen and Carlisle along the route of the Little Rock and Memphis Railroad (later the Rock Island) through the prairie's northern reaches.

Still to emerge was the town that would become the prairie's unofficial capital, a town that shares the name -- though not the pronunciation -- of a prominent German city.

In 1878-79, Rev. George Adam Buerkle, born near Stuttgart, Germany, came from Ohio and settled with 27 other families on a large prairie tract he'd purchased. Buerkle dreamed of starting a German colony and a new Lutheran synod.

Built on the northern edge of present-day Stuttgart, Arkansas, Buerkle's home served as a church and social center until 1896. In 1880, it also became a post office, which Buerkle named "Stuttgart."

In 1882, a railroad was built nearby. Because trains were required by law to stop at post offices on their routes, Buerkle moved the post office to a small shack built beside the tracks and posted a "Stuttgart" sign. Thus began the town.

Stuttgart didn't grow much until Thomas H. Leslie moved there in 1887. He organized the area's first bank, built a railroad southward to Gillette and opened up the downtown by starting the Grand Prairie Real Estate Exchange. Robert Crockett, the oldest grandson of frontiersman Davy Crockett, became the town's first mayor after incorporation in 1889.

The German presence was evident in the town's early decades. A weekly all-German newspaper was published for more than 20 years, Lutheran church services were held in German and most stores had employees who could speak the language.

Numerous German descendants remain in Stuttgart, now a town of about 10,500 with a skyline belying its size -- a skyline born of a revolution that swept across the prairie, fulfilling the promise Nuttall had seen.

While early settlers thought the prairie worthless for farming since its soils weren't suited for cotton, the late 1800s brought an influx of newcomers from Midwestern states with broader agricultural backgrounds. They were drawn by the prospect of cheap land.

W.H. Fuller was an Ohio native who came to Arkansas by way of Nebraska in 1895. He purchased a farm just south of Carlisle. The next year, on a hunting trip to Louisiana, Fuller saw for the first time rice being grown. He discussed the process with the farmers and later wrote: "It convinced me we had a good rice country if we just had the water."

After his first rice crop failed in 1897, Fuller returned to Louisiana for four years, learning the basics of rice farming, including irrigation. In 1904, he grew what is generally considered Arkansas' first successful commercial rice crop near Hazen, producing 5,225 bushels on 70 acres.

While others were also experimenting with rice, it was Fuller's success that brought about the onset of "rice fever," with thousands upon thousands of Grand Prairie acres changing hands and being planted in rice. Within 40 years, the native prairie had all but vanished, Stuttgart's skyline of agricultural drying and storage facilities was rising and Arkansas was on its way to leading the U.S. in rice production.

Other changes would ensue as well. Until the coming of drying facilities, harvested rice was left to dry in the fields, drawing southward-bound waterfowl in great numbers to feed. The Prairie's underlying layer of clay eased the construction of reservoirs for irrigation and they became another attraction for the ducks and geese. While the prairie chickens were on the way out, the Grand Prairie was becoming a nationally known venue for hunting ducks.

Originally planted on the prairie in the 1920s to restore the region's soils, soybeans joined rice as a leading cash crop when new farm technologies appeared after World War II. Later still, new reservoirs were created for fish farming, which also became a major economic contributor.

Among the sites providing visitors opportunities to explore the Grand Prairie are two small tracts of native prairie vegetation. The Roth Prairie State Natural Area's 41 acres are located off South Buerkle Road just south of Stuttgart, while the Railroad Prairie State Natural Area, 14 miles long and up to 150 feet wide, is located along the old Rock Island right-of-way along U.S. 70 between Carlisle and Hazen. (For additional information, phone the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission at 501-324-9619.)

The Stuttgart Agricultural Museum, located at 921 East Fourth Street, is an outstanding place to explore the Grand Prairie's human heritage. The museum’s extensive collection of prairie tools spans the history and crops of the region, from plows used to bust the virgin prairie's sod and reap its hay in the 19th Century to the advent of the modern tractors and combines that made obsolete the displayed steam traction engines, binders and threshers used in early rice harvests.

The museum has a wing devoted to the region's waterfowl and hunting heritage as well as a general wildlife diorama. Businesses such as were found in Stuttgart's early years have been re-created, including a mercantile store, a doctor's office, a photography studio, a toy store, a millinery and a post office. Among the museum's cultural exhibits are dolls, farm toys, crafts, household and kitchen items, clothes, quilts, photographs of early settlers and many other items.

Authentically furnished buildings located on the museum's grounds include a one-room prairie school house moved to its present site, a re-created prairie home and a reproduction (two-thirds scale) of Stuttgart's first Lutheran church.

The museum is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays and 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. on Sundays. It is closed on Mondays, legal holidays and Easter. Admission is free, with donations accepted. (For more information, phone 870-673-7001.)

The Stuttgart Area Chamber of Commerce at 507 South Main provides information on the town's lodging, restaurants and other attractions, which include area hunting lodges and resorts and guided waterfowl hunts. Visitor information can be requested from the chamber by e-mail at chamber@stuttgartarkansas.com, by phone at 870-673-1602 or by mail at P.O. Box 932, Stuttgart AR 72160.

Located a mile south of Lonoke on U.S. 70, the Joe Hogan State Fish Hatchery allows visitors to see how fish are raised on the Grand Prairie. Operated by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, it is the nation's largest state-owned, warm-water fish hatchery. The hatchery's open ponds offer a chance, improved with binoculars and spotting scopes, to observe the area's waterfowl in the wild.

The hatchery's visitors center, containing exhibits on Arkansas' fish and wildlife, is open from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. daily. (For more information, phone the hatchery at 870-676-6963.)

Other sites of interest in Lonoke include the restored 1912 Rock Island Railroad Depot, which now houses the offices of the Lonoke Area Chamber of Commerce, and the 1928 Lonoke County Courthouse. Both are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. For more information on the Lonoke area, contact the chamber at 501-676-4399.