Excerpt from Let the River Be: A History of the Ozark's Buffalo River

This study began during the summer of 1974 when, as a graduate student, I prepared an inventory of historic buildings along the Buffalo River for the National Park Service. As I attempted to place farms and log cabins in their proper historical context, I discovered that all previous research in the Arkansas Ozarks was either too general or too specific. There was no comprehensive overview that studied the settlement and development of that particular highland valley. What started as a summer adventure, then, evolved into a rather extensive examination of the Buffalo River valley that became my doctoral dissertation.

There is something intriguing about rivers. Americans from Henry David Thoreau to Mark Twain have been drawn to them, have listened to them, have studied them. Rivers served as roads to the interior of the continent during the early periods of the nation's history and later attracted settlers and towns and commerce and industry. The chronicles of the Shenandoah, the Ohio, the Missouri, and the Mississippi are an integral part of the country's historical and cultural past. Their names evoke images of epic movements of a romantic period. And for every river of major import literally hundreds of tributaries echo similar stories of exploration and settlement. For every Ohio there was a Wabash; for every Missouri, a Platte; and for every Rio Grande, a Pecos. The Mississippi is fed by the Arkansas which is fed by the White which, in turn, is fed by the Buffalo. Each played a role in the westward movement; each represents a piece of the broad mosaic of western migration.

The story of the Buffalo is essentially one of people, highland people for the most part, and how they and their way of life were affected by the Ozark Plateau, by outside influences, and by their relative geographical isolation. Like their counterparts in the southern Appalachians, the inhabitants of the Arkansas Ozarks lived close to the earth in an existence that was distinguished by poor and limited arable soil, by an insularity imposed by the surrounding hills, and by an independence that was necessitated by both.

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