6. Descriptions of the Collections


Over the course of the project, the University of Arizona Library, in cooperation with other libraries in
the state, will develop a comprehensive bibliography of published materials important to the study of
agriculture. and rural life in Arizona and Southwest. The project will employ a four-person scholarly
review panel to rank titles according to their priority as research resources for humanities studies, and
target the most important 25% of a universe of approximately 4,000 volumes to be preserved in a
subsequent project. Details of the Library's project staffing and costs are found in Section 5.1 of the
proposal's Plan of Work.


6.2 ARKANSAS


The recorded history of a European presence in Arkansas dates to the Spanish expedition of Hernando
de Soto, who crossed the Mississippi River and entered what is now Arkansas in 1541. Reports by the
commanders at Arkansas Post, one of the earliest settlements in Arkansas, indicate that there was never a
substantial agricultural class in the region, even in what might be loosely defined as the more populous
areas. Morris S. Arnold, in his social and cultural history of the state entitled Colonial Arkansas, 1686-
1804, states: "It is safe to conclude that there were never more than eight or ten real farmers at any one
time at the Post in the colonial period.... Although the state of the agricultural art, and the number of
people engaged in it, certainly increased during the last decade of the eighteenth century, John Treat,
writing from the Post in 1805, notes even at that late date that 'agriculture here is yet in its infancy....'"

In 1803 Arkansas became a part of the territory of the United States as the "District of Arkansas" within
the territory of Louisiana. In 1812 the District became part of the Missouri Territory, where it remained
until 1819 when Arkansas became a separate Territory. Military roads were among the important
projects undertaken by the territorial government. The road from Memphis to Little Rock opened in
1828. By 1836, the year that Arkansas became a state, military roads crossed from north to south and
east to west. Coupled with waterways that included the Mississippi and Arkansas rivers, these
thoroughfares enabled early settlers--primarily from Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Georgia, and
Virginia--to pour into Arkansas in search of new homes.

Governor Archibald Yell, well aware of the importance of the development of agriculture, requested the
state legislature to appropriate funds for scientific agricultural research in 1842. However, it was not until
1871 that any formal educational institution was established to actively promote agricultural research. In
that year Arkansas Industrial University, which became the University of Arkansas in 1899, was created
under the auspices of the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862. Agricultural science was among those courses
first offered by the University. However, it was eventually abandoned. The campus at Fayetteville,
located in the far northwest corner of the state, was too removed from the eastern and southern parts of
the state where cotton, the principal cash crop, was cultivated.

The geographic area of Arkansas is roughly rectangular in form--250 miles from north to south and 225
miles from east to west. With a total surface area of 53,335 square miles, it is the smallest state west of the
Mississippi, but roughly the size of Pennsylvania and New Jersey combined. If an imaginary line were
drawn from the northeast corner to the southwest corer diagonally across Arkansas, it would divide the
state into nearly equal parts. Roughly, the half of the state to the north and west is highlands and includes
the Ozark and Ouachita mountain ranges. Early farmers in the highlands eked out a living on eroded hill
tracts, raising corn, hogs, and cattle, while supplementing their income by working in coal mines or
sawmills. The half of the state to the south and east consists of river bottoms and low-lying plains. It
includes a broad belt of bottom lands, from 50 to 100 miles wide, along the Mississippi River stretching
from the Missouri line to the Louisiana line. This land, where cotton was king, is among the richest soil
in the country.