In T.S. Eliot's iconic poem "The Waste Land," April is the cruelest month. In Arkansas, even with the balm of air conditioning, the cruelest month is often August. Our summer's fiery furnace keeps pumping out the heat, while cooler autumn weather seems a distant fantasy.
OPINION | REX NELSON: A history of hospitality
by
Rex Nelson
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Today at 1:47 a.m.
By the 1930s, the era known as the Big Cut which had begun in the 1880s as northern-owned companies moved into Arkansas to harvest virgin timber was ending. In the pine-covered hills of southwest Arkansas, that meant a loss of jobs.
Montgomery County had a population of 12,455 in the 1910 census. By the 1960 census, that number had dropped to 5,370. The closure of sawmills and the onset of the Great Depression led to thousands of people moving out of the area. It took the construction of Lake Ouachita to finally turn things around.