Pendleton Bend US Army Corps Campground, Pendleton Bend, Arkansas; September 9-15, 2013

States we have camped in - not all of them this year

My bad! I haven't taken the time to find a wi-fi spot and get the last month plus of posts uploaded - I've been too busy enjoying the beautiful weather and scenery in Arkansas and Missouri.  I have put a place on the blog where you can enter your email to get a note when I've actually posted something. Soon I'll have cellular data I can use and I hope I'll be a little more current. It's just nice to be able to do nothing if I want to after 48 years of working. Between the two of us, we have worked more than 108 years toward our retirement, so please don't hold my current laziness against me.

Pendleton Bend Sign

Pendleton Bend Motel Office

Pendleton Bend is a tiny little town on the Arkansas River – 152 people and one old buzzard, the welcome sign proclaims – but Riceland Foods has a huge grain receiving and shipping facility there that is incredibly busy. Many of the trucks were farm specific. Our campground was down the little road just beyond the grain elevators and Rich counted 67 trucks waiting to load or unload on his way past. One of the park rangers said he was told by a   worker at Riceland that they had 350 trucks go through on Friday. Saturday afternoon we went through and I  counted around 100 trucks waiting to dump their grain or in the process of dumping.

Lots of trucks waiting

Riceland

Workers testing the load

The facility straddles both sides of the road and handles soy

beans, corn, and rice. There are large pipes that go overhead across over the road and are situated to pump the grain into large covered barges waiting on the river. Once filled the barges wait for the tugboat to push the barges out to the Mississippi River and its ultimate destination. One “tow”, a single tugboat and 15 barges, can haul

Truck being weighed?

See the truck tipped up on the ramp?

as much grain as 872 tractor trailers or 225 rail hopper cars. Right now, there are about a dozen barges full of grain and empty ones
awaiting their cargo.

Barge with grain being loaded

Arkansas is the largest producer of rice in the US and

Pipe loading a barge with grain

accounts for 48% of the rice on 1.3 million acres. Riceland is the world’s largest miller and marketer of rice and their Pendleton
facility can store 1.4 million bushels of grain. Not as much as the 3.6 million bushels the Chappell, Nebraska grain elevator, but far busier.

A crop of rice takes from three to six months to be ready to harvest and during the growing period, the rice will be under at least two inches of water. Once it is ready do harvest, the water is drained off the field. During the winter months, the rice farmers capture rainwater in the fields, creating resting and foraging habitat for migrating and wintering water fowl. 

Our site

Campground

One of the butterflies

Our campground is beautiful and, at this time of the week, quiet. Although there is no foliage to provide a buffer between sites, they are well-spaced and have lots of large trees all over the area. There is a lock and dam farther down the road, as we have seen at many other Corps parks, and they have their own tug boat and dredge barge to keep the waterway navigable. Although there are very few campers here, fishermen abound. There are also lots of butterflies and

Another butterfly

armadillos. There are 127 resident butterflies in Arkansas and June is the prime butterfly watching time here. Beth and I were at the animal refuge on Cedar Key in Florida one summer and we couldn’t walk without having butterflies brush against us. The butterflies here at this time of year aren’t that plentiful but there are enough to make it enjoyable to just sit and watch. We also saw red-headed woodpeckers, which used to be common when I was a kid but I haven’t seen any in years.

We visited the Arkansas Post National Monument, located on a point of land jutting out into the Post Bayou in the Mississippi Delta region of Arkansas. Flooding, erosion, an a natural change in the river’s course have altered the site of the old posts and town and while there were few physical signs of the actual trading post, forts, and other buildings, the museum and 20 minute film on the exploration and settlement helped give an idea of their importance.

A bit of history: From 1686 to 1803, the post bounced from French to

Flatboat

Spanish and back to French control. During this time, it served as a trading post and military post, and was moved back and forth along the river due to flooding, need to protect ships, and other strategic reasons. During much of this time the Quapaw Indians were allies to those at the post. 
 

Keelboat

During the Revolutionary War (in which Spain aided the colonies) a band of British partisans and Chickasaw Indians attacked the fort but were driven back. 1800 saw France back in control of the territory and in 1803, sold the territory to the U.S. The U.S. government  a trading post there in 1805 but couldn’t compete with private traders. By 1810, the population had grown to 500 mostly French with some African-American slaves and free people of color. During this time, hunting and trapping began to give way to a farming economy.

In 1819, Arkansas Post was named capital of the new Arkansas Territory, a newspaper was

Arkansas River at Arkansas Post

started, and log houses became more common. Only two years later, Little Rock became the capital, which caused the population to fall to 114 by 1830, giving the town a “forlorn and desolate appearance”. In spite of the Quapaw’s alliances with the post occupants, the U.S. forced the Quapaw to relocate in 1824. By 1830, Arkansas Post once again began to thrive because of the availability of prime farmland, slave labor, and transportation and became a major river port. By the 1840’s the boom subsided and by the mid 1860’s, the town declined.

Lake at Arkansas Post

In 1861, as the Civil War began, Arkansas joined the Confederacy. During the next two years, the area saw little war action as compared to other areas, but early in 1863, because of the threat the fort posed to Union supply lines, a large command of Union infantry along with a gunboat fleet converged on the post. With declining river traffic, increasing use of railroads, erosion which claimed parts of the town including the fort, the town never recovered from the shelling in one of the last and western-most battles of the Civil War.

This is another area we’ll probably stop at again, but now we’re off to Toad Suck Ferry, near Conway, Arkansas to meet up with some friends from Germany

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