A self-guided walking tour through Lawrence County’s Clover Bend Historical District will allow up-close looks at many of the old farm and school structures preserved on this 13-acre site, which is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Clover Bend Historical District Clover Bend, the oldest community in Lawrence County, has a long, interesting history. Named for unusually shaped bends in the Black River, it was settled by Frenchmen who farmed along the river in the early 19th century. A cotton plantation sprang up there in 1840, and the land passed through a series of owners — farmers all — for almost 100 years. From 1883 through 1909, fiction writer Alice French, known chiefly by her pen name Octave Thanet, spent her winters living and writing there in a three-story, 15-room Clover Bend home called Thanford. Her stories about the lives of Clover Bend’s sharecropping families gained her national acclaim, and she entertained many notables at Thanford, including Theodore Roosevelt.
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Arkansas Agriculture
In 1936, the United States government purchased a large portion of the Clover Bend Plantation, and during the first and second administrations of President Franklin Roosevelt, it was the site of a successful attempt to combat the socioeconomic problems of the Great Depression. The plantation was divided into 88 units averaging 45 acres each. Farmers received the land, a four- or five-room house, a barn, a poultry house and other outbuildings. They paid $200 a year on a 40-year mortgage while raising cotton, clover, vegetables, cattle, hogs and poultry. This allowed tenant farmers to break the cycle of borrowing against earnings on one crop to put in a new one. It was deemed the Farm Security Administration’s most successful project in Arkansas. At the core of this project was the local school, which the government built to provide educational