Arkansas
Arkansas is a state in the southern region of the United States, home to over 3 million people as of 2018. Its name is of Siouan derivation from the language of the Osage denoting their related kin, the Quapaw Indians; the state's diverse geography ranges from the mountainous regions of the Ozark and the Ouachita Mountains, which make up the U. S. Interior Highlands, to the densely forested land in the south known as the Arkansas Timberlands, to the eastern lowlands along the Mississippi River and the Arkansas Delta. Arkansas is the 33rd most populous of the 50 United States; the capital and most populous city is Little Rock, located in the central portion of the state, a hub for transportation, business and government. The northwestern corner of the state, such as the Fayetteville–Springdale–Rogers Metropolitan Area and Fort Smith metropolitan area, is a population and economic center; the largest city in the state's eastern part is Jonesboro. The largest city in the state's southeastern part is Pine Bluff.
The Territory of Arkansas was admitted to the Union as the 25th state on June 15, 1836. In 1861, Arkansas withdrew from the United States and joined the Confederate States of America during the Civil War. On returning to the Union in 1868, the state continued to suffer due to its earlier reliance on slavery and the plantation economy, causing the state to fall behind economically and socially. White rural interests continued to dominate the state's politics until the civil rights movement. Arkansas began to diversify its economy following World War II and relies on its service industry, poultry, tourism and rice; the culture of Arkansas is observable in museums, novels, television shows and athletic venues across the state. People such as politician and educational advocate William Fulbright; the name Arkansas was applied to the Arkansas River and derives from a French term, the plural term for Quapaws, a Dhegiha Siouan-speaking Native American people who settled in Arkansas around the 13th century.
This comes from an Algonquian term, /akansa/, for the Quapaws, is also the root term for Kansas. The name has been spelled in a variety of fashions. In 1881, the pronunciation of Arkansas with the final "s" being silent was made official by an act of the state legislature after a dispute arose between Arkansas's two U. S. senators as one favored the pronunciation as AR-kən-saw while the other favored ar-KAN-zəs. In 2007, the state legislature passed a non-binding resolution declaring that the possessive form of the state's name is Arkansas's, followed by the state government. Arkansas borders Louisiana to the south, Texas to the southwest, Oklahoma to the west, Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east; the United States Census Bureau classifies Arkansas as a southern state, sub-categorized among the West South Central States. The Mississippi River forms most of Arkansas's eastern border, except in Clay and Greene, counties where the St. Francis River forms the western boundary of the Missouri Bootheel, in many places where the channel of the Mississippi has meandered from its original 1836 course.
Arkansas can be split into two halves, the highlands in the northwest half and the lowlands of the southeastern half. The highlands are part of the Southern Interior Highlands, including The Ozarks and the Ouachita Mountains; the southern lowlands include the Arkansas Delta. This dual split can yield to general regions named northwest, northeast, southeast, or central Arkansas; these directionally named regions are broad and not defined along county lines. Arkansas has seven distinct natural regions: the Ozark Mountains, Ouachita Mountains, Arkansas River Valley, Gulf Coastal Plain, Crowley's Ridge, the Arkansas Delta, with Central Arkansas sometimes included as a blend of multiple regions; the southeastern part of Arkansas along the Mississippi Alluvial Plain is sometimes called the Arkansas Delta. This region is a flat landscape of rich alluvial soils formed by repeated flooding of the adjacent Mississippi. Farther away from the river, in the southeast portion of the state, the Grand Prairie consists of a more undulating landscape.
Both are fertile agricultural areas. The Delta region is bisected by a geological formation known as Crowley's Ridge. A narrow band of rolling hills, Crowley's Ridge rises from 250 to 500 feet above the surrounding alluvial plain and underlies many of the major towns of eastern Arkansas. Northwest Arkansas is part of the Ozark Plateau including the Ozark Mountains, to the south are the Ouachita Mountains, these regions are divided by the Arkansas River; these mountain ranges are part of the U. S. Interior Highlands region, the only major mountainous region between the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachian Mountains; the highest point in the state is Mount Magazine in the Ouachita Mountains, which rises to 2,753 feet above sea level. Arkansas has many rivers and reservoirs within or along its borders. Major tributaries of the Mississippi River include the Arkansas River, the White River, the St. Francis River; the Arkansas is fed by the Mulberry River and the Fou
Marked Tree, Arkansas
Marked Tree is a city in Poinsett County, Arkansas United States, along the St. Francis River, at the mouth of the Little River; the population was 2,800 at the 2000 census. It is included in Arkansas Metropolitan Statistical Area. Geologically, the area marks the southern end of the New Madrid Fault; the city got its name from a tree located on the bank of the St. Francis River until 1890, blazed to mark a section of the river where Indians could walk about 120 yards across land to reach the Little River and avoid paddling 12 mi upstream. Marked Tree has been noted on lists of unusual place names. Marked Tree is located at 35°31′48″N 90°25′3″W. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 2.3 square miles, of which 2.3 square miles is land and 0.04 square miles is water Fannie Lewis, Cleveland Ohio's longest serving councilwoman, was from Marked Tree and attended CarverWill "BigTymer" Johnson is a YouTuber with over 750,000 subscribers from Marked Tree. He is an active member of the Esports organization OpTic Gaming.
Before becoming content creator on YouTube, he was the most accomplished professional Call of Duty player before his retirement from competition in the end of 2013. As of the census of 2000, there were 2,800 people, 1,126 households, 731 families residing in the city; the population density was 1,208.8 people per square mile. There were 1,234 housing units at an average density of 532.7 per square mile. The racial makeup of the city was 50.36% White, 47.07% Black or African American, 0.11% Native American, 0.29% Asian, 1.25% from other races, 0.93% from two or more races. 2.07% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. There were 1,126 households out of which 29.7% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 41.9% were married couples living together, 19.4% had a female householder with no husband present, 35.0% were non-families. 31.9% of all households were made up of individuals and 14.5% had someone living alone, 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.39 and the average family size was 3.04.
In the city, the population was spread out with 26.5% under the age of 18, 8.4% from 18 to 24, 24.1% from 25 to 44, 21.9% from 45 to 64, 19.1% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 38 years. For every 100 females, there were 87.4 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 79.0 males. The median income for a household in the city was $22,591, the median income for a family was $30,197. Males had a median income of $26,305 versus $19,602 for females; the per capita income for the city was $11,867. About 25.6% of families and 32.3% of the population were below the poverty line, including 47.4% of those under age 18 and 28.0% of those age 65 or over. Public education for early childhood and secondary school students is provided by the Marked Tree School District; until 1966, a dual system of education was provided with one set of schools for white children, a different set for blacks. The first school for blacks was built in 1938, was named George Washington Carver from 1952 until it was closed in 1966.
As of 2018, the Marked Tree School District consists of the following schools: Marked Tree Elementary School, serving prekindergarten through grade 6th Marked Tree High School, serving grades 7 through 12. Crittenden County Open Portal Website https://web.archive.org/web/20070114112944/http://www.markedtreearkansas.org/index.htm
Stouts Creek
Stouts Creek is a stream in Iron and Madison counties in the U. S. state of Missouri. The stream headwaters lie just northwest of Taum Sauk Mountain and it flows north east to cross under Missouri Route 21 between Ironton and Arcadia, it continues east passing under past Lake Killarney. It flows into Madison County to its confluence with the St. Francis River east of Roselle. Stouts Creek has the name of a pioneer citizen. List of rivers of Missouri
Missouri
Missouri is a state in the Midwestern United States. With over six million residents, it is the 18th-most populous state of the Union; the largest urban areas are St. Louis, Kansas City and Columbia; the state is the 21st-most extensive in area. In the South are the Ozarks, a forested highland, providing timber and recreation; the Missouri River, after which the state is named, flows through the center of the state into the Mississippi River, which makes up Missouri's eastern border. Humans have inhabited the land now known as Missouri for at least 12,000 years; the Mississippian culture built mounds, before declining in the 14th century. When European explorers arrived in the 17th century they encountered the Osage and Missouria nations; the French established Louisiana, a part of New France, founded Ste. Genevieve in 1735 and St. Louis in 1764. After a brief period of Spanish rule, the United States acquired the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Americans from the Upland South, including enslaved African Americans, rushed into the new Missouri Territory.
Missouri was admitted as a slave state as part of the Missouri Compromise. Many from Virginia and Tennessee settled in the Boonslick area of Mid-Missouri. Soon after, heavy German immigration formed the Missouri Rhineland. Missouri played a central role in the westward expansion of the United States, as memorialized by the Gateway Arch; the Pony Express, Oregon Trail, Santa Fe Trail, California Trail all began in Missouri. As a border state, Missouri's role in the American Civil War was complex and there were many conflicts within. After the war, both Greater St. Louis and the Kansas City metropolitan area became centers of industrialization and business. Today, the state is divided into the independent city of St. Louis. Missouri's culture blends elements from Southern United States; the musical styles of ragtime, Kansas City jazz, St. Louis Blues developed in Missouri; the well-known Kansas City-style barbecue, lesser-known St. Louis-style barbecue, can be found across the state and beyond. Missouri is a major center of beer brewing.
Missouri wine is produced in Ozarks. Missouri's alcohol laws are among the most permissive in the United States. Outside of the state's major cities, popular tourist destinations include the Lake of the Ozarks, Table Rock Lake, Branson. Well-known Missourians include U. S. President Harry S. Truman, Mark Twain, Walt Disney, Chuck Berry, Nelly; some of the largest companies based in the state include Cerner, Express Scripts, Emerson Electric, Edward Jones, H&R Block, Wells Fargo Advisors, O'Reilly Auto Parts. Missouri has been called the "Mother of the West" and the "Cave State"; the state is named for the Missouri River, named after the indigenous Missouri Indians, a Siouan-language tribe. It is said that they were called the ouemessourita, meaning "those who have dugout canoes", by the Miami-Illinois language speakers; this appears to be folk etymology—the Illinois spoke an Algonquian language and the closest approximation that can be made in that of their close neighbors, the Ojibwe, is "You Ought to Go Downriver & Visit Those People."
This would be an odd occurrence, as the French who first explored and attempted to settle the Mississippi River got their translations during that time accurate giving things French names that were exact translations of the native tongue. Assuming Missouri were deriving from the Siouan language, it would translate as "It connects to the side of it," in reference to the river itself; this is not likely either, as this would be coming out as "Maya Sunni" Most though, the name Missouri comes from Chiwere, a Siouan language spoken by people who resided in the modern day states of Wisconsin, South Dakota, Missouri & Nebraska. The name "Missouri" has several different pronunciations among its present-day natives, the two most common being and. Further pronunciations exist in Missouri or elsewhere in the United States, involving the realization of the first syllable as either or. Any combination of these phonetic realizations may be observed coming from speakers of American English; the linguistic history was treated definitively by Donald M. Lance, who acknowledged that the question is sociologically complex, but that no pronunciation could be declared "correct", nor could any be defined as native or outsider, rural or urban, southern or northern, educated or otherwise.
Politicians employ multiple pronunciations during a single speech, to appeal to a greater number of listeners. Informal respellings of the state's name, such as "Missour-ee" or "Missour-uh", are used informally to phonetically distinguish pronunciations. There is no official state nickname. However, Missouri's unofficial nickname is the "Show Me State"; this phrase has several origins. One is popularly ascribed to a speech by Congressman Willard Vandiver in 1899, who declared that "I come from a state that raises corn and cotton and Democrats, frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I'm from Missouri, you have got to show me." This is in keeping with the saying "I'm from Missouri" which means "I'm skeptical of the matter and not convinced." However, according to researchers, the phrase "show me" was in use
St. Francois Mountains
The St. Francois Mountains in southeast Missouri are a mountain range of Precambrian igneous mountains rising over the Ozark Plateau; this range is one of the oldest exposures of igneous rock in North America. The name of the range is spelled out as Saint Francois Mountains in official GNIS sources, but it is sometimes misspelled in use as St. Francis Mountains to match the anglicized pronunciation of both the range and St. Francois County; the name of the range derives from the St. Francis River, which originates in the St. Francois Mountains; the origin of the river's name, spelled "Francois" in the French manner, is unclear. The area, as part of the Louisiana district of New France, is near some of the earliest French settlements in Missouri, where many French place names survive; some sources conjecture that the name honors St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of the Franciscan order, but none of the region's early explorers were Franciscans. Others propose that Jacques Marquette, a French Jesuit, named the river when he explored its mouth in present-day Arkansas in 1673.
Before his voyage down the Mississippi River, Marquette had spent some time at the mission of St. Francois Xavier, named for the Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier; the spelling of the river's name shifted from "Francois" to "Francis" in the early 20th century. The St. Francois Mountains were formed by intrusive activity 1.485 billion years ago. By comparison, the Appalachians started forming about 460 million years ago, the Rockies a mere 140 million years ago; when the Appalachians started forming, the St. Francois range was twice as old as the Appalachians are today; the intrusive rocks of the area are composed of three types: subvolcanic massifs, ring intrusions and central plutons. The subvolcanic intrusives are similar in geochemistry to the associated rhyolite volcanics, which they intrude, they are granite with granophyric quartz, perthitic potassium feldspar and magnetite. They are intrusive into the rhyolites with development of fine grained granophyre at the contact. At depth they exhibit a coarse-grained rapakivi texture.
The subvolcanic granites are the most widespread igneous rocks and were thought to have been covered with extensive volcanics that have been removed by erosion. The ring intrusives are high silica bodies which were intruded along ring faults associated with caldera collapse. Rock types include trachyandesite, trachyte and amphibole - biotite granite, they are porphyritic. The central plutons are evolved two mica granites. Distinctive accessory minerals include: fluorite, apatite, allanite and cassiterite, they are enriched in tin, beryllium, barium, niobium, uranium and fluorine and are referred to as "tin granites'. Their circular to oval shape in plan view is consistent with emplacement within resurgent calderas; the exposed igneous rocks of the St. Francois are surrounded at depth by the younger distributed igneous Spavinaw terrane; the Spavinaw rocks are intersected in drill core across southern Missouri, southern Illinois, northern Arkansas, southern Kansas and northeastern Oklahoma. The Spavinaw rocks occur in outcrop only near Oklahoma.
The rhyolites and ash flow tuffs of the Spavinaw are identical to the volcanics of the St. Francois mountains; the Saint Francois Mountains were formed by igneous activity, whereas most of the surrounding Ozarks are developed on Paleozoic sedimentary rocks as a dissected plateau. The localized vertical relief was caused by erosion following uplift during the Pennsylvanian and Permian periods produced by the Ouachita orogeny to the south. Elevations and strata dips in the Ozark structural dome radiate downward and outward away from the Saint Francois mountains; these ancient mountains may be the only area in the Midwestern United States never to have been submerged, existing as an island archipelago in the Paleozoic seas. Fossilized coral, the remains of ancient reefs, can be found among the rocks around the flanks of the mountains; these ancient reef complexes formed the localizing structures for the mineralizing fluids that resulted in the rich ore deposits of the area. The igneous rocks of the Saint Francois Mts. are interpreted to be a series of caldera complexes, similar in scale to the Yellowstone Caldera complex.
However, it is debated whether the igneous activity was related to a hotspot, like Yellowstone, or whether it was related to an ancient subduction zone. The St. Francois Mountains are the center of the Lead Belt, a mining region yielding lead, baryte, silver, manganese and nickel ores. Historic Mine La Motte near Fredericktown was the site of lead mining activity by the French as early as 1720; the area today accounts for over 90% of primary lead production in the United States. Granite has been commercially quarried since 1869 in the vicinity of Elephant Rocks State Park, a tor with huge weathered granite boulders; the red architectural granite quarried in the area has been used in buildings in St. Louis and other areas in the country, it is marketed as Missouri Red monument stone. Hughes Mountain contains a good example of columnar jointing in igneous rhyolite, the same process that formed Devils Tower in Wyoming and the Giant's Causeway in Ireland; the columnar jointing in this area is called the Devil's Honeycomb.
Mountains in this range include. The elevations range from 500 to 1,772 feet (152 to 540 met
Elephant Rocks State Park
Elephant Rocks State Park is a state-owned geologic reserve and public recreation area encompassing an outcropping of Precambrian granite in the Saint Francois Mountains in the U. S. state of Missouri. The state park is named for a string of large granite boulders which resemble a train of pink circus elephants; the park was created following the donation of the land to the state in 1967 by geologist John Stafford. The park is used for picnicking, rock climbing, trail exploration, it is managed by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. The Elephant Rocks, for which Elephant Rocks State Park is named, is a pile of residual boulders of weathered Graniteville Granite, it is a medium- to coarse-grained, muscovite-biotite alkali granite that, on the average, consists of 55 percent alkali feldspar, 40 percent quartz, less than 5 percent mafic minerals. The Graniteville Granite is a pluton formed 1.4 billion years ago in the Proterozoic by the cooling of magma that intruded into the volcanic strata and country rock associated with a collapsed caldera.
Nearly vertical fractures formed in the stone as it cooled, uplift of the granite enhanced the fracturing. The overlying strata were removed through erosion, exposing the granite pluton. Before it was exposed, groundwater weathered the granite along fracture joints creating corestones of solid altered granite embedded within friable saprolite. Surface runoff eroded the saprolite that once surrounded the corestones and left, what are now locally called elephant rocks as boulders perched on the ground surface; the reddish or pink granite has been quarried in this area since 1869, two abandoned granite quarries are within the park. These and others nearby have provided red architectural granite for buildings in states from Massachusetts to California, but most in St. Louis, including stone for St. Louis City Hall and the piers of the Eads Bridge. Stones unsuitable for architectural use were made into shoebox-sized paving stones that were used on the streets of St. Louis as well as on its wharf on the Mississippi River.
Stone quarried in the area is used for mortuary monuments and is known commercially as Missouri Red monument stone. A one-mile circular interpretive trail in the Elephant Rocks Natural Area, called the Braille Trail, is the first in Missouri state parks designed for visitors with visual and physical challenges. Spur trails off the main trail include one passing through "Fat Man's Squeeze," a narrow gap between two boulders that leads hikers to an abandoned quarry, another that goes through "The Maze," a 100-foot section of scattered boulders; the park's picnicking area includes ADA-compliant facilities. Elephant Rocks State Park Missouri Department of Natural Resources Elephant Rocks State Park Map Missouri Department of Natural Resources
Dam
A dam is a barrier that stops or restricts the flow of water or underground streams. Reservoirs created by dams not only suppress floods but provide water for activities such as irrigation, human consumption, industrial use and navigability. Hydropower is used in conjunction with dams to generate electricity. A dam can be used to collect water or for storage of water which can be evenly distributed between locations. Dams serve the primary purpose of retaining water, while other structures such as floodgates or levees are used to manage or prevent water flow into specific land regions; the earliest known dam is the Jawa Dam in Jordan, dating to 3,000 BC. The word dam can be traced back to Middle English, before that, from Middle Dutch, as seen in the names of many old cities; the first known appearance of dam occurs in 1165. However, there is one village, mentioned in 1120; the word seems to be related to the Greek word taphos, meaning "grave" or "grave hill". So the word should be understood as "dike from dug out earth".
The names of more than 40 places from the Middle Dutch era such as Amsterdam and Rotterdam bear testimony to the use of the word in Middle Dutch at that time. Early dam building took place in the Middle East. Dams were used to control the water level, for Mesopotamia's weather affected the Tigris and Euphrates rivers; the earliest known dam is the Jawa Dam in Jordan, 100 kilometres northeast of the capital Amman. This gravity dam featured an 9-metre-high and 1 m-wide stone wall, supported by a 50 m-wide earth rampart; the structure is dated to 3000 BC. The Ancient Egyptian Sadd-el-Kafara Dam at Wadi Al-Garawi, located about 25 km south of Cairo, was 102 m long at its base and 87 m wide; the structure was built around 2800 or 2600 BC as a diversion dam for flood control, but was destroyed by heavy rain during construction or shortly afterwards. During the Twelfth Dynasty in the 19th century BC, the Pharaohs Senosert III, Amenemhat III and Amenemhat IV dug a canal 16 km long linking the Fayum Depression to the Nile in Middle Egypt.
Two dams called Ha-Uar running east-west were built to retain water during the annual flood and release it to surrounding lands. The lake called "Mer-wer" or Lake Moeris is known today as Birket Qarun. By the mid-late third millennium BC, an intricate water-management system within Dholavira in modern-day India was built; the system included 16 reservoirs and various channels for collecting water and storing it. One of the engineering wonders of the ancient world was the Great Dam of Marib in Yemen. Initiated somewhere between 1750 and 1700 BC, it was made of packed earth – triangular in cross section, 580 m in length and 4 m high – running between two groups of rocks on either side, to which it was linked by substantial stonework. Repairs were carried out during various periods, most important around 750 BC, 250 years the dam height was increased to 7 m. After the end of the Kingdom of Saba, the dam fell under the control of the Ḥimyarites who undertook further improvements, creating a structure 14 m high, with five spillway channels, two masonry-reinforced sluices, a settling pond, a 1,000 m canal to a distribution tank.
These extensive works were not finalized until 325 AD and allowed the irrigation of 25,000 acres. Eflatun Pınar is a Hittite spring temple near Konya, Turkey, it is thought to be from the time of the Hittite empire between the 15th and 13th century BC. The Kallanai is constructed of unhewn stone, over 300 m long, 4.5 m high and 20 m wide, across the main stream of the Kaveri river in Tamil Nadu, South India. The basic structure dates to the 2nd century AD and is considered one of the oldest water-diversion or water-regulator structures in the world, still in use; the purpose of the dam was to divert the waters of the Kaveri across the fertile delta region for irrigation via canals. Du Jiang Yan is the oldest surviving irrigation system in China that included a dam that directed waterflow, it was finished in 251 BC. A large earthen dam, made by Sunshu Ao, the prime minister of Chu, flooded a valley in modern-day northern Anhui province that created an enormous irrigation reservoir, a reservoir, still present today.
Roman dam construction was characterized by "the Romans' ability to plan and organize engineering construction on a grand scale." Roman planners introduced the then-novel concept of large reservoir dams which could secure a permanent water supply for urban settlements over the dry season. Their pioneering use of water-proof hydraulic mortar and Roman concrete allowed for much larger dam structures than built, such as the Lake Homs Dam the largest water barrier to that date, the Harbaqa Dam, both in Roman Syria; the highest Roman dam was the Subiaco Dam near Rome. Roman engineers made routine use of ancient standard designs like embankment dams and masonry gravity dams. Apart from that, they displayed a high degree of inventiveness, introducing most of the other basic dam designs, unknown until then; these include arch-gravity dams, arch dams, buttress dams and multiple arch buttress dams, all of which were known and employed by the 2nd century AD. Roman workforces were the first to build dam bridges, such as the Bridge of Valerian in Iran
