Times Past is here!
Whether we proudly count our family’s generations here or recently adopted these rugged old hills as our home, we Ozark Countians love our county’s history. That’s why the Times Past column is one of the most popular regular features in each week’s Ozark County Times.
In this year’s Times Past magazine, we’ve combined clippings from Ozark County newspapers dating from the 1880s with appealing historical photos such as those commemorating a 1913 play, “The Honor of a Cowboy,” that Gainesville’s young people performed down at the creek. Other photos share the life of a young World War I soldier boy at his homecoming dinner and then, years later, with his children on a swinging bridge, and finally holding a grandchild on his knee in the general store he owned at Hammond.
One Times Past story quotes the editor of the Gainesville New Era newspaper as he describes his 1882 visit to Mountain Home, Arkansas, a town that impressed him with one especially remarkable quality that, he said, “will not be refuted by a single lady in the Union and by very few married ladies.” (Read the story on page 18 in Times Past magazine to find out what it is.)
Some of Ozark County’s many legends and heroes are briefly featured: songwriters and generals, fisherfolk and storekeepers. A 1920s baptizing in the Little North Fork of the White River is pictured, along with a portrait of a barefoot child feeding a sow in a creekbed while it feeds its piglets.
The 2020 edition of Times Past magazine is packed full of interesting glimpses of Ozark County history, told through tantalizing clippings selected from 140 years of Ozark County newspapers highlighted with intriguing photos contributed by Ozark Countians past and present who wanted to make sure the colorful stories of these hills and hollers are preserved.
We hope you enjoy this year’s journey back through the decades to visit the people, places and events that made Ozark County’s “times past” so special.
The magazine is free and is available at the Ozark County Times office or wherever the Times is sold.
Need one mailed to you?
We can mail a copy of Times Past magazine to you for $5. For more information, call 417-679-4641 or email regina@ozarkcountytimes.com.