[latunafish]

feel free to tell "another loong tale" anytime, especially with pics! i enjoy them.

[Old Fossil]

Go back and look at Post #828 which shows the overgrown railroad cars. Those cars were from several rail lines but these two are the only ones open enough I could photo them. They are from the Union Pacific Railroad and the Missouri Pacific Railroad. Several years ago the MP was taken over by the Union Pacific.

[Old Fossil]

Antoine, Pike County - This is the last of the original commercial buildings still standing in town. The others that I'm familiar with, have met the bulldozer. One was a beautiful rock building across the street in front of the one in this photo, one was the city jail which I posted some time ago, and one was a plank store building that, I think, was built in the late 1800s and was once used as a movie set, the name I don't remember at this moment.

[latunafish]

fossil, had to get my map out on that one, i thought i had never been to pike county. turns out, i have been to gleenwood and played golf several times. beautiful golf course in the middle of nowhere!

[Old Fossil]

Originally Posted by latunafish

fossil, had to get my map out on that one, i thought i had never been to pike county. turns out, i have been to gleenwood and played golf several times. beautiful golf course in the middle of nowhere!

10/4 on the golf course/country club. They also have a large, nice looking (I haven't been in it) motel there. I have never figured that out .

[Old Fossil]

My friend Randall Houp and his wife took the Attached photos this past winter. He is writing a book about this railroad and has walked it's original length of 50+ miles taking detail photos of all bridges, trestles, and other interesting scenes, and has re-walked many segments of it to get additional photos. That is the case here where they walked the segment between Caddo Gap and Norman, which originally was named Womble. The railroad has had many names, and the ones I know about are; Gurdon and Ft. Smith (the original name), Missouri Pacific, Arkansas Midland, and Antoine Valley.

Over the past years I have posted many photos and stories about this rr, but it is now history because the rails were taken up a few years ago and it will not take long for Mother Nature to take it all back. I was over there last Monday and the brush is rapidly gaining a foot-hold.

These are photos of a large culvert under the Caddo Gap - Norman segment, and in one photo you can see the Caddo River, through the culvert, on the other side.

[Old Fossil]

East Pike County - One of the photos I call "road to nowhere" and the other "coming from nowhere". You can see a few red "dots" in the photos? They are buckeye blossoms.

Several years ago this road was a grown up old country road through a pine plantation that crossed a ridge top and creek that had the high probability of having Indian artifacts, so we searched the road over the hill and the creek bottom at the foot of the hill. Not only did we find Indian stuff but also pieces of broken china which dated to pre-civil war. With that incentive we searched the woods along the road and found the old house site and planned to go back later and do some shovel testing to see if we could find more diagnostic artifacts. It was a couple years before we got back and in the meantime the area had been logged and we could not find the house site. Last month we were back in the neighborhood and decided to again look for the house site. Well lo-and-behold it had been recently logged again and we did not find it. In the "coming from nowhere" photo is my archeologist buddy searching the road ruts and found more Indian stuff but no more china.

[Old Fossil]

East Pike County - The first photo shows the current modern house setting on the footprint of the log house in the second photo, and the third photo shows the road, that runs in front of the house, that has been in use since the early 1800s and continues in use today by hunters and people like me who are going back to look at the "land of our ancestors". I was born in the log house a very long time ago. The log house was a double crib with dog-trot with a fireplace on each end of the house. It had "lean-to" front and back porch's. Later, at an unknown date, a board kitchen was added at the back that was connected to the house by a covered walk/porch. During that time the kitchen was often separate from the main house because of the danger of fire.

The brother of my maternal great grandpa received a Homestead Patent on this 160 acres in 1893 which means he lived on the property prior to 1887 because the Homestead Act required the applicants to live on and improve the property for a minimum of five years before they could apply. From the homestead papers I have, it is unclear if he built the log house or it was already there when he moved there. The property was valued at $300 and he had to pay a $14 application fee.

Various members of my family owned the property from the beginning to about the mid 1950s. In the 1950s the property had three houses, a large barn, several farm outbuildings, and my paternal grandpa owned the property and was planning to move into the log house. It's another very long story I'll not get into, but one day a man whose parents and grandparents, also had lived in the area, came by and told grandpa that he owned a portion of the property because one of his ancestors had bought it in the distant past, and he wanted the Deed to it. [I know the portion he referred to and know for a fact it was never sold, but that's still another story] It ended up being a serious "cuss fight" and grandpa ran the man off. That night every building on the property burned at the same time.

[latunafish]

That story sure does give more meaning to the pictures ! Sounds a lot like my ancestors in northeast Mississippi.

[Dr. Clinton Willis]

Hello I need help I finding J. Randall Houp I want to talk to him about his very good book "The 24th Missouri Volunteer Infantry "Lyon Legion". I would like to buy one. Thank you. Clinton Willis 716 S Maple Siloam Springs, Arkansas, 72761 Phone 1-479-524-3923.