[Old Fossil]

Over the past years I have posted many photos of the railroad that goes (or did, it has now been taken up) through the ghost town of Graysonia. Today I received a book about the history of that RR written by one of my exploring buddies. It is a big, high quality, detail book and if anyone is interested in more info about it, you may send me a DM and I'll tell you all about it and how to get one.

[Old Fossil]

Clark County - We call this "The Maya Temple on the Athens Plateau". We had learned there were some cinnabar smelters on a certain mountain in west Clark County and went looking. We found one which was associated with Cinnabar City, a miners town, mapped it, then went looking for another. We were driving along a narrow road at the foot of the mountain looking for the smelter. I was looking at the foot of the mountain when suddenly my buddy stopped, backed up, and said "what is that?" I didn't see anything and he said look about half way up the mountain. I did and there it was, and seeing it in the trees and underbrush it looked just like the Maya Temples shown from Central America. We got out, checked it out and saw it was part of a smelter. It looked like after the rocks had been processed they were dumped into the top of this structure into some type of cart backed into the opening you can see, and hauled off down the side of the mountain.


Later when we went back to map the site we cleared all the brush away and then you could see the whole structure but not the remains of the smelter because it was a little higher up the mountain.


The lady in the red shirt stands about 5'6" tall so that gives you an idea the size of the structure.

[Old Fossil]

West Clark County - We rarely find petroglyphs in this area but this is an exception. I did not paint it, I brushed dry flour into the grooves and when finished taking the photos I swept the flour away and after the first rain it doesn't appear I have ever been there. The glyph appears to be a spear in the back of a deer.


It is on a large sandstone flowstone and is the only glyph there. This is a very interesting rock in other ways too. The exposed portion is about 6 X 12 feet and about two feet high. It is covered with deep and shallow groves made by the Indians sharpening and smoothing their stone tools. The rock is on a creek bank and local people tell us that silt has washed in and covered another two feet of the sides and they too were covered with groves.


We have been told about two other grooved rocks. One is in central Pike County and when we got there we found lots of "Private Property" signs and have not had time to look for the owner to get permission to go look at the rock. The other we did not look for because the information is from my family oral history. There was supposed to have been a "large" boulder (unlike the flowstone) that was covered with groves. The local "word" was that it was a marker for Spanish treasure. A group of local men decided to go look for the treasure, but when they got to the site, the rock was gone. Everyone thought that a local man who was always looking for buried treasure hauled it off so no one could use it to find the treasure. So, how "large" was the boulder There is a good story about that treasure hunter and my dad, but this is enough for tonight.

[Old Fossil]

Southwest of Little Rock - I was told this is a slave cemetery and at one time the graves were marked with brick. It is now covered with about a foot of leaves and would take a lot of clean-up to see if any are still visible. Nearby are the remains of the foundation of a "huge" house.

[latunafish]

Old Fossil, thank you for your continued posts. I always look forward to them, they are so interesting. It makes me more observant on my travels these days.

I would rep you every time, if they would let me!

[Old Fossil]

Originally Posted by latunafish

Old Fossil, thank you for your continued posts. I always look forward to them, they are so interesting. It makes me more observant on my travels these days.

I would rep you every time, if they would let me!

Thanks for the "Roses", but the pleasure is all mine. As I have posted before, I like to share things I see in my explorations that others will never see and probably couldn't find them if they tried. I doubt I could get back to some of them. I have a new camera and just now got it figured out. It's photos had too many pixels so C-D couldn't post them. To keep this Thread active I've gone back and re-posted some of the earlier photos. Hopefully I can get back out before too long and get some fresh ones.

[Luvvarkansas]

Good to "see" you, Slim!

[Old Fossil]

Graysonia, Clark County - Last year I made several Post's about the ghost town and exchanged many Post's about it with "lordhelmet". Last night I learned that the entry to the mill site has been gated and POSTED, NO TRESPASSING signs have been put up. The 40 acre mill site went up for sale a couple years ago so I guess the new owners don't want us exploring any more . I spent many days in there and never did see it all. I have a personal connection to the Site but that's another long story.

[Old Fossil]

Hot Spring/Garland County - A mountain northwest of Magnet Cove on the Hot Spring/Garland County Line is covered with prehistoric quarries for over a mile along the top and in some places a short way down the side. We worked several years to map them but never got all of them. Most are pits but this trench is spectacular. It is so big it shows up on Google Earth. I appears the Indians found a surface exposure of quality novaculite and followed it with their quarrying for about 100 meters. As they followed the seam they continued to dig deeper and today the trench at the deepest point is about 10 meters deep and 10 meters wide at the top. The sides have obviously slumped over the past 2,000 years so we have no idea how deep it was originally. In the photo I'm standing on top of the rock face where they quit quarrying, and it appears that one day they decided to stop and walked away. This rock face is quality material so they didn't quit because they ran out of material.


There are shallow pits in the huge piles of quarry debris and we think as recently as 500 years ago Indians were going there, picking out chunks of rock to make their smaller dart and arrow points. For the smaller points they didn't have to quarry.


A fascinating place. Oh, and in the Magnet Cove area there is so much magnetite mineral a magnetic compass goes crazy.

[cttransplant85]

Traveled through Eureka Springs a few weeks ago. That place is awesome. My retired folks loved it! You guys need do a better job marketing it.