Summer 2012 || A PublicAtion of the ArkAnsAs stAte highwAy & trAnsPortAtion DePt. State’s New Heritage Trail System AHTD HELPS TO MARK HISTORIC TRAILS Voters p&r hoStS HWY 65 Approve new Documentary Widening IRP FILM CREW completed ARKANSAS Front cover: DireCtoR’s STATE HIGHWAY COMMISSION Scenic U.S. Highway 7 Message PerryBAck cCountyover: Arkansas Welcome Center – El Dorado Highway 167 Union County the summer months are a busy time A PublicAtion of the ArkAnsAs stAte highwAy & trAnsPortAtion DePARTMENT for all of us here at the Arkansas State EDITOR Highway and Transportation Department. Randy ort Our construction crews are taking R. madiSon muRphy GRAPHIC DESIGNER advantage of the warmer weather to make Chairman road improvements statewide. Our 2012 paula cigainero overlay program is well under way. A $50 4 WRITERS million annual overlay budget is allowing glenn Bolick us to resurface literally hundreds of miles david nilles of highways this year across the State. This means a new, safer driving surface for those PHOTOGRAPHER traveling our State in the months ahead. John Jackson This summer, revenue from the Natural Gas Severance Tax is providing an additional Correspondence should be directed to: $30 million for overlays. Funds from this tax are being utilized for resurfacing highways John Ed REgEnold ArkanSaS highwayS in the Fayetteville Shale area of north central Arkansas. Vice Chairman public information office p.o. Box 2261, Room 1002 The improvements that these two programs bring about are vital in allowing us to little Rock, aR 72203-2261 keep our highways in the best shape possible. In addition to resurfacing projects taking place this summer, the Department will begin making improvements on our Interstates beginning at the end of this year under the new Interstate Rehabilitation Program. In a special election last November, voters overwhelmingly approved renewing a $575 million bond program for our Interstate Contents system. Between 75 and 80 projects are expected to be let to contract that will allow us Summer 2012 to rebuild over 450 miles of Interstate highways. The new program will be financed by John BuRkhalter Federal funds and the existing four cents per gallon tax on diesel fuel dedicated for this Member purpose. With these improvements, Arkansas’s Interstate system will become one of the Arkansas Highways is published by best in the country. 4 ..............Arkansas’s heritage trail System and for employees of the arkansas State Let me mention another opportunity to improve our highways coming before voters highway and Transportation department as this November. It is a temporary ½-percent increase in the state sales tax. Approval at a medium of departmental news and other the voting booth would fund a $1.8 billion program that would allow us to construct information. it is also distributed free of 6 .....................................documentary Film follows charge to the public upon request. and improve four-lane highways in Arkansas over the next ten years. If this proposal planning & research passes, not only would our highways benefit, cities and counties would benefit greatly through increased turnback revenues. A new State Aid City Streets program would also The arkansas State highway and Transportation dick TRammEl department (department) complies with all civil be created. This program would be similar to our State Aid County Road program that Member rights provisions of federal statutes and related 7 .......................................... Interstate rehabilitation has been used to improve county roads since 1973. Many miles of city streets could be authorities that prohibited discrimination in Program Scheduled to Begin constructed or maintained under this new program. programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance. Therefore, the department does not The vote in November is an opportunity that we, as Arkansans, need to take a close discriminate on the basis of race, sex, color, age, national origin, religion or disability, in look at and consider. It will bring significant improvements to our highways, county 8 ............................................................department events the admission, access to and treatment in roads and city streets in the years ahead. department’s programs and activities, as well This time of year our highways are busier than ever with motorists traveling on vacation. as the department’s hiring or employment Our construction crews around the State will be busy as well as they work to keep our practices. complaints of alleged discrimination 13 ....................................................................public meetings and inquiries regarding the department’s highways in top shape. And behind the scenes, I know all of us will be working hard to nondiscrimination policies may be directed meet the demands of providing a good highway system for those traveling in Arkansas. Tom SchuEck to EEo/dBE Section head (ADA/504/Title Vi Member coordinator), p. o. Box 2261, little Rock, aR 14 .......................................letters to the department 72203, (501) 569-2298, (Voice/TTy 711), or the following email address: EEo/dBE_Section_ [email protected]. This notice is available from the ADA/504/Title Vi coordinator in large print, on audiotape and in Braille. Director of Highways and Transportation 2 || www.ArkAnsAshighwAys.com/mAgAzine.AsPx ArkAnsAs highwAys mAgAzine • summer 2012 || 3 Arkansas’s Heritage Trail system was officially announced at an event hosted by the Department of Arkansas Heritage in March 2012. Civil War Trail, Pea Ridge Southwest Trail, Conway Southwest Trail, Old Washington Trail of Tears, Vill Creek ARkAnsAs’s Heritage Trail System At the 88th and most recent legislative session at the State capitol, legislators passed The Southwest Trail is a general term Department has been busy installing Act 728 which established a State historic trail system known as the heritage trail System. for the network of routes connecting signs along Arkansas highways. the St. Louis/St. Genevieve area of “We’ve put up about 670 signs at this Butterfield Trail Missouri and the Red River Valley of point,” adds Tony Sullivan, AHTD State Texas. In Arkansas, what had been little Maintenance Engineer. “We estimate we ith the cooperation is the Arkansas Trail of Tears. Following stagecoach driver from New York, more than a footpath before Arkansas are about 40 to 45 percent complete at Wof the Arkansas the election of Andrew Jackson in 1828, established the Butterfield Overland became a territory in 1819 became a Cabell’s Route to Fayetteville and two this time. All of the signs should be up by Department of Parks long-held desires for the lands of the Mail Route in 1858 with the goal of major emigration route in the 1820s. Confederate Approaches (Helena-West summer’s end.” and Tourism and the Department Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw connecting the Mississippi River and the More than four-fifths of Arkansas’s Helena and Pine Bluff). More trails could be added to the of Arkansas Heritage, the AHTD and Seminole Indians came to fruition Pacific Ocean, delivering mail far faster population by the 1830s had entered “It’s so important for us to remember system in the future. The AHTD is is furnishing and installing signs with the federal Indian Removal Act than by sea. Lines were established the territory along the Southwest Trail. where we come from and to honor what consulting with the Department of Parks identifying the trails on the new system. of 1830. This act allowed the forcible from Missouri to Fort Smith and then The road was improved by the U.S. Army Arkansas was like in its early days and Tourism, the Arkansas History To qualify for the Arkansas Heritage removal of the five tribes to new lands points west, and from Memphis to Fort during Andrew Jackson’s presidency. The as a territory and new state,” Cathie Commission and the Arkansas Historic Trail system, a trail or route must in the Indian Territory (modern-day Smith, with a side-run to Little Rock. The section north of the Arkansas River saw Matthews, Director of the Department Preservation Program to determine the have been established by historic use Oklahoma). All five tribes passed through Butterfield Overland Trail was eclipsed its use decline during the late nineteenth of Arkansas Heritage, stated at a news feasibility of designating additional trails and must be historically significant to Arkansas. Hundreds of members of each by the faster Pony Express in 1860, and century, but the route south of there was conferenceth for the trail system held on as heritage trails. Arkansas or the nation as a result of that of the tribes died of hardship and disease Civil War bushwhackers and hostile still in use for decades afterwards. March 29 . In the meantime, with warm weather historic use. Examples would include on the long trek to Indian Territory, and Indians in the west spelled an end for The final trail on the system is actually “People are already calling the here, it is the perfect time of year to trails established in years past for trade, many more died of hardship in their new the company by 1861. The Butterfield a group of Civil War Trails. There are Department of Parks and Tourism and get outside and enjoy the weather, the commerce, exploration, migration, land. The removal of the southeastern Overland Mail Trail Route is currently eight Civil War trails in Arkansas and Department of Arkansas Heritage asking beautiful scenery and take in some of settlement or military campaigns. tribes is memorialized as the “Trail being considered as a possible National this system recognizes those. They about the signs they are spotting in their Arkansas’s rich history along these trails. There are four such heritage trails of Tears.” Historic Trail. include the Prairie Grove, Pea Ridge travels,” stated Richard Davies, the State For more information on the Arkansas presently in the system that document The second trail is the Butterfield The Southwest Trail is the third and Little Rock campaigns, the Camden Parks and Tourism Director.