Volume 5, Number 8 - Summer 1975
BAKERSFIELD TO SALUTE EXPLORER AND SETTLEMENT
IN BICENTENNIAL MARKER
by Ruby M. Robins
The Ozark county village of Bakersfield will be observing its status as a Bicentennial Community next year when a historical marker is dedicated in the city park on July 4.
The marker will call attention to the visit in 1818 of the first explorer to write of the area, Henry R. Schoolcraft, and to the settlement of the village.
Southern pioneers first came to the high ground along Bennett’s Bayou in the early 1840’s. One of these settlers, James A. Baker, is the man for whom the village is named. When the first post office was established in 1873, it was named Bakersville, but this name was rejected by the post office department as was the next name, Waterville. The name of Bakersfield was approved in 1885. A large influx of settlers came to the area after the Civil War. Many of them were from the southern states.
The present post office building, where the Bicentennial flag presentation will be made Saturday, was built in 1961 under direction of John K. Morris, the present postmaster.
Located half-way between West Plains and Mountain Home, Ark., the village flourished as a travelers’ stop and at one time two hotels were in operation to serve freighters, traveling salesmen and migrating Americans on their way to homestead land in the Ozarks.
Before the First World War, Bakersfield boasted, besides its hotels, school and churches, a distillery, several cotton gins, roller and buhr mills and a number of general stores. The population was estimated at 400 to 500.
In the center of the village was the town pump and, though the old pump was stolen, a new pump still stands on the site and still issues forth clear, pure water.
The town now serves a farming community and includes general stores, service stations, a tire shop, a hammer mill, a sawmill and several churches. The school where kindergarteners and students through high school attend, was built in 1928 after a tornado in June of that year seriously damaged the old school building and other structures in the village. The present school building has been enlarged several times and additions have been built for kindergarten classes and a lunchroom.
In the early 1900’s, iron and zinc mines were operated in the area and before rural electrification, a project was under way to generate power by damming the waters of Bennetts Bayou. This project was abandoned in the 1930’s.
The Bayou, which overflowed its banks quite often, was tamed when a dam was built in 1941-44 near the mouth of North Fork River at Norfork, Ark., some 20 miles below Bakersfield.
Bakersfield was incorporated as a village in 1967 and has a population of approximately 245. C. W. Vaughan, the first mayor, is still in office as is the first clerk. Dr. D. R. Sams.
When Schoolcraft traveled through the vicinity almost 157 years ago, he met the first man he had seen in 20 days on his journey from Potosi in Washington county and down the North Fork of White River.
In his account for Nov. 30, 1818, Schoolcraft wrote that he and his companion, Levi Pettibone, came upon a path obviously leading between two settlements.
They were on this path when they "met a man on horseback. He was the first human we had encountered for 20 days, and I do not know when I have received a greater pleasure at the sight of a man...
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"From him we learned that the stream we had been following down was the Great North Fork of White River; that we were within 10 miles of its mouth and within a few miles of a house either way.
"Elated with this information, we turned about and followed our informant, who in traveling about seven miles in a northwest direction, brought us to a hunter’s house on Bennett’s Bayou, a tributary stream of the North Fork."
The name of the hunter was Wells and in the history of Baxter County, Centennial Edition, 1873-1973, Mary Ann Messick identifies the location of Wells’ cabin as being near what is now Gamaliel, Ark., which is some eight miles south of Bakersfield. Schoolcraft called Wells a "forehanded man for these parts and a great hunter." Wells’ first name is not known nor is the first name of Bennett nor where his settlement was located.
Before coming to the Wells’ cabin, Schoolcraft and Pettibone had undergone many hardships, including running out of food and shot. On Nov. 26, Schoolcraft found a deserted "white hunter’s camp" where there were three pumpkins on a vine. He and his horse enjoyed one of the pumpkins right from the vine, the others he and Pettibone boiled and "enjoyed a most hearty repast." On Nov. 28 they had "acorns for supper.
Earlier on the 26th, they left the valley of the North Fork which Schoolcraft had called Limestone River before the hunter told him its name.
"We passed over a sterile soil, destitute of wood, with gentle elevations, but no hills or cliffs and no water." Later they enter a rocky valley where they found a spring trickling from a cave in the rock. Here they spent the night and here Schoolcraft said he engraved the date on a rock and part of a poem he had written. Apparently the site of the cave has never been found or the carving done in the rock has disappeared.
Schoolcraft described the valley of the North Fork as having luxuriant growths of timber, vine, cane and greenbriar. He tells of the purity of the water and describes the many springs, calling what is probably Double or Rainbow Springs near Dora a "natural phenomena."
The course of the North Fork he describes as "devious beyond all example." He tells of seeing bear, wild turkey, squirrel, ducks, deer and beaver in the valley.
No effort has ever been made to retrace School-craft’s journey completely, but he uses placenames still known and gives distances traveled and direction.
After obtaining supplies from Wells, he and Pettibone travel on to Kershner Spring on the James River near Springfield. He tells of passing the Little North Fork and the Bull shoals ripples in White River. They returned to Missouri by way of Calico Rock, then up the valley of Black River to the St. Francis and on to Potosi, the starting point of their journey.
Schoolcraft called his account "Journal of a Tour into the Interior of Missouri and Arkansas from Potosi or Mine a Burton, in Missouri territory, in a southwest direction, toward the Rocky Mountains; performed in the years 1818 and 1819."
The book was published in London and has been republished by Dierkes Press. Eureka Springs, Ark. It was published as a series five years ago in the Ozark Reader feature of the Ozark County Times.
In 1820, Schoolcraft was appointed mineralogist on an expedition to Michigan territory and from 1822 to 1841 he was Indian agent for the tribes in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.
He published many books and articles on his mineral investigations and explorations and on the Indian tribes whom he served.
He was born in Rensselaerwyck, N.Y., in 1773 and learned the glass making trade as a youth. He died in Washington, D.C., in 1864.
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