Mountain View Arkansas History and Culture
Description
This driving tour is a work in progress.
The Stone County Museum is operated by volunteers in a historic school built in 1928. This public school replaced the private Stone County Academy and served children of all grades until another school was built a decade later. This building was used as a school until the 1980s. n December 2004, the building was placed on the Arkansas Register of Historic Places. In the spring of 2006, the museum was expanded to include a larger research room and more space for Stone County artifacts donated or on loan to the museum.
Stone County, named for its numerous rocky ridges and rocky soil, is widely known for its preservation of Ozark folk music and culture. The county courthouse, still in use, was built in 1922. The two-story building is made of large hand-cut stone. The wall surrounding the structure that creates the court square was built with stones from all four corners of the county.
Wildflower Bed & Breakfast on the Square is one of only two hotels built in the 1920s still standing in Mountain View. It was built in 1925 and originally called the Commercial Hotel. It was designed in the Craftsman style and is located across the street from the courthouse square.
The former Inn at Mountain View is a historic hotel built in 1920. It is currently closed as of 2021. It was originally called the Dew Drop Inn and is one of only two 1920s hotels left in the city. It is a wood-frame building and features a gabled portico where the main entrance is located.
The Ozark Folk Center is an Arkansas living history state park located in scenic Mountain View, Arkansas dedicated to preserving and presenting Ozark cultural heritage and tradition to the public. University of Arkansas extension Service, in an early attempt to preserve the vanishing heritage of the Ozark mountains, assisted local craftsmen and musicians to form the Ozark Foothills Crafts Guild back in 1962. This Guild started with 30 people and grew to a membership of over 300 craftsmen and musicians. In the 1963 the guild, in the cooperation with the local civic organizations and education advocate Bessie Moore, organized the first Arkansas Folk Festival which attracted 15,000 people. Due to the success of the annual festival the guild realized that they needed a permanent home.