One entire room was dedicated to a phenomena which lasted over a century. The chautauqua movement was a social and cultural phenomenon that began in 1874, when John H. Vincent, a young Methodist minister, started a summer assembly for Sunday School teachers at Lake Chautauqua, New York.  An open air pavilion housed lectures and community singing, the participants stayed in tents and the session was characterized by good food and a high moral tone.  The next year Vincent persuaded President Ulysses S. Grant to speak, and chautauqua's reputation was made.  Soon college presidents, popular authors, moral crusaders and humorists were regular speakers at chautauqua.  Presidents Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, Cleveland, McKinley, both Roosevelts, and Taft followed Grant as did Jane Addams, Carry Nation, Carrie Chapment Catt, and Booker T. Washington, not to mention Thomas Edison.  Chautauqua subsequently came to mean study, lectures, music and drama while camping by the lakeshore.  The best in the culture and educational world, with good food and fireworks for a grand total of six to ten dollars a week. The statistical record alone is staggering.   During the peak year, 1924, an estimated 30 million Americans sat under the brown tents pitched nearby some 12,000 Main Streets and enjoyed the lectures, music, drama and other cultural items making up the typical chautauqua week offering.  The chautauqua brought people together to improve their minds, renew their ties with one another and to fill a need for culture, knowledge, inspiration, and entertainment.  There was an artifact which somehow survived years of being under water and vandalism before finding its way to the museum street. This  oddity was a vintage model T-Ford motor home, once owned by Rhene Miller Meyer known as the Goat Girl in her circus performances. She was typical of the performers who frequented the Chautauqua in the first decades of the 20th century. Outside, a trail wanders back along the hillside where 4 derricks have been assembled.  They represent the oil rigs from different time periods, starting with an old wooden derrick and advancing to a pump jack and tower system commonly used today. Symbolic of the 1920s South Arkansas oil boom, the wooden derrick performed an important role in oil well drilling.  The derrick remained in use for maintenance purposes after the installation of a standard pumping rig.  This 112 foot replica typifies boom-ear derricks, while later ones used for maintenance were usually 60 to 90 feet high. All in all it was a good day with some interesting things which were not known to us about the southern end of Arkansas

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