Best Autumn Drives #2 - Talimena Scenic Drive in Oklahoma & Arkansas

Queen Wilhelmina State Park

The Talimena Scenic Drive is extremely popular with sightseers from Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas, but license places from other states are very common as well.
Stretching from Mena, Arkansas, for 54 miles along the top of the Ouachita Mountains to near Talihina, Oklahoma, the drive crosses some of the highest points between the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Rockies. The views from both sides of the Talimena are spectacular and the landscape is dotted with historic sites and geological points of interest as well.

Among the key attractions along the drive is Queen Wilhelmina State Park. Located not far from Mena near the eastern end of the scenic roadway, the park is one of the crown jewels of the Arkansas State Park system. In addition to hiking, sightseeing, picnicking, camping and other traditional outdoor activities, it also offers a lodge, cabins, miniature railroad, antique railroad equipment and historic structures.

Rich Mountain Pioneer Cemetery

Just west of the park is the Rich Mountain Pioneer Cemetery, which contains the graves of early residents of the area and is said to be haunted by the ghost of a young girl who died during Civil War days.

Other key historic sites along the Talimena Scenic Drive are Horse Thief Springs, Old Military Road, the original Choctaw boundary line, historic Rich Mountain fire tower and more. Points of natural interest include spectacular views, unique rock formations and the stunning vistas of Winding Stair Mountain, which was declared a national recreation area by President Ronald Reagan in 1989.

View from Winding Stair

If the name Winding Stair sounds familiar, it could be because it was the setting for much of the book True Grit. In the book and subsequent movies, the name Winding Stair is read or heard as the location that Rooster Cogburn, the Texas Ranger and their young female companion go in search of the outlaw gang of Lucky Ned. The association with True Grit is appropriate as the Winding Stair area was frequented by outlaws during the violent days that followed the Civil War and deputy U.S. marshals from Fort Smith often went there in search of wanted men.

Among the deputy marshals known to have operated in the area was Cal Whitson, the one-eyed lawman that many believe was the real Rooster Cogburn.  Please click here to learn more about his life.

To learn more about the Talimena Scenic Drive and its points of interest, please visit www.exploresouthernhistory.com/ARTalimena1.

Real Rooster Cogburn worth remembering as True Grit comes out on DVD/Blu-ray

Cal Whitson, the Real Rooster Cogburn

I have mentioned him here before, but as the movie True Grit comes out on DVD/Blu-ray this week, it seems a good time to remember Cal Whitson, the man believed to have been the real Rooster Cogburn.

True Grit, first brought to the big screen by John Wayne, is the story of a young girl who enlists the help of a one-eyed Deputy U.S. Marshal from Fort Smith, Arkansas, to hunt down the man accused of murdering her father. The original book by Clinton Portis was something of a tongue in cheek portrayal of the heroes and outlaws in the Old West. But on the big screen, those same characters suddenly become larger than life. Whether in the original Wayne portrayal or in the new Jeff Bridges version, Rooster Cogburn leaps from the screen as the real deal, a rough and tumble frontier lawman with a deep sense of justice.

Although Portis said he based the character on a compilation of the deputy marshals who rode out from Fort Smith under the jurisdiction of the U.S. District Court of "Hanging Judge" Isaac C. Parker, there can be little doubt that Cal Whitson was the "real" Rooster Cogburn.

Cal Whitson had been a hard-fighting Union soldier during the Civil War and had lost an eye in battle in Arkansas. He became a deputy U.S. marshal in the years after the war after learning that his son had been killed while helping to apprehend an outlaw. He served in the Indian Territory, which fell under Judge Parker's jurisdiction, helping to bring wanted men back to Fort Smith to stand trial... and often stand on the gallows as well.

Parker hanged more men than any federal judge in U.S. history, but few know that he was opposed to the death penalty. Many of the laws governing crimes in the Indian Nations gave him only one sentence: death.

Cal Whitson, the real one-eyed deputy U.S. marshal of Fort Smith, was every bit as colorful and tough as the Rooster Cogburn of the movies. To learn more about him, please visit www.exploresouthernhistory.com/roostercogburn.

To learn more about Judge Parker's tenure as the "Hanging Judge" of Fort Smith, please visit www.exploresouthernhistory.com/ARFS6.

And if you haven't seen the new version of True Grit, I strongly recommend it. I am a huge John Wayne fan and love the original, but the new one tells the story in an entirely different way and is well worth viewing.

The "Real" Rooster Cogburn?! - Fort Smith, Arkansas

The Real Rooster Cogburn?

With the coming release of the Hollywood remake of the classic movie "True Grit," one of the most beloved Western figures of all time is seeing a bit of a rebirth as well - Rooster Cogburn.

John Wayne won the only Academy Award of his career for playing the rough and tumble Deputy U.S. Marshal and now Jeff Bridges will take his turn at bringing the character from the pages of the 1968 novel "True Grit" by Arkansas writer Charles Portis. For the uninitiated, the book (and movies) tell the story of a young girl's quest to bring the man who murdered her father to justice in the court of Fort Smith's famed "Hanging Judge," Isaac C. Parker. She goes to Fort Smith, on the western border of Arkansas, from nearby Yell County and hires a man with "grit" - Deputy U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn. The two set out into the Indian Nations of what is now Oklahoma in search of the murderer.

Although Portis is a very reclusive man, he has been quoted in the past as saying that the character of Rooster Cogburn was actually created as a compilation of the men who served as Deputy Marshals for the U.S. Court for the Western District of Arkansas. And indeed, some of the events in the story he told were loose adaptations of real events involving several of these famed western lawmen.

There is strong circumstantial evidence - and perhaps a bit more than that - however, that the actual character of Rooster Cogburn was based on a real-life one-eyed Deputy U.S. Marshal from Fort Smith. Descendants of Cal Whitson, a man who served as a frontier lawman during the late 1800s, believe that their ancestor was the "real" Rooster Cogburn.

Whitson, like Cogburn, was a former Civil War soldier who served as a Deputy U.S. Marshal in Fort Smith during the days of the "Hanging Judge." He was the only such lawman in the history of Parker's court known to have lost an eye (his left, which he covered by keeping the brim of his hat intentionally pulled down on that side). And there is more.


To learn the story of Cal Whitson, the "real" Rooster Cogburn, please visit www.exploresouthernhistory.com/roostercogburn.