This Is Arkansas: What Remains (The Cardon Bottoms School House)

This Is Arkansas: What Remains (The Cardon Bottoms School House)

Carden Bottoms, Arkansas…history records settlers living in the Carden Bottoms area as early as the 1850’s and, while a thriving rural community eventually sprang up there, today it is virtually deserted. Sporadic ruins, some over-grown to the point of being unrecognizable, now serve as solemn, decaying reminders of the people that once called Carden Bottoms home and the lives that they lived there. Located at a bend in the Arkansas River and in the shadow of Petit Jean Mountain, the aging ruins of Carden Bottoms now rest far from any towns or heavily populated areas…but over the years people were born there, lived there, played there, went to school there, went to church there, farmed and worked there, raised families there, cooked and served meals there, went to bed and woke up there, and eventually died there. This is the story of what remains.

Once upon a time, the old abandoned Carden Bottoms school was a part of the Dardanelle/Yell County school district. And while nobody is sure exactly when it was built or when it was abandoned, the exterior of the gymnasium remains carries still conveys the year of 1936 as its time of construction. Was the entire school house built in 1936 or was the school built at an earlier date and the gymnasium added later? Unknown. The ruins of the school house are very difficult to find, too Now completely overgrown, the old abandoned school house is very difficult to see from the road amidst all of its covering foliage. That being said, the school itself is remarkably intact to have been abandoned as long as it has (I’m guessing 40 years minimum). The gymnasium, located in a separate building directly adjacent to the side of the school house proper, has completely caved in…but all of the exterior walls and a back room remain intact. Other than that, with the exception of some minor roof and floor decay, the rest of the school continues to stand in relatively good shape for the length of time that it’s been abandoned. My guess is that the same thick and choking foliage that now hides it has also protected it from the elements and helped it to withstand many of the effects of time and decay. And music must have been very important to this small rural community because the abandoned schoolhouse has not one but two pianos…pretty rare for a small country school of this size.

Three different people gave us three different sets of detailed directions on how to find the schoolhouse…but even then, we had to resort to using Google Earth on my smartphone in order to locate it – it’s that hard to spot from the road. Special thanks to my good friend Shane Engebrecht for riding shotgun on this one, too.

The small school yard, surrounded by the schoolhouse and gymnasium on three sides, is now completely overgrown by vegetation…but once upon a time all of the children of the Carden Bottoms community spent their recesses playing there. How many children attended school there? Who were the teachers that taught them? From how far would the children walk to the school house? Unknown. But standing inside the school house, you can close your eyes and still hear the sounds of children playing, teachers teaching, and children

The backing track that you hear on this production is the sound of Emma playing one of the two pianos that can still be found inside the school house. Age and decay has rendered one of the two pianos completely inoperative…but about 1/4th of the keys still function on the other one. I heard my 9-year-old daughter Emma playing around and exploring on it and I decided that it would make the perfect backing track on this one, so the sound that you hear is actually Emma playing on the abandoned piano.

W. Ray Bertram
MrHayseedplowboy@aol.com
June 14, 2013