June 13: Scott, Ark.

Scott, Arkansas is the home of several unique places to visit. This town is only about 3 miles south of our camp ground and the Toltec Mounds Archeological State Park is a couple miles past Scott. These mounds are one of the largest archeological sites in the Mississippi River. It covers 100 acres and at one time had 18 mounds of various heights and circumferences. People started living in this area sometime before 700 AD. They were given the Toltec name because it was assumed that the local Indians could not be advanced enough to build these mounds; therefore, the Toltec's of Mexico got the credit. Then they learned that the Toltec never made it this far north. The culture is now called the Plum Bayou people after a stream in the area. The original mounds were built along the Arkansas River complete with a levi. The river has changed its' course several times and the mounds now sit on an ox bow that is about 4000 years old. There are lots of ox bows in this area.

Only one of the mounds seems to have been for burials. The others either marked the edges of a plaza and/or were for astronomical purposes. Experts seem to think that about 50 people lived in this mound area and they were probably religious and social leaders and their families. In the picture with the mound in the middle and an "H" in front (the H is where a mound used to stand before farmers in the 1800's decided they need the land for crops) marks the equinox sunset. These two mounds are approximately 498 meters apart. Two other mounds (not shown), looking from "H", show the winter and summer solstice sunsets. The large mound is marked "A" and is 39 feet high. There was also a mound that when looking from it to A you could find the North Star directly above A.

Behind A is a boardwalk that goes out around the mound and over the ox bow. Here are large Cypress Trees with "knees" that come up from the roots of the trees. Pretty cool sight.










Then for lunch, we drove back to Scott to dine at Cotham's. This is the home of the "Hubcap" hamburger - which we did not eat - and was featured on the Food Network's "Diners and Dives". We both had the 4 oz chicken fried steak dinner with mashed potatoes, cream gravy and greenbeans. Larry said the greenbeans tasted like home canned. They did have lots of ham in them and I even ate about half of my serving. The dinner was great. For dessert, we split a Mississippi Mud which was vanilla ice cream between two pieces of chocolate cake topped with hot fudge. Talk about some chocolate. This general store was built in the early 1900's to provide supplies to the local farmers and plantations. We would go back to this place any time. The food and service was great. They have a web site - but it seems to be mostly "under construction".

Scott was also the home to a plantation agricultural museum that we didn't take time to go to. It looked like mostly cotton gins and the manufacturing/farming end of the plantation process.