In the 1960s, prominent local plantation owner Robert L. Dortch converted this former general store into a museum to interpret the history of the region’s cotton agriculture. It closed in 1978, but in 1985 the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism acquired and renovated the building, and reopened it. The former store, a two-story building of red brick with a recessed entrance between plate glass windows, has a full-width one-story porch carried on brick piers. A narrow green-tiled shed roof supported on massive brackets elaborates the building’s upper story. The state park now also includes a restored 1919 Munger cotton gin and press of the Dortch Gin Company and a seed warehouse of 1948. The Robert L. Dortch seed warehouse is a massive ten-thousand-square-foot building with a series of small ventilation monitors along the main roof ridge. A rail spur connected the seed warehouse to the railroad’s main line.
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Plantation Agriculture Museum (General Store)
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