Clover Bend High School

This high school was part of a Resettlement Administration (later Farm Security Administration, [FSA]) project in this community. The Clover Bend public works project was one of the most successful of the resettlement projects in Arkansas. In 1937, a 5,600-acre former plantation was divided into 40- to 65-acre plots, and each tenant family was provided with a house, a barn, and outbuildings. Rather than the communal or coop arrangements many such projects undertook, here the plots were individually leased to local families. Each family paid $200 a year on a forty-year mortgage and raised crops without paying rent. This arrangement was designed to break the cycle of borrowing against earnings on one crop in order to plant a new one. The community’s high school is a one-story white-painted wooden building with a central entrance, end gables, large windows, and a small central cupola. Although plain in details, the building’s proportions are harmonious. The school averaged about 350 students in thirteen grades until it closed in 1983, when it was consolidated with the school in a nearby town. This school also served as the center for all community activities. Five additional buildings, typical FSA farmstead structures from the 1930s—a farmhouse, a barn, a chicken house, a smokehouse, and a privy—were later moved to the 13-acre school site, which is now a historic district.