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(Photograph by Dell Upton)
To visit this small white frame rural church, tucked far back in the piney woods, is to step back in time, the only reminder of modernity being the nearby rumble of an occasional logging truck. All the quintessential features of Arkansas’s traditional one-room frame rural churches are here: the starkly simple gable-fronted rectangular block perched on concrete piers, the two separate front doors, the small placard bearing the name and date centered between the doors, the tall, narrow four-over-four windows on the sides, and, located at a discreet distance in the rear, the outhouse. In the summer, the adjacent cemetery is redolent with the odor of cedar and gardenia. The simplicity of the exterior carries over to the interior, entirely sheathed—floors, walls, and ceiling—with unpainted pine boards. Electricity has never been installed; wires for kerosene lanterns still hang from the ceiling above the solemn rows of slat-back benches.