Mount Pleasant, which started almost 150 years ago as a small trading post and blacksmith shop, will be the subject of the next Izard County Historical Society meeting on July 10, according to Roger Harvell, president.
Craig Ogilvie, whose ancestors settled in the area before the Civil War, will present the program at 2 p.m. in the Mount Pleasant school cafeteria as part of the historical society’s summer meeting. The general public and all members are welcome to attend, Harvell added.
Using vintage photos, some never before published, Ogilvie will trace the area’s history from settlement in the 1840s to the Great Depression of the 1930s.
“Along the way, the town had its boom years and its lean times,” Ogilvie notes. “It also changed the name of its post office from Barren Fork to Mount Pleasant in 1914, and survived a tornado in 1929.”
Ogilvie’s program will focus on the old academy school that served a wide region until 1905 and a church-sponsored clinic/hospital, which was the first facility of its kind in the county in 1928.
