DODDRIDGE, Ark.-The threat of early spring showers didn't keep about 550 elementary school kids from taking in the sites and sounds of early 19th-century American explorer and Native American campsites Friday.
The children in fact, eagerly, if only temporarily, swelled the Doddridge community's population during the first day of a three-day bicentennial marking the 200th anniversary establishment of the Sulphur Fork Factory and Indian Trading Post.
From about 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., these young explorers scampered around the animal skin tents as they looked at the vintage rustic cooking ware used by both European settlers and members of the Caddo and Choctaw tribes. Many children also took the time to gather in front of the historically garbed demonstrators as they explained living life in the early 1800s to their young captive audiences.
Besides lectures, these reenactors also demonstrated cooking and pottery making as well as wax melting and candlestick making to the kids during this day-long field trip to Doddridge's Spring Bank Ferry Park just south of the community's fire station and historic museum.
The students came from the Fouke, Genoa and Bradley school districts as well as from the area's Atlanta and Queen City districts.
The celebration, which continues today and Sunday, focuses on the 1818 founding of the Sulphur Factory and Indian Trading Post, which drew its named from the fact that both the factory and post were established by the federal government upon an 80 foot-high bluff not far from where the Sulphur River actually forks itself into the Red River.
One of the historic demonstrators, Joseph Wolf, an actual Choctaw Native American from Durant, Okla., displayed some Indian war arrows along with some pottery, weaved baskets and other artifact replicas he sells from his Oklahoma-based business.
"We started the business about 10 years ago and we even teach pottery making and basket weaving," Wolf said.
As a life-long Doddridge resident, Becky Beckham said she was enormously impressed by the celebration.
"Doddridge, at one time, use to be a busy community so it's good to see this happen because a lot of kids, growing up nowadays, don't know that at one point in history, people had to actually make their own clothes and grow their own food," she said.
Doddridge resident Nola Harrison, who served as the community's post master for 35 years, said the celebration is a tribute to the whole three states area where Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana actually join borders.
"For a little community like ours, this was a lot of hard work, but we did have a lot of help from Fouke," she said.
The celebration resumes both from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. today and Sunday.