Fayetteville and Washington County came into being almost 200 years ago. A lot of things happen in two centuries. All kinds of things. Good things, bad things. We were once on the edge of the Western frontier, the last stop before heading into basically unknown territory. A lot of that history has been preserved and is easily accessed. But sometimes, our local history gets lost or simply drops out of the public’s consciousness.

Forgotten Fayetteville is a book devoted to retrieving ignored, lost, or forgotten history—mostly in Fayetteville but out in the county, too. There are 17 histories of this type here, including family histories, crime stories, and important people and places that may have drifted out of our communal awareness. In these pages are the histories of our old movie theatres, like the Ozark, Palace, Royal and Victory––the latter almost wiped clean from our past. Here you will find the true account of the murder of an African American Patrolman in Fayetteville––wait for it, in 1928. You’ll learn how a car wreck near West Fork in 1939 changed the course of American political history.

Go back in time and read about our original old schools, the history of our beautiful Wilson (City) Park, and about a Mr. Chips style journalism professor who taught in virtual obscurity at the University of Arkansas for decades. Maybe you didn’t know who our city’s first Poet Laureate was or that we had an African American poet here back in the 1920s through the 1940s. All this and lots more await you in the pages of Forgotten Fayetteville. Take a trip into forgotten history. It can be a journey well worth the effort.