Sam theTravel Bug

At the Janet Huckabee Arkansas River Valley Nature Center, they talk about the early stone work in the area. The Maness schoolhouse was the only building that wasn't moved or destroyed when the Department of Defense acquired over 72,000 acres to build Camp Chaffee. The schoolhouse was completed in February 1937, and German POW's built the back porch in 1943. The school was added to the National Register of Historic Places on May 29, 2003.

This log cabin was built by John Christian Heilman in 1841 as a store along the Arkansas River, and was the only one along the route between Little Rock and Fort Smith. He sold tobacco and food from the fertile land he farmed. The cabin was moved to this park in 1976, and stands across from the Heilman Cemetery on land John once owned.

The caboose played several important roles for the railroad: it served as the office where the business of the train was conducted, home to crew members as they traveled, and it was an observation post from which the crew could watch for problems with the train and tracks. Some even had kitchens. The railroad has decommissioned most of its cabooses. They are now being used as park attractions.

The Battle of Nashville - Shy's Hill: On this hill was fought the decisive encounter of the Battle of Nashville on December 16, 1864. At 4:15 p.m. a Federal assault at the angle on top of the hill broke the Confederate line. Col. W.M. Shy, 20th Tennessee Infantry, was killed and Gen. T.B. Smith was captured. The Confederates retreated over the Overton Hills to the Franklin Pike.

The Land Between the Lakes is a result of the Kentucky Dam on the Tennessee River and Barkley Dam on the Cumberland River. The Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers flow very close to each other in the northwestern corner of Middle Tennessee and Western Kentucky, separated by a rather narrow and mostly low ridge. This area where they are only a few miles apart had been known as "Between the Rivers" since at least the 1830s or 1840s. After the Cumberland River was impounded in the 1960s and a canal was constructed between the two lakes, Land Between The Lakes became the largest inland peninsula in the United States. Downstream from this area, the courses of the rivers then diverge again, with the result being that the mouth of the Cumberland into the Ohio River is approximately 40 mi (64 km) from that of the Tennessee.