White River at DeValls Bluff

Most people in this place have not been farther than Des Arc in most of their adult lives, hardly anyone has even thought of leaving the state. Despite the smallness of the DeValls Bluff world it tends to be quite self-sufficient. Most people who are born here, die here, and escape is always on the minds of the young.

This place is the context of many more stories than my own.

It was nothing more than a swamp when the first settlers arrived. It eventually became a bustling town centered around the river basin, which provided fish for market and muscle shells for the button factory. Then the Civil War came. The little burg of DeValls Bluff became the primary base of operations for the control of the river statewide. In just four years the town changed hands between Union and Confederate troops eight times, hundreds died fighting and thousands of disease over this little patch of swamp. DeValls Bluff has more cemeteries with more gravesites than many cities. Since then it has been in slow decline. Now there are fewer than seven hundred people living within city limits, even fewer on the outside.

This is the world into which I was born. As a youth I was moved around with my family as my father chased the oil industry from city to city, so I spent many years living in various parts of Texas. Yet we would always return to DeValls Bluff when things would go sour before striking out again, so it has always been home for all of us.

When I was fourteen my parents called it quits and moved back to DeValls Bluff permanently. They had tired of the rat race and were ready to settle down on the family farm. Now that we were back at the home place, I wanted to know everything. They proceeded to tell me about the history of DeValls Bluff. They told me about the old swamp witches that cured and cursed during my father’s youth. They told me about the Quapaw tribal burial grounds that lie on our land. They showed me the secret cemeteries in the swamps and told me about the ghosts of the war.

In the years to come I was mentored not by my parents, but by the place itself. My teachers were the animals, trees, swamps, and ghosts. That is perhaps one of the more unique qualities about most residents of DeValls Bluff, they all believe. Everyone knows about the outdoors, ghosts, and the things that hide in the swamps.

I escaped DeValls Bluff and its people during my college years, though thankfully without losing my connection to its history or spirits. I return now to those woods and that town not as an enemy, but as an old friend.