Northwest Arkansas
(Page 5 of 6)
September/October 1986
By the Mother Earth News editors
This awareness of the value of historic heritage is particularly apparent in Fayetteville, Bentonville, and Rogers, which have preserved and enhanced their old downtown buildings, bringing new life to these areas. In fact, a shopping mall just outside Rogers has low traffic, while it's difficult to get a parking place in the bustling and beautiful downtown.
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Education and Health
Generally speaking, the educational system gets higher ratings in this section of the state than it does in the rest of Arkansas. In recent teacher competency tests, Carroll County scored highest in the state, a fact which many observers think is due to the in-migration in the past two decades of well-educated back-to-the-landers, who have worked to improve the schools or ended up teaching in them. However, outsiders may be a little shocked at the fundamentalist attitude toward discipline, including corporal punishment, that still exists in some public school systems.
Though there is an average of only 10 to 15 inches of snow each winter, the lack of the necessary highway equipment means that schools sometimes have to be closed because of the weather. School children also get a day off during deer-hunting season to help bring home venison for the family larder.
Aside from offering access to the university library, which recently had a million-dollar drive to update its already excellent collection, Fayetteville has an attractive public library with a large section for the seeing impaired. Towns with populations above 1,200 have branches of the Ozark Regional Library, and smaller communities are visited by bookmobiles.
As for health care, Washington County is served by the Washington Regional Medical Center and City Hospital with a combined capacity of over 400 beds, the 65-bed Charter Vista Hospital for psychiatric and addictive disease patients, a 187-bed V.A. Hospital, the Washington County Public Health Center, and several nursing homes. Hospitals are also found in Bentonville, Rogers, Huntsville, Eureka Springs, and Berryville.
The People
Despite the influx of new residents into this section of the country, most of the people are still white, native-born Protestants with a fierce love of their land. Many object to anyone telling them what to do with their property.
Considering the above, one would expect an attitude of suspicious unfriendliness to outsiders, but quite the opposite is true. People here are extremely open, helpful, and courteous both to outsiders and to each other. Most likely, it will be they, not you, who first strike up a conversation.
"When newcomers move down here, particularly from some northern city," a Berryville banker said, "it takes them about two or three years to realize that nobody is trying to cheat them. After that, they become our staunch friends." Then he smiled and asked, "What in the world do they do to those poor people up there to make them so suspicious?"
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