Italian roots, enduring traditions shape Chicot’s shoreline
Lake Village, set on Arkansas’ largest natural lake, celebrates its Italian-American heritage with a museum created by a congregation founded 160 years ago in the state’s most southeastern county.
Our Lady of the Lake Catholic Church Museum, 314 S. Lake Shore Drive, honors the fortitude of long-ago immigrants from hilly north-central Italy. They came to flat Chicot County at the end of the 19th century to labor in the cotton fields of Sunnyside Plantation near Lake Chicot, which at 22 miles long is also North America’s biggest oxbow lake.
These new Americans, the museum points out, “struggled against exploitation, prejudice and language barriers, with many dying from malaria and other lowland diseases. Many of their descendants are now among the leading citizens of Arkansas and the nation.”
The museum’s trove of memorabilia evokes the county’s sustained Italian heritage, including the church’s annual Spaghetti Dinner each March. A display titled “A People Set Apart” displays around 100 photographs of Italian family life over the decades.
One newspaper photo of a half dozen women in aprons is headlined “They’re Making Pasta!” Another image, captioned “Johnny’s Party Pig — All Dressed Up,” portrays a grinning chef and his roast suckling pig with an apple in its mouth.
The museum, in the church’s next-door rectory, is open to visitors most days by calling ahead to (870) 265-5439. There is no admission charge, but donations are welcome.
Sunnyside spirit
Lake Village visitors can buy handmade pasta and see more photographs of the county’s Italian heritage at Regina’s Pasta House, 3877 U.S. 65/82.
Owner Jeremy Moyer, descendant of a Sunnyside settler, is happy to explain the dozens of vintage photographs displayed in his shop. He points out that while some Italians left Sunnyside to form Tontitown in northwest Arkansas, many stayed in Chicot County. He also reminds customers that handmade pasta should be boiled for no more than two minutes.
A longtime non-Italian favorite, Rhoda’s Famous Hot Tamales, 714 St. Mary’s St., occupies an unpretentious, no-frills structure. Its tamales continue to draw accolades, as do its fried pies. Hours can vary, so check ahead at (870) 265-3108.
Lake Village’s post office, 206 S. Cokley St., displays one of the surviving murals created across the nation as a Depression-era federal project. The oil painting, “Country Wild Life,” by Avery T. Johnson, shows an array of creatures along Lake Chicot.
On the 15-mile drive northeast from Lake Village to Lake Chicot State Park, a stop can be made at Hyner Cemetery, on Sunnyside Road, two miles east of Causeway Road. Its tumbled gravestones mark burials “of those devout, courageous Italian immigrants who came to America in 1895.”
Lake Chicot’s oxbow, a C-shaped curve, was created a half-dozen centuries ago when its water separated from the Mississippi River. The lake is a popular venue for birdwatching and fishing. A photo display in the state park’s visitor center shows 20 of the 275 avian species sometimes sighted in this hot spot for migratory birds. Fishermen can catch bluegills, channel catfish, largemouth bass, crappie and redear sunfish.
Beyond the lake
A new nighttime event at the state park is the Alligator Prowl Lake Tour. Participants “venture onto the water as park staff guide you through cypress-lined shores and quiet backwaters while searching for alligators and other nocturnal wildlife. Learn how alligators hunt, navigate and thrive in the darkness.” There is a fee to take part and advance reservations are requested.
Fifteen miles southeast of Lake Village, the state’s only surviving antebellum mansion rises near the Mississippi River levee. Seventeen-room Lakeport Plantation was built in 1859, largely by slave labor. It survived after the Civil War by employing sharecroppers. In 2001, the owners donated Lakeport for restoration to Arkansas State University, which opened it to the public in 2007.
Group and self-guided tours offer glimpses of the opulence enjoyed by plantation operators. One prized 19th-century artifact is a floorcloth, described as “one of the most stylish treatments of the time” and “a rare gem in spite of much loss and wear, since few such cloths have survived. Two sections have been cleaned for display. One shows the pattern, created using 14 separate colors, each separately block printed.”
A Chicot County visit including Lakeport Plantation and Our Lady of the Lake Church Museum brings into focus some of the ways life has evolved over many decades in one of Arkansas’ four corners.