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ARKANSAS A-Z: Garver was brains behind much of state’s infrastructure | Arkansas Democrat Gazette

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ARKANSAS A-Z: Garver was brains behind much of state’s infrastructure | Arkansas Democrat Gazette


Neal Bryant Garver arrived in Little Rock in 1918 to help provide engineering services for the construction of a munitions plant during World War I. As the State Highway Department’s first bridge engineer, Garver also led the design of more than 2,000 bridges from 1921 to 1950, helping to modernize the state’s roadways by adding river crossings. In 1919, Garver started what became the state’s largest engineering firm, which began by providing structural engineering services for Little Rock High School (later called Little Rock Central High), North Little Rock High School, the Pulaski County Jail and many other structures.

Neal Garver was born on Feb. 17, 1877, in Lee County, Iowa, near the Mississippi River, to the farming family of Eliza Adelaide Clifford Garver and Jacob Garver, a Civil War veteran from Pennsylvania. His interest in engineering was sparked when he helped cut down oak trees to be used as bridge supports. Despite having only an elementary education, he obtained a teacher’s certificate before attending Highland Park College in Des Moines, Iowa. He later gained admittance to Iowa State University in Ames.

Garver married Laura Scott on Dec. 10, 1905; they had a son and two daughters. After graduating with a civil engineering degree in 1905, Garver worked for the American Bridge Co. in Toledo, Ohio, designing and fabricating steel, some of which was used to rebuild San Francisco following the 1906 earthquake. In 1910, he left for what is now the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to teach structural engineering. In 1918, he informed the engineering firm Alvord and Burdick of Chicago that he was available for war work and was assigned the picric acid project in Little Rock. Picric acid is used in making explosives and was needed during World War I.

Garver and two others working on the project arrived in Little Rock on June 18, 1918, according to his unpublished autobiography. They spent their first night at the Marion Hotel before finding temporary rooms at a home on Ninth Street, where Arkansas Children’s Hospital was later built. When the Armistice was signed on Nov. 11, 1918, signaling the end of the war, construction slowed and eventually stopped. Garver resigned from the University of Illinois to prepare a report on the construction of the plant, after which he decided to stay in Arkansas because he saw a need for structural engineers. “Architects were here in sufficient number to design buildings, but few could design complicated structural features,” he wrote in his autobiography.

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Garver’s first office was in the Gazette Building on the corner of Third and Louisiana streets, and his first private engineering project was to develop standard bridge plans for the State Highway Department. He also provided structural engineering plans for a type of cotton warehouse that reduced the likelihood of fire. Garver soon moved to the Donaghey Building on Seventh and Main streets when Gov. George Washington Donaghey offered him office space in exchange for engineering work on the building. Later joined by partner W.T. Morrow, Garver provided structural engineering services for Little Rock High School, North Little Rock High School, Dunbar High School, the Pulaski County Jail, the Ben McGehee Hotel, the Gay Building, the 555 Building, the original Immanuel Baptist Church and the Wallace Building; he also did work on the science, agriculture and library buildings at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.

During the 1930s Morrow left for work in Tennessee, and Garver devoted more of his time to the Highway Department, serving as chief engineer for two years, but mostly as bridge engineer. Until his retirement from the Highway Department in 1950, Garver consulted on bridge expenditures totaling $75 million. His work touched the state’s most significant bridges, including the bridge over the Arkansas River at Dardanelle and the (now Interstate 55) Memphis-Arkansas Bridge over the Mississippi River in West Memphis.

Garver served as president of the Rotary Club of Little Rock and was honored with a doctor of laws degree conferred by UA in 1948. His son, Mark Garver, became Little Rock’s first traffic engineer in 1952 before partnering with his father in 1954. Garver and Garver was incorporated in 1959.

Neal Garver died on April 23, 1969, in Little Rock, and he is buried at Pinecrest Memorial Park in Little Rock. Following his death, the company he founded went on to deliver such Arkansas projects as Interstate 630; Interstate 540 (later renamed Interstate 49), including the Bobby Hopper Tunnel; and the second incarnation of the Broadway Bridge. — Troy Schulte

This story is adapted by Guy Lancaster from the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas, a project of the Central Arkansas Library System. Visit the site at encyclopediaofarkansas.net.

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Arkansas

Why Ole Miss Should Beat the Arkansas Razorbacks on Saturday | Locked On Ole Miss Podcast

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Why Ole Miss Should Beat the Arkansas Razorbacks on Saturday | Locked On Ole Miss Podcast


Today’s Locked On Ole Miss Podcast discusses why Lane Kiffin and the Ole Miss Rebels will beat the Arkansas Razorbacks in Saturday’s matchup. This will be the next opportunity to play clean football, and I think they will put it together against the Hogs and Sam Pittman and cut down on the penalties that have been allowing teams to stay in the game.

This matchup is absolutely massive for the Rebels because of what it means in the season as a whole, and Taylen Green against the Ole Miss defense will draw everyone’s eye. People look at the Arkansas stats and assume this is a typical Bobby Petrino team, and that isn’t quite right. John Nabors of Locked On Razorbacks said that if Ole Miss goes up by 14, it is over because this team is not a play-from-behind team.

In our final segment of the day, we give our final thoughts on Ole Miss vs. Arkansas and talk about expectations for Saturday and why everything points to an Ole Miss win, but Ole Miss fans before a trip to Fayetteville have seen this movie before.

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Ole Miss Football Reveals Uniform Combination For Road Game vs. Arkansas

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Ole Miss Football Reveals Uniform Combination For Road Game vs. Arkansas


The No. 19 Ole Miss Rebels have a big test on Saturday when they travel to face the Arkansas Razorbacks in Fayetteville, and we now know what uniform combination coach Lane Kiffin’s team will feature on the field.

For the first time in two years, the Rebels will not be wearing a different uniform combination in each of its regular season games. Ole Miss is reusing the uniform it wore earlier in the year at South Carolina, opting to don powder blue helmets, white jerseys with powder blue accents and white pants.

You can view the uniform reveal below, complete with modeling from edge rusher Princely Umanmielen.

Since this is the first year the Rebels have ever used this jersey, they are technically undefeated all-time in this uniform combination after knocking off South Carolina 27-3 in Columbia earlier this year. They hope that good luck follows them to Fayetteville this weekend, a place they have not won since 2008.

The last time Ole Miss reused a uniform combination during the regular season came in 2021, but the last time they did it in a campaign including the postseason was in 2022 when they repeated a uniform in the Texas Bowl against Texas Tech. Assuming this is the Rebels’ only road jersey in this year’s rotation, we should also see a repeat when Ole Miss travels to face Florida later in November.

Kickoff on Saturday between Ole Miss and Arkansas is scheduled for 11 a.m. CT, and the game will be televised on ESPN.





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Arkansas purchases Franklin County land for new prison site • Arkansas Advocate

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Arkansas purchases Franklin County land for new prison site • Arkansas Advocate


The state has purchased 815 acres in Charleston for $2.95 million to build a new prison to help alleviate overcrowding that requires housing inmates in county jails, Arkansas officials announced Thursday. 

The state spends roughly $30 million a year to house about 3,000 inmates in county facilities, according to a press release. More prison beds also likely will be needed in the future due to the Protect Arkansas Act. Backed by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the 2023 law overhauls the state’s parole system and eliminates the possibility of parole for the most serious offenders.

“The Department of Corrections’ mission is to provide safety and hope for Arkansans, but we won’t accomplish that effectively without adequate bed capacity,” Secretary of Corrections Lindsay Wallace said in a statement. 

“Working with Governor Sanders, our Department has opened more than 1,100 prison beds to alleviate our state’s longstanding bed shortage and we plan to open hundreds more soon. With this new facility, we will add even more beds and deliver on our promises to the people of Arkansas.”

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Department of Corrections officials did not have an estimated timeline or a full cost estimate for the prison Thursday. The project is expected to create thousands of construction jobs, and once the prison is built, it’s estimated it will employ nearly 800 people at an annual average salary of $46,600, according to the release.

Located about a half hour east of the Oklahoma border, the secluded Franklin County site offers needed infrastructure for what’s expected to be a 3,000-bed facility, including cell phone reception, water lines, electricity and a nearby fire department, and it’s also close to thousands of workers who could staff the facility, officials said. 

Unofficial news about the purchase broke Wednesday when KDYN Radio announced in a social media post that Sanders would discuss the prison project on air Thursday afternoon. The news garnered hundreds of comments, many of which expressed displeasure about building a prison in the region and concerns about a lack of community input. 

Asked about these issues during Thursday’s broadcast, Sanders said local officials were not involved in the site selection process, which was “a state-funded, state decision,” but said some were notified ahead of the formal announcement. Sanders said her administration has been very open about building a new prison in the state and is committed to working with local stakeholders throughout the rest of the process.

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Additionally, Sanders said the project is a major economic investment in the area and will help improve public safety in the state. 

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“These people that we will be locking up in this prison can either be in this prison and in this facility where they are guarded or they can be in your community, and right now that’s our alternative,” Sanders said. 

“Right now we don’t have the space and we don’t have the ability to arrest and lock them up. So instead of letting people free, we can put them in this facility and make sure that our state and our communities are infinitely safer.”

The governor said she’d like to break ground as soon as possible, but noted it will likely be a couple of years before the facility is fully operational. The Board of Corrections must vote to approve the prison site before construction can begin, according to the governor’s office. 

It’s been two decades since the state last built a new prison. The first phase of the Ouachita River Correctional Unit opened in Malvern in 2004 when Sanders’ father, Mike Huckabee, was governor.  

Nearly 20 years later, former Gov. Asa Hutchinson proposed expanding the Corrections Department’s North Central Unit in Calico Rock by almost 500 beds using surplus funds. State lawmakers approved $75 million for the expansion in December 2022, but the project was put on hold when Sanders took office in January 2023.

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Arkansas prison board OKs managerial contract to develop new facility

Last November, the governor and attorney general began butting heads with the Board of Corrections over plans to expand the state’s prison capacity and who has ultimate authority over Arkansas’ correctional system. The dispute resulted in lawsuits and the firing of former Corrections Secretary Joe Profiri, who was then hired as a senior advisor to the governor. Officials said Thursday they anticipate relying on his expertise while building the new prison.

While discussions about a new prison continued, the Department of Corrections in August turned its attention to immediate expansions when officials announced more than 100 inmates were being moved into a vacant work release facility at the Tucker Unit in Jefferson County. Officials also announced nearly 325 additional beds were planned in three other state correctional facilities in Batesville, Texarkana and Newport. 

In September, Arkansas prison officials approved the acquisition of two facilities in Mississippi and Phillips counties for additional expansion opportunities. 

The Board of Corrections earlier this month voted to approve a contract with Vanir Construction Management to help oversee development of the new prison. 

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The board’s next meeting is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Monday at the Tucker Unit. The agenda includes a discussion about new bed space and an update on the county jail backup.

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