From the ArkLaTex to the Ozarks, Arkansans have their regional identities.

But two regions — the Ozarks and Delta — seem to be more solidified in the Arkansas ethos.

Ben Johnson of El Dorado, a retired history professor from Southern Arkansas University in Magnolia, has a theory on why that is.

New Deal reforms in the 1930s brought more attention to the Ozarks and the Delta as Arkansas pondered its history and place in the wider world, said Johnson.

And then there’s the music.

Folk music was becoming more popular in the 1930s and ’40s, said Johnson. Appalachia got most of the attention, but the Ozarks — being sort of an extension of Appalachian culture — also benefited.

“Basically, the Ozarks became a cultural product,” said Johnson. “The Arkansas identity really became tied, I think, to the Ozarks. When you think of Arkansas, you think of the hill people. That was part of the tourist branding, the promotional literature for the state after World War II and so forth. As part of that process, the Ozarks became sort of the cultural foundation of how people understand and see Arkansas.”

The Delta, of course, gave birth to the blues, and Helena became a magnet for blues musicians looking to get on the King Biscuit Time radio show and possibly make a deal with the devil.

“People in much of eastern Arkansas, once you get past those who identify with Central Arkansas, generally embrace the identity of being from the Delta. It suggests identity, heritage, a sense of place,” said Thomas Jacques, interim director of the Delta Cultural Center in downtown Helena-West Helena.

So today, the Ozarks and the Delta are often-used identifiers.

But the Ouachitas and West Gulf Coastal Plain? Not so much.

“Southwest Arkansas or Gulf Coastal Plain is an identifiable region with distinctive historical and economic development but clearly does not have the cultural heft and recognition of the Ozarks and Delta,” said Johnson.

The Ozark Mountains are generally considered to be north of Interstate 40 on the western side of the state, as opposed to the Ouachita Mountains to the south. The Ozarks and Ouachitas are geologically different. The Ouachitas were caused by the collision of tectonic plates. The Ozarks are an eroded plateau that was shoved into an elevated position by that collision.

The Delta is a word often used to describe at least part of, if not all of, the Mississippi Alluvial Plain. To many, the word Delta conjures an image of the Deep South, of cotton fields and plantations.

COMPASS DIRECTIONS

While some people use physiographic identifiers, others use region names to explain where they’re from — like Northwest Arkansas or eastern Arkansas.

“I think the difference between a directional identity, like being from eastern Arkansas, and a geographic identity, like being from the Ozarks, is that there is a kind of regional culture to these different geographic regions,” said C.L. Bledsoe, a novelist and poet who grew up in Wynne and now lives in Virginia.

When Arkansans meet Arkansans, they very likely would introduce themselves and say what town they’re from.

But, as Johnson said, if they’re asked where that town is, the respondent would be likely to offer geographical markers.

“My wife, who is a Union County native, commonly responds that El Dorado ‘is 15 miles north of the Louisiana line and in the middle of the bottom of the state,’” said Johnson.

Kenneth Bridges, a history professor at South Arkansas College in El Dorado, said Arkansans from cities or immediate suburbs will usually identify as being from those cities, or they’ll say Northwest Arkansas if they’re from Fayetteville, Springdale, Rogers or Bentonville.

“Directional or regional references will often be used if they are from smaller towns,” said Bridges. “Here in South Arkansas, we will often just say ‘South Arkansas,’ which generally indicates anything within 100 miles of the state line. Central Arkansas will generally refer to anything within an hour or 100 miles of Little Rock.”

Bridges said the Delta in Arkansas usually refers to the counties adjacent to the Mississippi River. That’s considerably less territory than the Mississippi Alluvial Plain, which stretches west almost to Little Rock and includes all or part of 27 Arkansas counties.

This might be why some people who live in subregions of the Mississippi Alluvial Plain, such as the Grand Prairie, identify with the subregion instead of saying they’re from the Delta.

“Even Union County is part of the Delta, technically, but no one here really thinks of it as part of the Delta,” said Bridges. “It’s usually just considered as a matter of proximity more than technical precision. We had a factory in World War II here that was called the Ozark Ordnance Works even though we are nowhere near the Ozarks. It’s really a matter of perspective.”

Bridges said the El Dorado-Magnolia-Camden area would sometimes refer to itself as the “Golden Triangle” area years ago.

“Sometimes here in south Arkansas, we will refer to ourselves as ‘LA,’ or ‘Lower Arkansas,’” he said. “Far southwest Arkansas will sometimes call itself the ‘ArkLaTex’ while far southeast Arkansas will sometimes call itself the ‘ArkLaMiss.’”

SUBREGIONS

Arkansas’ subregions can confound visitors.

We have the Boston Mountains, which are nowhere near Massachusetts. The Boston Mountains are the southern portion of the Ozarks.

And there’s an unusual geographical formation in east Arkansas that seems, at least to some, to have an identity all its own.

Crowley’s Ridge rises some 250 feet above the Mississippi Alluvial Plain and stretches from southern Missouri south to Helena-West Helena, with a slight break at Marianna created by the L’Anguille River as it flowed across the ridge.

While some east Arkansas residents say they’re from the Delta, others say they’re from Crowley’s Ridge.

Still others, who live on Crowley’s Ridge, say they’re from both, arguing that Crowley’s Ridge is in the Delta.

“I always said I grew up in the Delta,” said Charlie Hart, who grew up in Wynne and now lives in North Little Rock. “The ridge just cuts a swath through the Delta in my eyes.”

But Bledsoe, the writer from Wynne, claims the ridge as his home turf.

“Being from Wynne, I think of myself as from Crowley’s Ridge, but I grew up farming in the Delta,” he said. “For me, as a writer, where I’m from is important. Donald Harington famously wrote about the Ozarks through the lens of the summers he spent there as a child, I’ve read, but he was originally from Little Rock, which is very different.”

The landscape and history influences a writer, said Bledsoe.

“I’m a southern writer, but more than that I’m an Arkansas writer and I write about Crowley’s Ridge and the Delta,” he said. “Those places are home to me.”

Edward C. Dodge, who teaches at Catholic High School for Boys in Little Rock, spent his younger years in Helena and Gosnell, near Blytheville, before going to college at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro.

“I always thought of Crowley’s Ridge as a feature within the Arkansas Delta,” he said. “I also suspect that more Arkansans know the Delta than Crowley’s Ridge. Combined, using the Delta to locate Wynne seems a stronger choice to me.”

Farther to the north, Paul McFadden, vice president of student affairs and associate professor of Biblical studies at Crowley’s Ridge College in Paragould, very much favors the ridge reference.

“Up this way, the ones that are here, we talk about the ridge a lot,” he said. “I’ve been working here for 41 years, and the ridge is all I know. Crowley’s Ridge is a big thing to me and the people who live here. Delta, I never use that term in describing my life or what I’ve been about. It’s always been the ridge.”

He was born in Wynne, raised at Hickory Ridge in Cross County and went to high school in Wheatley before moving to Paragould to attend Crowley’s Ridge College, where he graduated in 1983.

“The ridge out here just feels different from the areas on each side of it, east and west,” he said.

Dodge said Delta may be a better identifier for the part of Arkansas in the general vicinity of Memphis.

“Living in Conway, when I hear of the Delta, I definitely think closer to Memphis,” he said. “And while I’m relying on childhood memories, I’d say the experience suggested there’s quite a difference between Jonesboro and Helena.”

“Some people in northeast Arkansas embrace the Crowley’s Ridge identity, but that’s not common once one gets down to Helena,” said Jacques. “You could probably figure geographically that once you cross Interstate 40 [heading south], there is very little hemming or hawing — you’re simply from the Arkansas Delta.”

GEOGRAPHICAL REVELATIONS

Many people don’t realize they’re from a distinct, named geographical region until after they’ve moved away.

Joe David Rice, the former Arkansas tourism director, grew up in Jonesboro, which is on Crowley’s Ridge, but Rice didn’t know that when he was a kid.

“I don’t think I heard of Crowley’s Ridge until I moved to Little Rock and got a job with Parks and Tourism,” he said.

Rice said he knew Jonesboro was in the Delta because of the mosquitoes.

“That was sort of the defining cultural icon for people in the Delta,” he said.

As more people move into Arkansas from out of state — particularly to rapidly growing Northwest Arkansas — the use of the regional, geographic identifiers within Arkansas will probably wane, he said.

Brooks Blevins, an expert on the Ozarks at Missouri State University who grew up in Izard County, Arkansas, said he was in college when he realized that he’d grown up in the Ozarks.

“We identified as hill people — especially in contrast to the people from the ‘bottoms,’ the flat-land people, of northeast Arkansas,” he said. “But we didn’t think about being from the Ozarks.

“When I thought of the Ozarks, I thought of Stone County because of the Ozark Folk Center State Park and Springfield, Mo., because we watched Springfield TV stations and they were always throwing the O-word around,” said Blevins.

“As a kid I was responding to the Ozarks as a ‘brand,’ not particularly as a place,” he said. “Today, though, 40 years later, I think the Ozarks as a brand name has expanded, and there are many more people — still not all, but more than there used to be — who have Ozarks somewhere near the top of their identity list. And I think it would be more unusual today for someone to grow up in the rural Ozarks, like I did, and not have some recognition of being in and a part of some place called the Ozarks.”

But now, Blevins very much identifies as being from the Ozarks.

“Born and raised a hillbilly, but the Ozark identity, I guess you would say, was something learned or acquired in adulthood,” he said.

When traveling recently to states out west, Blevins said he told people he’s from Arkansas.

“I don’t know that I mentioned the Ozarks to anyone, probably because I wasn’t sure they would know where/what I was talking about,” he said.

“As for why Ozark and not Ouachita caught on,” Blevins said, “I don’t know for sure, but I suspect some of it has to do with the weird spelling of Ouachita and the inability of people to pronounce it, if you haven’t grown up with the word. Plus, the word Ozark has been in use for the Arkansas hill country longer than Ouachita has, and it’s probably just a more aesthetically pleasing and catchy word. And there hasn’t been a ton of stuff written about the Ouachitas specifically, in terms of history and culture.”