Hope, Arkansas: Bill Clinton put it on the map; residents are working to preserve it

HOPE, Arkansas ‒ Trains rumble through this southwest Arkansas town 58 times a day. Two stop at the restored railroad depot that doubles as a welcome center downtown, but most roll slowly through; carrying timber, chickens, coal, packages and whatever else needs to make its way to the rest of the country.

They rattle the windows of city hall and, across the tracks, the gate of the two-story white frame house on South Hervey Street where former President Bill Clinton lived for the first four years of his life.

Along with Clinton, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a White House chief of staff, California Secretary of State and several judges were also born here, leading people to wonder what’s in the water ‒ or as locals joke about their best-known crop, what’s in the watermelon?

This community of about 8,000 is the largest and most diverse of America’s 19 towns called Hope. Nearly 150 years old, it’s a place of resilience, of faith, of community.

This summer, USA TODAY visited six of the nation’s Hopes at a time when hope seemed in short supply in national politics.

The country’s mood shifted somewhat midsummer with President Joe Biden’s decision not to seek reelection and to support his Vice President Kamala Harris, instead. Still, we found that this handful of small towns, ranging literally from sea to shining sea offered insights into 2024 America.

Here’s what we found in a town firmly ingrained in the ethos of hope in American politics because of one man, who declared “I still believe in a place called Hope” as he accepted the Democratic presidential nomination in 1992.

Center of the universe

Locals had no warning that Clinton was going to shout out to his then-unknown hometown at the ’92 Convention, held in Madison Square Garden, in the country’s largest city.

“Hope became the center of the universe for a short period of time,” said former mayor Dennis Ramsey.

By the next morning, thousands of journalists began pouring into Hope, scouring for details about what made the place so important to Clinton. Tourists flocked here after he won the presidency.

But the Hope they found was far from what Clinton experienced as a boy.

“We weren’t ready for it. We had no place for people to go,” Ramsey said. “Of course, the Clinton house was in total disarray, and it had a fire in the roof and was abandoned. Downtown at that point in time was not a very appealing place.”

Named for the daughter of the railroad entrepreneur who founded it in 1875, Hope has always been tied to the rail line that cuts northeast to southwest through its heart. The economy has long been centered on agriculture ‒ first cotton, then poultry and cattle.

The young Hope blossomed into the mid-20th century with daily passenger train service, two hotels, three movie theaters, and shops and cafes. “It was idyllic, just a pretty town, thriving. Downtown was the heart of the city,” said Barbara Noble, 66, who runs an antique store downtown.

But the town started to change when passenger rail service to Hope ended in the 1960s. The completion of Interstate 30 between Little Rock and Dallas in the 1970s shifted the center of commerce toward the interstate. By the 1980s, most small shops downtown had shuttered. The decline continued through the 1990s. 

The roller rink, movie theater, putt-putt golf and bowling alley of 37-year-old John Sitzes’ youth are all gone.

Locals expected Clinton’s speech and the attention that followed would mark a turning point, that times would immediately get better. It didn’t work out that way.

“I think we all thought Bill and (his best childhood friend and first chief of staff) Mack McLarty were going to come and save us,” Sitzes said, adding fellow Hope native Huckabee. “The truth of the matter is, there is no evidence any of their money came back to Hope.”

‘You can’t go buy it … but folks have it’

The trains rattle the pictures on Beckie Moore’s walls, but after so many years she barely pauses the conversation when they do. Hope comes from faith, and from the heart, she said.

“You can’t go buy it. You can’t plant a seed and grow it but the folks you’ve talked to today, have it. And it begins here. Hope “has to begin in the heart,” Moore, 70, said as she placed a hand above her own.

Moore is a whirlwind with a short gray pixie cut and flamboyant clothes, who has played a pivotal role in restoring her hometown.

In 1994, she led a group of Hope citizens as they began raising money to restore the house where Clinton spent his early years.

She served as executive director of the Clinton Birthplace Foundation, running the visitors’ center and offering tours of the home after its 1997 opening to the public. Within a few years though, tourist interest dropped to only a few hundred visitors a month. It was taken over by the National Park Service, which still runs it.

Moore, now retired as the director of the Hope-Hempstead County Chamber of Commerce, pops into store after store in the town’s historic downtown, greeting shop owners by name and offering the history of each building: when the shop opened, what was there before, what work went into making it operable again.

Her apartment takes up the entire top floor of a renovated bank building on Main Street, the manager’s glass-walled office transformed into a master bedroom. During tornado season she waits out threatening storms in an old bank vault. The parking lot next door was once her father’s grocery store.

“I tell people I park in the cereal aisle. I can still see every row in his store,” she said.

All politics is local

Despite its place in political history, citizens have tried to keep national politics from seeping into their little town. Like Arkansas as a whole, Hempstead County, where Hope is located, swung hard to the right after decades of being the last blue state in the South. People know they can’t win with a D by their name. Trump signs flourish.

During the Republican primary this spring, a dark money group from out of state attacked one candidate as a Democrat in mailers, ads and text messages. The other candidate said she wasn’t involved and didn’t know how to stop it.

“We couldn’t understand it,“ said Noble, the antique shop owner. “They don’t have a dog in this fight. It was for state representative. It was embarrassing.”

The attacked candidate, a long-time public official in another town, won the runoff.

Locals hope it doesn’t happen again. Here people say a politician’s main job is serving the community over the party.

“We know things go in cycles. So hopefully, we can see that cycle go back to where it needs to be. If we can see it in our small town, I’m sure, hopefully on the national scale, we can see it as well,” Steve Montgomery, a current board member and former mayor, told USA TODAY. 

Sitzes said people shouldn’t rely on politicians for hope.

“I don’t need other people’s speech and rah-rahs to find the hope I have in my own abilities,” he said. “I think if people are looking for hope then they need to dig their feet into the dirt and go get it.” 

The lure of Hope

Sitzes left for college with no plans to return but was drawn back by a business opportunity in his early 20s. He located Bobcat Freight on Main Street near the train depot. A taxidermied bobcat ‒ the high school’s mascot ‒ stands guard over his sparse office. In the early 2000s, downtown had the cheapest rent he could find and his business doesn’t rely on foot traffic.

John Caldwell spent years renovating the old Capital Hotel building across from the train depot that would eventually house Tailgaters Burger Co., which opened in 2011 as one of the few businesses downtown.

Tailgaters is now a bustling restaurant with wide bright windows, a motorcycle hanging from the ceiling and sawed-off tailgates attached to the walls in place of chairs. A neon sign and a decorative antique truck mark its entrance. Families and teens filled the tables on a weekday night.

Co-owner Sharon Caldwell laughed off the noise as she slipped a side of fried okra onto the table, saying she’s known the teens since they were children.

The push to rebuild downtown began in 2013, around the time Amtrak passenger rail service resumed in Hope after nearly 20 years of lobbying from civic leaders.

Moore left Hope for a few years to run nonprofits across the country but was pulled back in 2017 to lead the Chamber of Commerce. She’s followed in the footsteps of her father, who was on the school board and the Citizen’s National Bank board when she was a child.

“I saw him pouring into community and I was always right there with him,” she said. “Every day when I drive into this parking lot…I still say ‘hey dad, had a good day. Let me tell you about it.’”

Business owners formed the volunteer Hope Downtown Network, which built The HUB, an outdoor space for free concerts and the weekly farmers market. Now, people stop to take photos of statues of a mother and child running to catch a train, a conductor statue patiently waiting.

Then, in 2019, Clinton, McLarty and their childhood best friend Joe Purvis lit a fire under the downtown restoration effort when they spoke at the annual chamber dinner.

“They said ‘you know, you guys, you’re missing the boat. You have so much to capitalize on. You don’t know what you have here,’” remembered Noble, who had come back herself in 2018 to take over her mother’s antique store. “It was eye-opening for a lot of people. You can get stuck in the mud in a rut in a small town like this but I saw a lot of [people] starting to say ‘hey, we can do some things here.’” 

Today, downtown hosts several restaurants, clothing stores, a photo studio, a tuxedo rental place, a row of antique shops, a hardware store, a coffee shop as well as an Asian grocer and a Hispanic ice cream shop. The upper floors of many buildings hold offices or apartments.

“Welcome to Hope” flags hang from newly installed light poles, flower boxes are full, strings of lights illuminate alleys and murals highlight the town’s history: including Arkie the Alligator, who weighed a record-setting 500 pounds when caught here in 1952.

Moore said downtown has gone from 60% vacancy to 6%, and city leaders are pushing property owners to renovate, sell, or knock down vacant or abandoned properties.

One day this spring, two workers were cutting boards in a vacant building, where Moore said the owners hope to create a youth gathering space.

“Hallelujah for these precious people who saw the hope and saw the potential and began to breathe life back into downtown Hope,” Moore said.

Leaving and coming back

Still, Hope has its challenges.

Anyone with money has left, said Sitzes, who lives 14 miles down the road. Doctors and lawyers send their kids to private schools or have moved away. The county has one of the state’s lowest income rates and one of the lowest voter registration rates. Low turnout in elections makes it difficult to get bond measures or policy changes approved.

While the four-block downtown has been reinvigorated, the surrounding neighborhoods are spotty. Pristine homes with blooming rose bushes stand alongside burnt-out homes with sagging porches. Children play barefoot in yards with cars on concrete blocks while a collarless dog grooms itself in an abandoned lot taken over by weeds. Many neighborhood roads are deeply potholed.

When a train comes through, traffic backs up.

Noble said the city and residents need to get serious about code enforcement, and improving homes if they expect the town to attract new industry.

“When you drive into residential areas, you think ‘I can’t bring people here’,” she said. “There are groups of us now that we’re pushing the envelope a little bit just to say, hey, let’s really do something here that can make us all proud.”

At Hebrews 11:1 Coffee Shop on Main Street, a handful of recent high school graduates talked excitedly this summer about the future. Like many rural towns, Hope’s population has steadily declined, but all the teens said they plan to return after college.

Tara Henry, 18, who is attending Arkansas State University in Jonesboro this fall to study information systems, said as she weighs her first opportunity to vote for president in November, how people talk about the country’s future can be scary.

“It feels like right now in this country, lots of things are uncertain, and things are constantly changing,” she said. In contrast, Hope “is a place where people are supporting you and building you up. It feels like they really want you to succeed here. I’ve loved that kind of community.

“I feel like I will be back.”