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Authors: Greg Day
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Memphis, so the earth was shored up, trestles were built, and construction of the railway moved forward.
But why “Marked Tree”? There are two prevailing stories. As speculated earlier, the area was indeed home to an indigenous people, in this case the Osage and Cherokee Indian tribes, and they had discovered a wonderful geographical feature of the area. At one point in the current location of Marked Tree, the Saint Francis and Little Rivers are separated by only one-fourth of a mile of land. This meant that if a traveler wanted to navigate between rivers, eight miles of paddling could be eliminated by simply carrying his canoe across a narrow strip of land. The Indians spotted an old oak tree on the Saint Francis side of the future town and, in order to identify this crossing, “marked” it for easy identification.
There is also another, more sinister possibility. The John A. Murrell gang, an infamous clan of murderers and robbers, specializing in horse and slave theft, had several hideouts in Helena, Arkansas, in the White Swamps about one hundred miles south of Marked Tree. This was an especially terrifying group of thugs. Murrell himself took to the practice of stealing and reselling slaves, killing the new buyers, and selling the slaves again, doing this until the slaves had been sold often enough to be recognized. At this point, he would disembowel them, fill their abdominal cavities with stones, and sink them down into in the water, never to be seen again. 41 The gang would often rendezvous at a certain point along the river, at a tree marked with a large “M.” Speculation about Murrell and the town’s name abounds, and no one can say with any authority exactly how Marked Tree was named, but one thing is for certain: there is no other town in the world so named, and that distinction is a source of pride for the residents of the tiny hamlet.
A few other things about Marked Tree can be determined without ever setting foot there.
• It is relatively hot. Marked Tree averages fifty-three days a year over ninety degrees.
• With a listed population of 2,800, it is very small, although it is the second-largest town in Poinsett County. (Only the town of Truman—population 6,889—is larger).
• It is located at an altitude of 224 feet above sea level and a distance of thirty-seven miles northwest of Memphis, Tennessee.
• It is situated some 1,100 miles west of New York City and 1,800 miles east of Los Angeles, which probably suits the locals just fine.
• There are twenty Protestant churches listed in Marked Tree, one Catholic Church, and one Kingdom Hall for Jehovah’s Witnesses, but no Mormon temples or Jewish synagogues.
Marked Tree is also at the center of a sportsman’s paradise. It is fifteen miles from Big Lake National Wildlife Refuge, a 1,230-acre wildlife management area (WMA). The lake that gives the WMA its name was formed during the New Madrid earthquakes. The area is thick with tupelo, willow, buttonbush, and cypress, as well as large quantities of various hardwoods. Here one will find an abundance of waterfowl, mostly ducks, and hunting is, of course, permitted. In addition to ducks, hunters can go after deer as well as squirrels, rabbits, and other “fur-bearers,” but because of frequent flooding, only ducks are a sure thing. With the plethora of mosquitoes and biting flies present throughout the area, many hunters choose to lodge in nearby Blytheville rather than rough it in a tent.
There’s a nice public library in Marked Tree; a very small campus of Arkansas State University; and a public school system consisting of one elementary school, which houses kindergarten through sixth grade, and one high school (“Home of the Indians,” for whom Mark Byers played football and basketball) for grades seven through twelve. Mark attended these schools from kindergarten through his senior year. If one were to walk the hallways of Marked Tree High School, one would see the senior class
But why “Marked Tree”? There are two prevailing stories. As speculated earlier, the area was indeed home to an indigenous people, in this case the Osage and Cherokee Indian tribes, and they had discovered a wonderful geographical feature of the area. At one point in the current location of Marked Tree, the Saint Francis and Little Rivers are separated by only one-fourth of a mile of land. This meant that if a traveler wanted to navigate between rivers, eight miles of paddling could be eliminated by simply carrying his canoe across a narrow strip of land. The Indians spotted an old oak tree on the Saint Francis side of the future town and, in order to identify this crossing, “marked” it for easy identification.
There is also another, more sinister possibility. The John A. Murrell gang, an infamous clan of murderers and robbers, specializing in horse and slave theft, had several hideouts in Helena, Arkansas, in the White Swamps about one hundred miles south of Marked Tree. This was an especially terrifying group of thugs. Murrell himself took to the practice of stealing and reselling slaves, killing the new buyers, and selling the slaves again, doing this until the slaves had been sold often enough to be recognized. At this point, he would disembowel them, fill their abdominal cavities with stones, and sink them down into in the water, never to be seen again. 41 The gang would often rendezvous at a certain point along the river, at a tree marked with a large “M.” Speculation about Murrell and the town’s name abounds, and no one can say with any authority exactly how Marked Tree was named, but one thing is for certain: there is no other town in the world so named, and that distinction is a source of pride for the residents of the tiny hamlet.
A few other things about Marked Tree can be determined without ever setting foot there.
• It is relatively hot. Marked Tree averages fifty-three days a year over ninety degrees.
• With a listed population of 2,800, it is very small, although it is the second-largest town in Poinsett County. (Only the town of Truman—population 6,889—is larger).
• It is located at an altitude of 224 feet above sea level and a distance of thirty-seven miles northwest of Memphis, Tennessee.
• It is situated some 1,100 miles west of New York City and 1,800 miles east of Los Angeles, which probably suits the locals just fine.
• There are twenty Protestant churches listed in Marked Tree, one Catholic Church, and one Kingdom Hall for Jehovah’s Witnesses, but no Mormon temples or Jewish synagogues.
Marked Tree is also at the center of a sportsman’s paradise. It is fifteen miles from Big Lake National Wildlife Refuge, a 1,230-acre wildlife management area (WMA). The lake that gives the WMA its name was formed during the New Madrid earthquakes. The area is thick with tupelo, willow, buttonbush, and cypress, as well as large quantities of various hardwoods. Here one will find an abundance of waterfowl, mostly ducks, and hunting is, of course, permitted. In addition to ducks, hunters can go after deer as well as squirrels, rabbits, and other “fur-bearers,” but because of frequent flooding, only ducks are a sure thing. With the plethora of mosquitoes and biting flies present throughout the area, many hunters choose to lodge in nearby Blytheville rather than rough it in a tent.
There’s a nice public library in Marked Tree; a very small campus of Arkansas State University; and a public school system consisting of one elementary school, which houses kindergarten through sixth grade, and one high school (“Home of the Indians,” for whom Mark Byers played football and basketball) for grades seven through twelve. Mark attended these schools from kindergarten through his senior year. If one were to walk the hallways of Marked Tree High School, one would see the senior class
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