Well, some people were ambushed, but it wasn’t too bad

For a time in the 1920s, Rosie, Arkansas, did not quite live up to its name.

Rosie was formed in the second decade of the 19th century, with the opening of a post office in 1819. The town was first known as White Run, after the nearby White River. As with most rural Arkansas towns, Rosie had its ups and downs, name changes, good times and bad. The name Rosie was affixed to the town in 1888 with the opening of another post office. The White Run post office had closed in 1833.

“One of the deadliest episodes in Independence County history occurred in the early 1920s and concerned the Kickers, an organization against the government-ordered dipping of cattle for the eradication of ticks. Rosie was touched by this grassroots vigilante movement when barns were burned and a young Finis Wyatt (later the noted physician of the area) was fired upon while standing in his yard. Other parts of the county saw even more violence. On March 20, 1922, Charles Jeffrey, one of the inspectors, was killed from ambush on Hutchinson Mountain on the Jamestown Road, and his partner, Lee Harper, was wounded but survived.”

http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=8483

Also: “Dissidents in Arkansas, known as ‘kickers,’ usually hailed from a yeoman group that actively asserted their resistance to change in agricultural practices in the only way available to them, through violence. Opposition was noted in several publicized incidences, most of them resulting in a court case and fine for refusal to dip, which was a relatively tame act of defiance compared to more aggressive actions in the form of destroying vats, damage to property and murder. Several counties reported the use of dynamite to demolish dipping vats - a common occurrence throughout the quarantined areas of the South - and Independence County cattle inspector Charles Jeffery was shot to death in 1922 by a posse of dipping opponents. The barn of another federal inspector in the county was destroyed by fire and he reported that he had previously received death threats, as had an inspector in Rosie, whose barn was also burned.”

-- Holly Hope, Dip That Tick: Texas Fever Eradication in Arkansas, 1907-1943, Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, Little Rock, 2005.

In the early part of the 19th century, farmers saw more and more of what they believed to be “federal intervention” in long-established ways of doing things. Opposition was natural, especially considering the expense of building dipping vats and herding cattle from farms to a central location and back to the farm. Some of the opposition, too, might have been caused by the federal government’s decision that cow tick quarantines applied only to states of the former Confederacy.

Federal supremacy became even more concrete when Washington took advantage of the Depression of 1929-40 to remove people from failing farms with the Federal Resettlement Administration and other New Deal agencies, all designed to “assist” U.S. citizens in their daily lives.

Town in decline

The population of the Desha, Ark., area has dropped by about 85 since 2005, from 642 to around 560 in 2014.

Wikipedia does not list a population for Desha itself, but does show Independence County with a 2015 population of 37,052. Independence County is in the eastern part of North Central Arkansas and was the ninth county formed in Arkansas Territory, in 1820. Independence is a dry county.

Desha is 97% white, a figure that closely corresponds to Independence County’s 95%. In the county, 10% of families and 13% of the entire population has income below the federal poverty line.

Desha is in Zip Code 72527. Fifty-two percent of the population are women. Forty-eight percent live in husband-wife households, meaning man and woman in Arkansas.

By https://www.unitedstateszipcodes.org/72527/ figures, 100% of the population lives in “occupied housing units.” The plurality of houses in the Zip Code were built in the 1980s. Sixty-two percent of employed people work full time; 27% work part time; and 11% report no earnings. Average household income in 2014 was $42,246. Eighty-five percent of the working people get their money through wages paid by an employer. One hundred percent of the workers get to the job by car, van or truck. No public transportation, no taxis, no motorcycles, no bicycles or walking. Two hundred-forty-eight workers get to work within 10 to 19 minutes. Ninety-two percent of the population 25 and over has a high school diploma.

Desha is on Arkansas Highway 14/25, a few miles south of the White River. Here is a satellite image: https://www.google.com/maps/@35.7439856,-91.765883,159m/data=!3m1!1e3

Just a little north of due east from Desha, you will see a dam on the river, at the end of Lock 2 Road. The south side of the dam has a lock for river traffic.

In the satellite image, a cluster of house trailers has taken root on Moody Street, while on Hulsey Street, quite a few cars, trucks and other metal items have gone to die.

Batesville Regional Airport is just east of Desha.