9. 1905 Junior College Building

This site has been continually used for public education since 1858.  Bennett G. Clark and Sarah W. Clark deeded this land in 1847 to the early trustees of El Dorado Female Institute.  In 1858, Albert Rust sold five acres more to the trustees for $250, stipulating that the land be used for a female academy.  That year the academy opened in a two-story, eight-room frame structure and was run by Reverend and Mrs. William S. Lacy.  (Early trustees’ family names included Goodwin, Bussy, Ammons, Smead, Marr, Clowser, Adams, Rust, Cornish, Hampton, Heines and Hardy.)

During the Civil War, the school’s assembly hall was used as a hospital for Confederate soldiers (see the monument on the downtown square commemorating the soldiers that died). IN 1874, the building joined El Dorado’s public school system and eventually became the school district’s high school, with its first graduating class in 1896.

After the turn of the century, prominent citizens B. W. Reeves, Dr. Morgan Smith, W. H. Matthews, D. E. Armstrong, C. P. McHenry, Rev. J. F. McKinzie, Dr. W. J. Anson, Dr. J. M. Sheppard and Hugh W. Goodwin oversaw the construction and financing of a new high school structure in 1905.  By 1911, the building had electricity and indoor plumbing.  The subsequent years brought many changes in use for the building (a junior high, a high school, a junior college and a community college), but always for education. In 1975, Southern Arkansas University (formerly Southern State College) purchased the property and established Southern Arkansas University-El Dorado Branch the following year.  In 1991, South Arkansas Community College was created as a result of the merging of the Branch and the independent Oil Belt Vocational-Technical School in El Dorado.  Today, this red brick building houses administration and faculty offices for the college.