HELENA - WEST HELENA, ARKANSAS

As I've stated in other places, I had to spend quite a bit of time earlier this year in West Helena, Arkansas for work. This is an area that is not well off, but does show a great dichotomy. In some places you can find great beautiful houses with rundown shacks only blocks away. Most of the pictures here are of some of these houses. The first picture is what I consider to be the quintissential picture for the area. It's the welcome to West Helena sign with a closed Golden Corral steakhouse right behind it.















Those were the nice houses. These next set are houses that are only a few blocks from most of those.













A perfect example of this involves one of the town's bed and breakfast inns. The Edwardian Inn is a great building but across the street and down the road from it are some very dilapidated buildings as you can see in these pictures.
Edwardian Inn


Across the street


One door down


Two doors down

Helena at one time was a very active shipping town for the farmers since it's located right along the Mississippi. However that has changed. Here are some pictures of the Mississippi looking south then north. You can't really see it, but there is a casino on the left hand side of the south picture which provides about the only entertainment for the area.





Downtown Helena looks like any other downtown area except for the levee which has a mural of great Blues artists. This is the Mississippi delta area where the blues really got it's start. Each October the town hosts the King Biscuit Flour Blues Festival. It appears to be the only real event which happens in town throughout the year.







Since I had a lot of free time, I took a ride around the area. There is a lot of flat land where cotton is grown. There are also a lot of these pieces of land with little lean-tos. These are shelters for roosters which, if the rumor is correct, are used for cock fighting. These pictures show some of these items.




Delta Blues Museum, Clarksdale, MS









There is also another interesting piece of history about the town which carries itself out today. Racial segregation is alive and well today. The blacks keep to themselves while the whites do the same. They two races will mix at work, but head their separate ways at the end of the day. West Helena is so divided that there are even numbers of each race on the town council and they can't even get a budget passed because no one from either side will cross. This can be visually seen in the next few pictures. There is a chain link fence in each of them with some run down houses behind the fence. This fence was erected in the 50's I was told to keep the blacks on that side of town. Apparently, at one time, it even had slats in the fence.









These last two pictures were basically to fill out a roll. The first is of the hotel which I stayed in for the most part. It was the best hotel in town. Not the most luxurious, but definitely workable. The second is the sign for the Louisiana Purchase State Park. I thought that there would be some kind of display, but the park was out in the boonies. All I could see was a walkway into the swamp. It didn't look too sturdy so I didn't take my chances....

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This page last updated on: 09/15/98