Fort Smith National Historic Site

Something pink for Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Don't forget to schedule your mammogram...

Early detection is crucial in saving your life...

Second I'd like to wish Jan of Jan & Tom's Place a VERY HAPPY BIRTHDAY.. visit her birthday tea party... it is so cute... and wish her a Happy Birthday

Perhaps one of the most interesting places in Fort Smith is the Fort Smith National Historic Site, which includes the remains of the original 1817 fort on the Arkansas River. One of the highlights is the two-story barracks from the second fort, which in the early 1870's became the Federal Courthouse for the Western District of Arkansas. Inside is the restored courtroom of the famed "Hangin' Judge" Isaac C. Parker, and the dingy frontier jail aptly named "Hell on the Border." On the site grounds are Judge Parker's restored gallows, and the original Commissary building - a major military supply center in the 1850's.

See my little darlings sitting on the pillars outside the Barracks and the infamous courtroom

Of course you can't take kids with you and not go into the gift shop... & the Commissary building

An original cannon on the grounds... Memaw and the kids posing for there photo opportunity
And the very eerie gallows.... where they could hang 6 men at one time... eeeeeeeee

A little bit of HISTORY... Hated it in school... LOVE it now...

Holding court for the first time on May 10, 1875, eight men were found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. Judge Parker held court six days a week, often up to ten hours each day and tried 91 defendants in his first eight weeks on the bench. In that first summer, eighteen persons came before him charged with murder and 15 were convicted. Eight of them were sentenced to die on the gallows on September 3, 1875. However, only six would be executed as one was killed trying to escape and a second had his sentence commuted to life in prison because of his youth.

In 21 years on the bench, Judge Parker tried 13,490 cases, 344 of which were capital crimes. 9,454 cases resulted in guilty pleas or convictions. Over the years, Judge Parker sentenced 160 men to death by hanging, though only 79 of them were actually hanged. The rest died in jail, appealed or were pardoned.

Until Later