If fast-paced city life has you down, why not take a step back into a slower, simpler time in Arkansas’ past? All over the state,  exhibits and tours highlighting Arkansas’ rich cultural heritage.

Central Arkansas residents don’t have to go far to encounter Arkansas history. True to its name, the Historic Arkansas Museum, 200 E. Third St., in Little Rock, encompasses a number of structures to give visitors a look at centuries gone by. Among these is Little Rock’s oldest standing building, the Hinderliter Grog Shop. Built around 1826, the shop provided a watering hole and sometimes an overnight stay for travelers on the Arkansas River. The museum also includes residential houses built in the mid 1900s.

“It’s really what’s left of our earliest city living, but in those days, most people in Arkansas didn’t live in the city,” said Ellen Korenblat, communications director. To highlight the more common rural life of the time, the Historic Arkansas Museum also features an 1850s era-farmstead that helps showcase the rural life common to the vast majority of Arkansans at that time.

(Please see the August 2008 issue of AY magazine to read this article in its entirety.)