Rex Nelson: T.H. Barton and the Coliseum


The basketballs are bouncing again this week in Little Rock’s old Barton Coliseum, and the memories will flow as I pull off Roosevelt Road, park my car and walk into the building for the first time in several years. Does that “dirty oatmeal” still hang from the ceiling? Will the narrow corridors be crowded? Will the same old troughs be in the men’s room? Will Barton be just as I remember it?

I’ll remember having been there with my father to watch the most hyped high school basketball game in the state’s history – a Fort Smith Northside team led by Ron Brewer playing a Conway team led by Marvin Delph in the finals of the Overall Tournament in 1974. Northside, coached by the great Gayle Kaundart, won in front of a packed house. I was 14 years old at the time and in love with high school sports.

Kaundart, who was inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame in 1984, coached at Green Forest from 1950-53, Conway from 1953-55, Northside from 1955-74 and then at the junior college level at Westark Community College (now the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith). The Alma native had played in 1949 on the first Arkansas Intercollegiate Conference championship basketball team at what’s now the University of the Ozarks in Clarksville. He won five state championships at Northside as a head coach and then won the 1981 national junior college championship at Westark.

I vividly remember looking in awe at the “Silver Fox” during that game. My father was in the sporting goods business, selling athletic supplies to high schools and colleges across the state. Because of that, many of my childhood heroes were high school football and basketball coaches. Yes, it was a simpler time.

As I walk into Barton, I’ll also remember those weeks in early August that were spent with my dad at the annual coaching clinic, where his Southwest Sporting Goods Co. would always have a display. I’m dating myself, but that was back when the Magnolia Inn on Roosevelt was a nice place to stay. We would conclude the week on Saturday by attending the high school all-star basketball game (there was only a boys’ game in those days) in the afternoon at Barton and the high school all-star football game in the evening at War Memorial Stadium. My parents’ anniversary fell on Aug. 11, and they would celebrate (while allowing me to tag along) by eating between the two games at Hank’s Dog House on Roosevelt. It didn’t take much to impress a boy from Arkadelphia, and I can promise you that I was most impressed by the live lobsters in the tank out front.

As I watch high school basketball this week, I’ll remember attending the old NAIA District 17 Tournament at Barton as the AIC schools (and the occasional non-AIC squad such as John Brown University) battled to see who would represent the state at the NAIA national tournament in Kansas City. By college, I was broadcasting Ouachita Baptist University games on the radio from courtside at Barton, making me feel as if I had reached the big time.

I’ll remember when the University of Arkansas Razorbacks would play a couple of basketball games each December at Barton. As the sports editor of the Arkadelphia newspaper, my primary responsibility was covering the city’s two AIC teams. I rarely made it to Fayetteville, usually only seeing the Razorbacks when they played at Barton or the Pine Bluff Convention Center (yes, I was in Pine Bluff in 1984 when North Carolina fell).

After moving back to Little Rock in 1989 following a four-year stint in Washington, D.C., I began attending University of Arkansas at Little Rock basketball games at Barton. Though I was the political editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette by then rather than a sportswriter, I somehow managed to secure media passes to sit at courtside on March 7, 1995, for a heartbreaker. Wimp Sanderson’s Trojans lost in the Sun Belt Conference Tournament finals by only three points to No. 23 Western Kentucky before a full house and a national ESPN audience.

The venue might not be the most modern this week, but the memories will indeed be rich for someone of my age who grew up with Arkansas sports as his passion.

Barton Coliseum, which seats more than 7,000 people, was dedicated on Sept. 29, 1952, in honor of Thomas Harry Barton of Lion Oil Co fame. Barton, as it turns out, is one of the more fascinating characters in Arkansas history. He was born at Marlin, Texas, in September 1881. He entered Texas A&M at age 16. A lack of funds forced him to leave college during his sophomore year. T.H. Barton entered the U.S. Army in 1901 and left in 1904 with the rank of corporal.

Barton moved to south Arkansas after the war to work in the banking and lumber business. In 1906, he was commissioned in the Arkansas National Guard with the temporary rank of captain. He moved into the regular Army during World War I and was discharged in 1919 with the rank of major. He remained in the Army Reserve until 1936, retiring as a colonel. From then until his death in 1960, he was known by most Arkansans simply as Col. Barton.

Barton had arrived in El Dorado in 1921, soon after oil was discovered in the area. He organized the El Dorado Natural Gas Co., which soon became the El Dorado Natural Gas and Fuel Corp. He sold the company in 1929 to Cities Service Co. Barton was a stockholder in Lion Oil and agreed to become the struggling company’s president in 1929. The turnaround he engineered is among the greatest success stories in the history of Arkansas business.

The company bought leases in the Smackover oil field, and those leases proved successful, allowing for a rapid expansion. It was Lion Oil, in fact, that discovered the third major producing zone in the Smackover field in 1935. Two years later, Lion Oil drilled a wildcat discovery well in the Shuler field, which was located about 15 miles west of El Dorado. Barton quickly leased another 7,000 acres in that field. By the mid-1950s, Lion Oil had 3,000 employees and almost 2,000 service stations across the South.

Barton had even diversified the company during World War II by operating the government’s Ozark Ordnance Plant near El Dorado. The plant produced ammonia that would serve as a raw material for nitrates used in explosives. After the war, Lion Oil purchased the plant from the government and operated it as the Lion Chemical Co. The ammonia produced there was used in fertilizers.

Having been raised on a farm in Texas, Barton took a deep interest in the Arkansas Livestock Show Association, which annually put on the Arkansas State Fair and Livestock Show. Though earlier events across Arkansas had been called a state fair, the current version began in 1938.

“Arkansas was still feeling the effects of the Depression well into the 1930s,” Dennis Schick writes in the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture. “The economy was in disarray, and the primary cash crop in the state (cotton) was in decline. In 1937, a survey by the University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service revealed that livestock would be successful in the state. A group of leaders, who later formed the Arkansas Livestock Show Association, decided to hold a livestock exposition to educate farmers and to promote the new industry.”

The first such event was held Nov. 9-13, 1938, at Fifth and Smothers streets in North Little Rock. The Arkansas Livestock Show Association lost $23,000 that year. The next year’s State Fair was moved back to October in anticipation of warmer weather, and promoters brought in a young film star named Roy Rogers. The fair was held in North Little Rock through 1942. A fire destroyed the fair buildings on the north side of the river late that year, and the 1943 event was held at Pine Bluff. Due to World War II, there was no State Fair in 1944 or 1945.

In 1945, the Little Rock Chamber of Commerce offered the Arkansas Livestock Show Association several acres facing Roosevelt Road. Those holdings would be expanded through the years. Using his political connections at the state Capitol, Barton helped convince the Legislature in 1945 to appropriate $250,000 per year for two years to the Arkansas Livestock Show Association.

Barton also contributed personal and corporate funds as construction of the arena began in 1948. No one was surprised when the finished facility was named after the El Dorado oilman.

The colonel likely would have been shocked if he had been told at the time that the building would be hosting high school state championship basketball games more than 60 years after its dedication.

Editor’s Note:

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported total attendance for the 14-game high school state championship finals of 83,216. That number sets a new attendance record for the event.

To quote our good friend Skip Rutherford, “Barton is back and back in the history books.”

We agree. Amazing weekend of hoops action at “old Barton Coliseum.”

Tags: , ,