FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The powerful and dramatic story of how a group of Arkansans saved the Buffalo River was beautifully told in Neil Compton’s 1992 book The Battle for the Buffalo River: The History of America’s First National River. Unavailable for a number of years, the book is now back in print and in paperback ($29.95), with a new Foreword by Kenneth L. Smith, re-issued as a joint project of the University of Arkansas Press and the Ozark Society Foundation.

Under the auspices of the 1938 Flood Control Act, the U.S. Corps of Engineers began to pursue aggressive dam-building campaigns around the country. A grateful public generally lauded their efforts, but when they turned their attention to Arkansas’ Buffalo River, the vocal opposition their proposed projects generated dumbfounded them. Never before had anyone challenged the Corps’ assumption that damming a river was an improvement.

Led by Neil Compton, a physician in Bentonville, Ark., a group of area conservationists formed the Ozark Society to join the battle for the Buffalo. This book is the account of this decade-long struggle that drew in such political figures as Supreme Court justice William O. Douglas —
“All of us who have been on it love it. It would be sheer desecration to 
destroy it by a dam or otherwise” — Sen. J. William Fulbright, and Gov. Orval Faubus. The battle finally ended in 1972 with President Richard Nixon’s designation of the Buffalo as the first national river. Drawing on hundreds of personal letters, photographs, maps, newspaper articles and reminiscences, Compton’s lively book details the trials, gains, setbacks and ultimate triumph in one of the first major skirmishes between environmentalists and developers.

Former Sen. Dale Bumpers says: “There are rivers and there is the Buffalo. Neil Compton captures its beauty and uniqueness as no one else could, and all of us owe him a deep debt of gratitude for his lifetime commitment.”

Neil Compton (1912-1999) was also the author of The High Ozarks: A Vision of Eden. He received the National Wildlife Federation’s National Conservation Achievement Award and was a President George H.W. Bush Point of Light Recipient for his community service, and in 1990 President Bush presented him with the Teddy Roosevelt Conservation Award. Kenneth L. Smith is the author of Buffalo River Handbook, The Buffalo River Country, and Illinois River, all published by the Ozark Society, and Sawmill: The Story of Cutting the Last Great Virgin Forest East of the Rockies, published by the University of Arkansas Press.

The book is available at the University of Arkansas bookstore and from the University of Arkansas Press at 1-800-626-0090.