By Cody Berry 

This week and last week have been full of small discoveries at the Gann Museum. Last week, I was looking for picture frames to use in a future display when I came across a certificate from the National Register of Historic Places for the Old River Bridge. The certificate was printed in 1977 and signed by then Governor Bill Clinton. I dusted it off and added it to our display on the Old River Bridge in the front room.¹  

Another great find came when I was sorting through my third box of Ron Meyer’s political cartoons. I found an old envelope labeled “End of the Line,” which contained production photos from the set of the 1987 film starring the late Wilford Brimley, Kevin Bacon, Holly Hunter, and Mary Steenburgen. End of the Line was set in the fictional town of Clifford, Arkansas where two railroad workers find out that their little railroad is being shut down, so to stop that from happening, they steal a train and take it to protest the closing.² 

Mary Steenburgen, who I probably first saw in Back to the Future Part 3, was born in Arkansas. Her father was a freight train conductor on the Missouri Pacific Railroad. End of the Line was directed by Jay Russell, and it stars another famous Arkansan, The Band’s late drummer and singer Levon Helm. Parts of the film were shot right here in Benton.³ The film is a great watch. It focuses mainly on Brimley and Helm’s adventure from Arkansas to Illinois by rail and it does have a happy ending.  

Soon those stills and the rest of the Ron Meyer Collection will be available online through the Gann Museum’s website. We already have more than 3,000 images available there for viewing and use by our patrons. Just go to www.gannmuseum.com and click on one of the buttons there to browse through our historic photographs and past blog entries.  

Citations:

¹ National Register of Historic Places, “Old River Bridge,” Certificate, September 15, 1977. 

² “End of the Line 1988,” YouTube.com, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nUN919kE7I, Date Accessed 10/22/2024 and “End of the Line,” IMDB.com, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092967/, Date Accessed 10/22/2024. 

³ “End of the Line,” IMDB.com, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092967/, Date Accessed 10/22/2024.