Monette, AR — (JonesboroRightNow.com) — July 10, 2025 — After a delayed start to the season, the Buffalo Island Museum (BIM) will reopen during the Friends of the Buffalo Island Museum Day this weekend.
This event will feature marble collectors and enthusiasts Sheila and Donny Ashabranner and Lisa and Brady Cornish, who will be the special guests. They will discuss marbles with visitors from 1-2 p.m. as they help people identify their collections. The Friends of the Buffalo Island Museum event will be this Saturday, July 12, from 1 to 4 p.m. at the museum, located at 207 W. Drew St.
BIM committee member Diana Sanders said the museum’s late opening was due to a series of events, including some mischievous critters and tornado cleanup.
“The critters were first. It was a raccoon and then it was another raccoon, and then it was a squirrel. So, we had some damage that had to be repaired, and preventative measures had to be taken. Plus, we had to clean the messes and that took a while because it was during the time of the tornado in our town,” Sanders said, noting museum volunteers had to assist with tornado cleanup.
“The tornado took priority over anything else, and our town pulled together so beautifully during that time, but the museum was very low priority. Thankfully, we had no damage,” she said.
The museum, originally located in an old school building, was established by Gerald “Boots” Pitts of Monette in September 1997 to preserve and exhibit as many artifacts as possible from the Buffalo Island area for future generations. The Buffalo Island area was formed by a New Madrid Fault earthquake in 1811 and includes the cities of Monette, Black Oak, Caraway, Leachville and Manila.
After Pitts’s death in 2004, the museum’s operation was left in the hands of the museum committee.
In 2006, David and Karen Wallace of Leachville donated the museum’s current facility, the First National Bank building, built around 1918. The building previously served as the Bank of Monette, the Monette State Bank, and the Monette Masonic Lodge, as well as a restaurant in the early 1990s.
According to Sanders, former Monette Mayor Jerry “Chub” Qualls, who was one of the original committee members, also played a vital role in the museum’s legacy. After becoming mayor in 2007, Qualls appointed a committee to assume responsibility for day-to-day operation and long-range planning.
By 2008, with the help of chairman Ernestine Harrell, the building was added to the National Register of Historical Places. The museum committee and local contractors spent many hours planning repairs and minor changes to the interior of the building to save the historic structure and provide a clean, climate-controlled area to exhibit museum collections.
Although the city did not have the funds necessary to make the repairs, it applied for and received a $40,000 grant from the General Improvement Fund. Committee members raised more than $25,000 in donations from local business owners and individuals within the community.
Although there were additional minor repairs that could be made, the committee decided the collections could be moved from the old school building to the current BIM building, which Sanders, the museum’s humanities scholar, coordinated in May 2009.
Most of the museum’s collections range from approximately 1880 through 1960 and were used by community members. Exhibits and artifacts include former local businesses, farming tools, an outhouse from Black Oak, a piano built in 1884 used in the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, and more. There’s also a reference room with books, newspapers, city history books, and school yearbooks.
Those wanting to tour the museum virtually can do so with the 360 BIM Virtual Tour, which is a result of a collaboration with Buffalo Island Central High School’s EAST program.
“The BIC EAST program has opened up some areas in the museum that we could never have done being such a small museum,” Sanders said. “They have been invaluable to us because they have added things that we couldn’t have ever had, including the 360 tour online. Many of the artifacts in the museum have QR codes that link visitors to someone from our community who has been interviewed by EAST. That has made it possible for the kids who come to the museum and see some of their relatives, some of their family are on those interviews.”
Buffalo Island Central EAST teacher Jill Sanders said the school has been working with the museum since 2015.
The students started with the interviews and creating the QR Codes, she said. Then in 2020, when COVID-19 hit, the students wanted to find a way to make the museum more accessible, thus the 360 tour was created as a way for everyone to enjoy the museum whenever they wanted.
“The goal is to continue to add to the museum,” Jill Sanders said. “There is still so many stories to collect and preserve. We are proud of our local museum. My students and I are honored to be able to contribute to the culture and rich history of our community.”
The museum is open every Saturday from 1-4 p.m. For more information, click here.