Bernie Babcock was an author and museum founder.  Born in April 1868 in Ohio, she moved with her family to Arkansas as a child.  Marrying and starting a family, she also continued to write, which had been a passion since she was younger.  When her husband died, leaving her with five children, she starting writing for money. She published several temperance novels and later wrote for the Arkansas Democrat.  She also published a magazine and a poetry anthology.

In 1927, after professional curmudgeon H. L. Mencken wrote derisively of Arkansas, she decided to start a museum. The Museum of Natural History and Antiquities was first located in a Main Street storefront.  In 1929, she “gave the City of Little Rock a Christmas present” by giving the museum to the city.  She was associated with the museum until her retirement in 1953.  She moved to Petit Jean Mountain and wrote and painted. After her death in June 1962, she was buried at Oakland Cemetery.

This is her poem “The Sun-Caressed Prairies of Arkansas” which is found in the 1906 book Pictures and Poems Of Arkansas which she co-edited with O. C. Ludwig.

The Sun-Caressed Prairies of Arkansas

From a line on the east
To a line on the west,
Where the green of the field
Meets the blue of the sky,
Stretching boundless and free
As the breast of the sea
The sun-caressed prairies
Of Arkansas lie.

Here acre bounds acre
In rich store of treasure;
Here the grain and the grass
In luxuriance vie;
Here the billowing rice,
For man’s toil pays the price
Where the sun-caressed prairies
Of Arkansas lie.

The meadow lark’s song
And the spring blossom’s grace
Make a poem delighting
The ear and the eye;
But this poem’s meaning
Proves best in the gleaning—
Where the sun-caressed prairies
Of Arkansas lie.