An Arkansas museum telling the tragic story of the steamboat Sultana will be housed in an old school gym. Its decades-old wooden bleachers are finding a new use

Wood from high school bleachers adorn lobby area; banners will be featured in exhibits (Sultana Disaster Museum)

John Fogleman grew up in Marion, Ark., three blocks from the high school gymnasium-auditorium his grandfather helped dedicate in 1939 near the end of the Great Depression.

Fogleman -- president of the Sultana Historical Preservation Society, which is building a new museum about a Civil War maritime disaster that occurred near the town -- routinely walked to the gym to watch basketball games and attend plays and pep rallies. He played guard for the junior high and high school hoops teams.

“My memory is that the gym was always packed with people (probably not in reality),” he said. “It was much like a scene from ‘Hoosiers.’”

Fogleman’s and other alumni’s memories will live on as the Sultana Disaster Museum continues to take shape in the old multiuse building. Recent construction has used part of the 500-seat bleachers to decorate walls in the lobby area outside what will be the main exhibit area. (Below, Fogleman during a 1969 game at Marion High School)

“Generations of high school students … were in that gym. (Some) of our board members played on the basketball team,” museum director executive director Jeff Kollath told the Daily Memphian podcast last month.

The relocated museum, which spotlights the burning and sinking of the side-wheel steamboat Sultana, will feature a space dedicated to the story of the gym and the old high school. Visitors will see photos of basketball teams, letter jackets and cheerleader uniforms, Kollath told the Picket in an email.

The current Marion high school is in another part of the bedroom community, which is across the Mississippi River from Memphis, Tenn. The gym is the only part of the old high school to survive.

Crews are building a more dynamic Sultana Disaster Museum than the current small location a few blocks away. Marion, close to where the Sultana caught fire in the Mississippi, will honor soldiers who died in the disaster and residents who helped save others who were plunged into the river in late April 1865.

About 1,200 passengers and crew perished. Hundreds of Federal soldiers, many recently freed from Confederate prisons, including Andersonville and Cahaba, were on their way home.

Museum officials say the exhibits will build off the full story of the Sultana, with information about the importance of the river, Confederate POW camps, the bribery and corruption that led to the overcrowding of the boat, the explosion and fire, and the creation of the Sultana Survivors Association. The vessel’s boilers are considered to be the main cause of the catastrophe.

Recalling the smell of popcorn and sweat 

Harper's Weekly illustration of the conflagration (Library of Congress)

The state of Arkansas and the federal Public Works Administration built the gymnasium-auditorium in 1938-1939. School board President J.F. Fogleman presided over its dedication.

“Musical selections were performed by the Marion and Earle Glee Clubs. Following the program, three intrasquad games were played,” according to a brief history of the venue.

An article on the Living New Deal website describes the building:

“The structure is a handsome example of brick Moderne architecture, with two faux stone entrances. It is single-story with large window and minimal decoration, except for the bas-relief columns and arch around the entrances and two sculptural scrolls along the central roof line. The interior of the gymnasium appears largely unchanged from its original form.”

The gym got off to a notable start after it opened, hosting a February 1940 game between the Southwestern College Lynx of Memphis and the Louisiana State University Tigers.

The University of Arkansas Razorbacks, on their way to what is now called the Final Four, beat Southwestern at the Marion gym in December 1940. (At left, a May 1939 article on the dedication of the gym, click to enlarge)

This, of course, was before segregation, which came to Crittenden County in 1970-1971. Until then, Black athletes played at Phelix School in nearby Sunset.

I asked Fogleman what happened to that gym. “It was sold and it is more or less tearing itself down -- nature. It’s sad to see,” he said.

Fogleman, 69 and a retired circuit court judge, said he gave his first speech in the auditorium when he was in sixth grade.

“I remember basketball practice as exhausting (line drills, and bleachers). When I go into the main part of the gym, I am reminded of the smell of popcorn,” the 6-footer wrote in an email.

“Prior to (demolition) work, when I entered the area that will now house the administrative offices and the classroom I could still smell a combination of sweat and liniment (Atomic Balm).”

Gym before 2022 construction began and a concert in the 1960s-70s (Sultana Disaster Museum)

The last high school game in the building was 1974-75. A youth sports league played games in the building until 2020.

The elementary school across the street also used the building until 2020. 

Fewer artifacts, more storytelling 

While the bleachers have been repurposed for a decorative element, the wooden floor remains in the gym. Most of it will be covered by a large-scale version of the Sultana and other exhibits, says Fogleman (right, below).

Kollath, who formerly led the Stax Museum of American Soul Museum in Memphis, told the Daily Memphian the remains of the Sultana lie about 20 feet below a soybean field east of Marion, which has about 13,000 residents.

The permanent gallery about the Sultana disaster will open in April 2026. The society and museum are still raising money to finish the project. Unlike Stax, the Sultana Disaster Museum has few original items to display.

“It is not going to be as artifact heavy as a lot of museums would be. But we have great storytelling,” said Kollath.

Gene Salecker, Sultana author, collector and museum supporter, has amassed a large cache of items, many associated with disaster survivor associations and their reunions.

The museum will use modern technology and a scale replica of the 270-foot boat to tell the story under the 35-foot ceiling of the old gym on Old Military Road.

The Sultana had left Memphis and caught fire in the middle of the night, with its flaming wreckage drifting to the Arkansas side.

The story of the Sultana runs deep in the blood of Judge Fogleman and his cousin Frank, who was Marion's mayor for many years.

Their great-great-grandfather, John Fogleman -- after lashing two or three logs together -- poled his way through the current of the Mississippi River and toward survivors.

The Fogleman and Barton families, descendants of local men who were part of that rescue effort, donated $100,000 for the project.

The new museum met another milestone recently, with its name added to the gym’s exterior. (Photo Sultana Disaster Museum)

 “We are the only museum in the world that will have the word disaster in it,” quipped Kollath.

May 2025 photo of the gym interior, future site of permanent gallery (Sultana Disaster Museum)

A wildfire rolled into a Civil War-era fort in New Mexico. Among the damaged structures at Fort Stanton (where Billy the Kid stayed one night) was a gym built by German internees during World War II

Burn area includes site of pool, gymnasium and old guard house (New Mexico Dept. of Cultural Affairs)

A central New Mexico wildfire damaged three historic structures but 150 firefighters and air crews prevented it from spreading to the main grounds of Fort Stanton, which is best known for its roles in the Civil War and Indian Wars but also tells the stories of  frontiersman Kit Carson and the Buffalo Soldiers. If that's not enough, outlaw Billy the Kid had a Fort Stanton connection.

The 877-acre Camp Fire broke out Sunday in an area known for the fort and 52 miles of cave passages. Containment had grown to 76% by Thursday afternoon and rain helped to extinguish remaining hot spots.

Fort Stanton, established in 1855, is one of the most intact 19th-century military forts in the country and is the best-preserved fort in New Mexico, according to state officials.

As an internment camp in 1939, the fort held the 400-member German crew of the luxury liner Columbus. 

The fire-blackened exterior of the German camp gymnasium (Wendy Brown/Bureau of Land Management)

Remains of the German internment camp before the Camp Fire (NMDCA)

“Damage to historic structures in the German Internment Camp area of the site is still being assessed, but two wooden structures built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s were destroyed by the fire,” the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs said in a press release.

The roof of a gymnasium built by German internees in 1944 and which collapsed in the 1990s was consumed by the fire. Its walls, made of adobe and concrete, remain standing, officials said Wednesday.

A guardhouse suffered minor damage from a fire retardant that colored the walls pink. “We expect that a good rain will wash it off,” Daniel R. Zillmann, director of communications and marketing for the department, told the Civil War Picket.

Out of the 88 structures on the site, the most important structures in this portion of the site were the ruins of the pool, the gymnasium and the guard house.

Living historians portray Civil War soldiers during an event at Fort Stanton (NMDCA)

Zillmann said he did not believe the two destroyed wooden structures involved historic interpretation.

Fort Stanton Historic Site, which is about 20 miles northeast of Ruidoso, will reopen Thursday morning. ”The only portions of the site off limits to the public will be the Internment Camp area,” said Zillmann.

The park web site includes details of its extensive history and wide-ranging use over the years, including as a camp holding Japanese Americans during WWII.

Fort Stanton was seized by Confederate forces in 1861. During the occupation, three Rebels were killed by Kiowa Indians while on patrol 50 miles north.

A fire crew works to contain the Camp Fire around Fort Stanton (NMDCA photo)

“After all supplies were moved to Mesilla, the Confederates abandoned the fort, burning it as they left. The fort stood empty for a year, but the stone walls survived and in 1862, New Mexican Volunteer forces under the great frontiersman Kit Carson (now a US colonel) reoccupied the fort.”

In 1862, during the Civil War, Union Capt. James “Paddy” Graydon allegedly massacred peaceful Indians. Army doctor John Whitlock called Graydon a murderer and they got into a gunfight, with both ending up dead. (Read here for an account.)

In 1876, Buffalo Soldiers built the Fort Stanton Laundress Quarters, which still stands at the site and is one of the few surviving structures directly associated with the Black troops, the state says.

Billy the Kid, a legendary figure in the Wild West, was locked up at Fort Stanton for a night in 1881 when he was being brought back to Lincoln for hanging after his murder trial in Mesilla, where he was convicted of killing Lincoln County Sheriff William Brady in 1878.

He was kept in a building next to the Fort Stanton visitor center, said BIlly Roberts, a Lincoln resident, professional cartographer and amateur historian

"He was brought to Lincoln, locked up in the newly acquired courthouse, and spent a week there before he killed deputies Bell and Olinger and made one of the most famous jailbreaks in history," said Roberts.

I asked the state for more details on the fort's Civil War and other interpretation, but officials said they were busy assessing the damage and would answer questions on that aspect next week.