How the Pea Patch got its name

Every year Dick Standridge and his brothers, Joe and Mack, took their “Pappy” Sam to the Ouachita Mountains for their traditional family squirrel hunt. Yes, a squirrel hunt….important only to them and later to the rest of us.

After several years of camping haphazardly on the banks of the Little Missouri River, Dick decided that we needed a permanent place on the river away from all the people that Uncle Joe referred to as “asphalt cats”. So he enlisted the help of their cousin, Ira Blevins.

Ira called him in late February in 1969 and Dick, Buena and Joe met him on the Little Missouri River near Langley, Arkansas, where he had found 40 acres for sale. As they ate their lunch on a tree stump next to an eight acre field, they commented that it wasn’t big enough to raise cattle, but it would make a nice little pea patch.

Two years later Dick found a place with enough acreage to raise all the cattle that he could muster and we turned our attention to the Big Pea Patch. So here we are ….on the Caddo River in Caddo Gap enjoying country life at its finest……and quietest………