Rock ‘n’ Roll Highway

In a desperate attempt to drum up tourism, Route 67 through the mud flats of northeast Arkansas has been named the Rock ‘n’ Roll Highway. Several early artists of Rockabilly music played in the towns along the route in the 1950s, and evidently this is enough for a memorial of sorts. The town of Walnut Ridge is the first to jump on the theme. In tiny Cavenaugh Park along the road, there is a sculpture of a guitar and speaker and a walkway in the shape of an electric guitar. Around the edges of the walk there are signs telling about the musicians who traveled in the area — Elvis Presley; Wanda Jackson; Roy Orbison; Jerry Lee Lewis; Carl Perkins; Johnny Cash; Billy Lee Riley; Conway Twitty and Sonny Burgess.

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On September 18, 1964, the Beatles finished a concert in Dallas and boarded a plane. They planned on hiding out at a ranch in Alton, Missouri for a couple days before resuming their tour. The closest airport that could handle their plane was a former WWII base in Walnut Ridge, Arkansas. They immediately boarded a smaller plane and flew off. Two days later, they flew back into town and then left again on their larger plane. And that was the Beatles’ only appearance in Arkansas.

To celebrate the fact that four British guys changed planes in the town twice, Walnut Ridge has renamed a downtown street Abbey Road, put up some silly figures and built a monument of the scene from the cover of the Abbey Road album. There’s even a Facebook page where visitors can post photos of themselves doing “the Beatles walk.”

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