Elton Britt

The strangest chapter of Elton Britt's career came in 1960, the year of his Hollywood Walk of Fame star. He retired to run for president as a Democrat, a campaign widely viewed as a publicity stunt. He was removed from the New Hampshire primary ballot over allegedly fake names on his nominating petitions, and he soon went back to entertaining. Born in 1913, the youngest of five children, he had bought a $4.95 mail-order guitar at ten. He died in June 1972 after a heart attack while driving, and is buried in Broad Top, Pennsylvania.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Buffalo National River at Tyler Bend — 9.1 mi
  The country's first national river, kept free-flowing after a dam fight that ended in 1965, seen from the Middle District's visitor center, the Collier Homestead and the Riverview Trail.
• Rush Historic District — 16 mi
  The zinc-mining camp on Rush Creek that boomed from the 1880s, emptied after 1919 and now stands inside Buffalo National River as a ghost town.
• Blanchard Springs Caverns — 26 mi
  A living limestone cave in the Ozark National Forest, opened to the public in 1973 on a spring that once ran a Confederate veteran's gristmill.
• Jacob Wolf House — 28 mi
  Arkansas's oldest public structure, a two-story dogtrot log house at the Norfork confluence that served as the Izard County courthouse in 1829 and later as a family home.

More markers nearby

• Arkansas Peace Society — steps away
• Federal Raids on Burrowville — steps away
• Searcy County Seat — steps away
• Skirmish at Tomahawk — 13 mi