Cow Faced Hill

For Little Rock Public Radio, this is Dan Boice, with Naming Arkansas.
Cattle have given a few names to Arkansas towns, the most famous being the Sebastian County town of Lavaca. Originally called Military Grove and then Oak Bower, it is thought that the herds of beef cattle being held for delivery to Fort Smith caused Spanish-speaking railroad workers to call the station La Vaca, or the cow.
Less famous but much more curious is Cow Faced Hill up in Benton County. There are two versions of a story in which a man had recently been killed on the hillside, either murdered in cold blood or accidentally killed by a runaway team of horses. Sometime later, another man – possibly with a few sheets to the wind – was walking by the hill and was terrified to come face to face with the ghost of the dead man. Neighbors, roused by his cries, came out to discover that the man had been looking at the white face of a cow, and so the name of Cow Faced Hill bears witness to danger of mixing drinking and staring at cattle.
For the University of Arkansas at Monticello this is Dan Boice.