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Restoration work on the 1858 Casey House has reached its next milestone, with all lumber now on site and crews preparing to begin installing a new cedar shingle roof this week.
The Baxter County Historical Society shared the lumber update on April 28. Born to Roof is handling the restoration, with plans for a new historically accurate roof, porch and foundation.
The house remains at its original location on the corner of East Wade and Arena streets, adjacent to the Baxter County Fairgrounds.
Artifacts found during the work
Crews working on the property have turned up a small but unusual array of artifacts. Baxter County Historian Vincent Anderson shared the findings in an April 18 social media post.
Among the finds are a mummified squirrel of the kind sometimes called an “Ozark mummy,” and what appears to be a partial proximal tibia from a cow.
A piece of a metal plate bearing the name “Evan’s” was also recovered. Anderson speculated the fragment could be from a kitchen cast-iron stove designed by Oliver Evans, the early American inventor known for an 1795 cast-iron kitchen stove design. Anderson noted the identification is only a guess.
A broken dinner plate found on the property resembles a style produced in 1922 by the Homer Laughlin China Company, which would place that artifact decades after the house was built.
A long road to the new roof
The Casey House, built by Col. Randolph DePriest Casey in 1858, is the oldest standing structure in Mountain Home. The two-room dog-trot cabin features a breezeway separating the rooms and served as the site of both the first county court and Mountain Home’s first post office.
The building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in the 1970s. It has survived the Civil War, a near-devastating tornado in 1985 and 167 years of Arkansas weather.
The current restoration project has been years in the making. Baxter County set aside $100,000 in its 2025 budget for the work, and the Historical Society secured a $68,000 state grant after initially requesting $142,000 for phase one.
Eight contractors attended a pre-bid walkthrough earlier this fall, and bids came in significantly lower than expected. The low bid of $91,000 prompted architect Gary Clements, who also helped restore the Wolf House in Norfork, to call the result a “home run” in an email to county officials and Historical Society President Kevin Bodenhamer.
Officials had initially estimated phase one of the project at $214,172. The favorable bid opened the door to expanding the project scope through addendums.
What comes next
Phase one focuses on critical structural repairs, including the deck, permits and the cedar shake shingles, which are imported from Canada. Some contractors stockpiled materials ahead of potential tariff increases on Canadian goods.
The Historical Society plans to apply for additional grants in coming years to continue the work, although Clements has warned that historic preservation funding has grown more competitive as the state shifts money toward other priorities.
The Baxter County Historical Society meets the fourth Tuesday of each month. For more information, visit the society’s Facebook page at Baxter County Historical and Genealogical Society, Inc., the website at www.BaxterCountyHistory.org, or the Baxter County Historical Museum at 300 Bomber Blvd. The museum is
