Neil Ernest Compton of Bentonville was a physician of obstetrics by profession and a conservationist by avocation. He is widely recognized as the founder of the Ozark Society to Save the Buffalo River, which he and his associates initiated on May 24, 1962, at a meeting in Fayetteville. He loved the untamed Buffalo River even more than his vocation of treating the sick and bringing babies into the world. As founder and first president of the Ozark Society, he was in the forefront of the long and eventually successful fight to prevent building of dams on the Buffalo.
Compton was also a talented author and photographer. He wrote his first book in l982, The High Ozarks: A Vision of Eden, featuring photographs he made during his favorite Ozark explorations.