The history of travel has always intrigued me. Recently friends sent me two interesting accounts which provide background on Arkansas travel history. Bill Sayger of Brasfield in Prairie County gave me a 1922 article in which Bob Wilder recalled his long association with the Memphis & Little Rock Railroad. Harold Coogan of Mena shared a 1920 article about an 80-mile trip through the Ouachita Mountains from the Hot Springs area to Mena. Both accounts remind us that our ancestors faced many challenges while traveling about the Natural State.
Bob Wilder found employment with the Memphis & Little Rock Railroad in 1871. The M&LR was the first railroad built in Arkansas, with construction beginning in 1856. The Civil War delayed completion of the railroad, with the flood-prone bottom lands along the Cache and L'Anguille rivers not being finished until April 1871, about the time Wilder was hired.
Wilder recalled that when he went to work for the railroad, the company was "operating one freight train each way a day, and one passenger train each way [each] day, between Memphis and Huntersville, which was the terminus on the north side of the Arkansas River in what is now North Little Rock."
With a hint of nostalgia, Wilder recalled that the train usually consisted of "a combination baggage and mail car and about four small wooden coaches." Since there was no railroad bridge across the Mississippi River at Memphis until 1892, the train was ferried across the river to Hopefield, modern West Memphis.
At first, the trains were pulled by "little 14 x 24 inch American or 8-wheel type wood-burners," Wilder recalled. The M&LR switched to coal fuel in 1879. These early engines, Wilder said, "were all decorated with brass trimmings and the engine crew did not even wear overalls, but it was customary for the engineer and firemen to be dressed up in white shirts and stiff hats."
The greatest challenge to train travel between Memphis and Little Rock for many years was flooding. Much of the track between Hopefield and modern Forrest City was built on elevated wooden trestles. Despite these precautions, the track was often under water and the M&LR was forced to transfer its passengers to steamboats. Wilder recalled that the train took about seven hours to complete a run from Memphis to Little Rock, with a fee in 1871 of $12.50 per person.
My second travel account is from the opposite side of the state, the Ouachita Mountains. On Sept. 14, 1910, W.A. Talley set off from his home at Beaudry near Hot Springs in Garland County on an 80-mile trip to Big Fork in rural Polk County near Mena. Traveling with Talley were his wife, four children, and two brothers-in-law. The Big Fork area was home to his wife's extended family.
Talley's route included several small villages and towns including Cedar Glades--which now rests beneath the waters of Lake Ouachita. A few miles west in Montgomery County the travelers encountered the settlement of Silver, a town which prospered briefly during the 1880s due to a short-lived and probably bogus silver mining boom.
Still farther west, along the banks of the South Fork of the Ouachita River, the Talley party came to Mount Ida, the county seat of Montgomery County. Talley was not impressed: "All the compliments I can pay the town is that it is very old, and seems to have been finished several years ago."
Talley was much more impressed with the settlement of Black Springs, which he described as "beautifully situated on table land, surrounded by many fine farms ... bordered on the south by the Caddo valley." He was smitten with the community: "To my mind there is fascination connected with Black Springs, which I am not poet enough to truthfully describe."
From Black Springs the party traveled 17 miles westward to their destination, Big Fork, "a thriving village on a stream of the same name," where his wife grew up. "We scarcely met a single individual but what was some of my wife's kinfolks, being either a Bates or an Abernathy"--family names which are still common in the area.
Giving the rest of the family "a dodge," Talley headed off by horseback to visit the small Montgomery County town of Slatington. The town was named for the large slate quarry located in that mountainous terrain. Talley was impressed by the scale of the quarry, commenting "... let me tell you, there has been some money spent at this place."
Slatington was already in decline when Talley came calling. The Red Slate Mine, which was owned by a group of midwesterners, was an open-pit mine that flourished briefly before it was discovered that roofing shingles made from that quarry did not hold up well.
Talley liked Mena, a young railroad town at the time, finding it "... a first class city, noted for its elevation, quick growth, fine water, and mountain scenery."
------------v------------
Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist living near Glen Rose in rural Hot Spring County. Email him at Arktopia.td@gmail.com.
Editorial on 03/26/2017