Arkansas lawyer and real estate developer John Cooper Sr. was a visionary who helped give birth to the retirement community industry in this country. On the cover of today's Perspective section, his history in the state is outlined in a story about the 50th anniversary of Hot Springs Village. That anniversary also brings to mind some other business titans, members of the Dierks family.
In the late 1960s, Cooper approached the owners of Dierks Forests Inc. to purchase the land he needed to create what would become the nation's largest gated community. The company sold Cooper almost 20,000 acres of timberland in Saline and Garland counties. The man who negotiated the sale to Cooper was Peter Dierks Joers. He was the great-grandson of Peter Henry Dierks, a German immigrant who became a successful banker and farmer in Iowa. His sons Peter, Hans, Henry and Herman founded Dierks Lumber & Coal Co. in Lincoln, Neb., in 1895.
Peter Henry Dierks had married a Danish immigrant named Margaretha Dorothea Tauk. Herman, who became the brother most associated with Arkansas, was the couple's seventh child.
In 1897, the Dierks family moved the company headquarters to Kansas City since that city was becoming a center of the timber industry. By the turn of the century, the brothers owned 24 lumber yards. They had made the jump in 1897 from simply selling lumber to manufacturing it following the purchase of a sawmill at Petros, Okla., for $15,000. Because of the lack of timber reserves in the area, the sawmill closed after three years.
The brothers had better luck with their purchase of a mill at De Queen. Herman moved to De Queen to manage that mill, beginning the family's involvement in the state. Herman began purchasing timberland across southwest Arkansas, beginning with a major tract in northern Howard County.
Herman had been born in Iowa in 1863 and joined his brother Hans in Nebraska after Hans purchased land along the newly constructed Burlington Railroad. In addition to heading up the family's Arkansas operations, Herman served as president of the Florien Lumber Co. in northwest Louisiana, which the brothers purchased in 1906. When Hans died, Herman took over the company and remained in that position until his death in 1946.
The next generation of the family joined the company and spread out to manage mills across Arkansas and Oklahoma. In Oklahoma, there were lumber mills at Broken Bow and Wright City. The De Queen mill burned in 1909 and was replaced by the expanding operations in the Howard County company town of Dierks. That area of the county was covered by dense forests of hickory, oak and pine.
In the early 1900s, the Dierks family established the De Queen & Eastern Railroad to move workers and supplies into the region while carrying timber out. The settlement known as Hardscrabble grew rapidly and changed its name to Dierks in honor of brother Hans Dierks.
"Hardwood was harvested first and was used largely for barrel staves," Steven Teske writes for the Central Arkansas Library System's Encyclopedia of Arkansas. "Around 1917, the hardwood had been exhausted, and interest turned to the softer pine wood. The Dierks company built a sawmill in Dierks, and the population continued to grow. The racial composition of the community also began to change. At the time of the 1910 census, Dierks had been home to only one African American resident. In 1917, with the new sawmill--and with many men joining the armed forces during World War I--the company created a segregated neighborhood for black workers and their families. The neighborhood included a hotel, two churches, a school and stores."
The company commissary for white residents of Dierks was known as the Big Store.
In October 1925, the company made a huge land acquisition in the Ouachita Mountains when it purchased Yell Lumber Co. Almost 88,000 acres of timberland came with that transaction. The timber was used to supply a massive mill built at Mountain Pine in 1928.
Company holdings grew to 1.8 million acres, making the Dierks family one of the biggest landowners in the country. Dierks Lumber & Coal Co. changed its name to Dierks Forests Inc. in 1954.
According to the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program: "The company, always family owned, had undertaken a number of innovative projects to capitalize on their investments and maintain profits, including the construction of box factories, facilities for the production of pressure-treated wood products and facilities to make fiberboard. By the late 1960s, these operations were still managed by the grandsons and one great-grandson, Peter Dierks Joers. The family stockholders, now numbering in the hundreds, had diverse interests and small share holdings.
"When approached by Weyerhaeuser, the offer of $317 million in cash and preferred stock was too much to pass up. In September 1969, Dierks Forest Inc.'s 1.8 million acres of land, three sawmills, paper mill, treating plant, wood fiber plant, gypsum wallboard plant, two railroads and smaller facilities were sold to Weyerhaeuser."
The Big Store at Dierks closed in 1970. A plywood mill built by Weyerhaeuser replaced the African American neighborhood. By the late 1980s, there were no black residents of Dierks.
Joers had been born in Kansas City in 1919. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy, went to work for the family company in 1946 and became the board chairman in 1965. The company headquarters moved in 1956 from Kansas City to 810 Whittington Ave. in Hot Springs, the site of the former People's Ice Manufacturing Co. The father-son architectural team of Irvin McDaniel Sr. and Irvin McDaniel Jr. designed a new headquarters building for the company. The younger McDaniel practiced in Hot Springs and died in 1978. Weyerhaeuser now uses the Dierks building for its offices.
A streetcar barn had stood to the west of the building. Just past that was Whittington Park, a baseball field that opened in 1894 and was later used by professional teams for spring training. The field also was used for high school football games and other events. It was torn down in 1942.
Joers purchased 10 acres for his Hot Springs home from Mose Klyman in 1954 at a cost of $10,000. A Dallas builder named Hal Anderson oversaw the $138,000 project in 1954-55. Joers spared no expense. A pool was added at a cost of $10,522. The family company supplied premium-grade wood for the interior of the home. Texas limestone was brought in by Texas Quarries Inc. of Austin, and a company known as Scandinavian Art Metal of California did custom copper work. The Dunbar Furniture Co. of Indiana was hired to provide the dining room table and its matching sideboard.
Joers died on March 23, 2006, in Hot Springs, where he's buried. The home remained vacant yet cared for by a full-time staff until it was purchased by Kathleen and Len Pitcock in June 2007.
The Arkansas Historic Preservation Program notes: "Joers was considered one of the state's most prominent businessmen. In addition to holding a number of high-level positions in family-owned businesses, Joers also served on various boards and commissions including the Arkansas Forestry Commission, the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce, the Arkansas Wood Products Association, Arkansas Blue Cross Blue Shield and Keep Arkansas Green. He twice was elected president of Associated Industries of Arkansas and served on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's natural resources council. In 1970, Joers was appointed by President Richard Nixon to the U.S. Government Procurement Commission. Joers consistently worked to improve the community, attempting at one point in the 1970s to attract a branch of the Smithsonian Institution to Hot Springs. He offered to donate 100 acres for the construction of a museum."
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Rex Nelson is a senior editor at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Editorial on 03/08/2020