Corning, like many towns across Arkansas, was a product of the railroad. In late 1872, the Cairo & Fulton Railroad met the Iron Mountain Railroad on the Arkansas-Missouri border. The Cairo & Fulton came north out of Little Rock. The Iron Mountain came south out of St. Louis. As the crow flies, Corning is 150 miles from Little Rock and 155 miles from St. Louis.
"There's little record of western Clay County's earliest settlers," Franklin Cochran writes for the Central Arkansas Library System's Encyclopedia of Arkansas. "The land was heavily forested and cut by numerous streams. Swamps covered parts of the area, making transportation and farming difficult. Land speculators and timbering interests bought large tracts of land from the state.
"The rivers aided in the movement of timber to mills. In the 1850s, the Cairo & Fulton secured the right to build a railroad through the area, but the Civil War postponed construction. ... On Feb. 5, 1873, the first southbound train from St. Louis to Little Rock arrived with mail for the newly named Corning."
Who was Corning?
Town pioneer Charles Beloate identified him as H.K. Corning, a railroad official. An April 1955 letter from a Missouri Pacific Railroad employee identified him as H.D. Corning, an engineer with the construction firm Mandeville & Allen. Robert Webb wrote in 1933 in "History and Traditions of Clay County" that Corning was a friend of railroad magnate Jay Gould.
In Wednesday's column, I wrote about Corning native David Wilson's book "I Grew Up in a Small Town." Wilson finished the book in time for the 2023 celebration of Corning's sesquicentennial. The town grew rapidly as people traveled south from Missouri, Indiana, Illinois and Ohio on the railroad.
"The vast hardwood forests yielded oak, cypress and gum, and the railroad made it possible to ship wood products," Cochran writes. "Corning's location in the western part of the county made it inconvenient for those in the eastern part to do business at the courthouse. The trip required crossing swamps around the Black River and Cache River bottoms, which were impassable many months of the year.
"On June 30, 1874, an election determined that the county seat should be moved from Corning to Boydsville. Corning residents resisted. The question was put to voters again in May 1877. The results were overwhelming for moving the seat. The courts declared Boydsville the winner. This solved a problem for eastern Clay County, but residents of western Clay County found that the swamps were just as much a hindrance to them."
In February 1881, the Legislature divided the county into two judicial districts. In 1891, the eastern district county seat was moved from Boydsville to Piggott. The county still maintains dual county seats at Corning and Piggott.
Wilson says the four major factors in the development of the Corning area were lumber production, the railroad, agriculture and modern roads for automobile traffic.
"Early Corning had stores, blacksmith shops and mills," he writes. "Later it would also have hotels, saloons, drugstores, a livery stable, a stave factory, a wagon shop and two cotton gins."
By 1910, virgin timber in the area had been cleared. Land was drained and cotton cultivation replaced the timber industry.
"A state program to drain swamplands reached northeast Arkansas," Cochran writes. "Paid for by state money and local ditch taxes, this program looked like an agricultural bonanza. But the end of World War I coincided with falling crop prices, lower land values and rising taxes. Slowly, a road network emerged. In 1933, U.S. 67 became a paved road connecting St. Louis and Little Rock. Other roads extended east and west."
Stave mills that had lined the railroad tracks in the 1890s were mostly gone by the end of World War I. J.W. Black Lumber Co. was the only survivor of that era.
By the 1920s, the mills had been replaced by operations that dredged mussels from area streams and then used the shells to make buttons. After World War II, new industries were along the lines of the Clayton Shoe Co.
"Agriculture got a boost with construction of a large grain dryer by the railroad tracks," Cochran writes. "Downtown business thrived, and a sense of pride developed in town. Civic organizations sprang up, and social clubs were established. More recent developments haven't been in the same vein. Factory owners, finding cheaper labor in other countries, closed most industrial concerns. ... The town's commercial center shifted from the old downtown area along the railroad to the highway corridor."
Though Corning lost population between the 2010 and 2020 census, that loss (3,377 to 3,227) wasn't as drastic as in most east Arkansas towns.
"We could make a list of reasons why Corning doesn't seem as vibrant as it did in the past, but it would be pretty much the same list other American towns would make," Wilson writes. "We could also engage in finger-pointing about matters that aren't to our liking. ... We would be much better served by realizing that if there are shortcomings in Corning, they're the same ones that afflict American culture everywhere.
"In fact, there's nothing needed in Corning that isn't needed nationwide, such as less time with electronic entertainment and more time reading; less time criticizing and more time being helpful; less time in a frantic hurry and more time in a slower pace with family."
Senior Editor Rex Nelson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He's also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.