I’m leaving Historic Washington State Park in Hempstead County for a meeting at Arkadelphia in Clark County, but I have some time to kill. Rather than taking Interstate 30 out of Hope, I get on U.S. 67 and explore Nevada County, which is between Hempstead and Clark counties.
Like many rural counties across Arkansas, Nevada County has been losing population for decades. The county went from a high of 21,934 residents in the 1920 census to just 8,310 residents a century later. That’s the smallest population in a census since the county was formed in March 1871. In the 1880 census, there were 12,959 residents.
Population growth began with the coming of the railroad in the 1870s. What’s now Nevada County was sparsely populated for much of Arkansas’ early history as a territory and state.
“It remained wilderness with a few cotton plantations being established in the first half of the 19th century,” Steve Teske writes for the Central Arkansas Library System’s Encyclopedia of Arkansas. “An important transportation corridor was in the area, connecting Camden and Washington. This route, which ran several miles south of present-day Prescott, was part of the Indian removal route and also served as a major corridor for shipping goods and transporting people from Washington to the navigable head of the Ouachita River.” The Cairo & Fulton Railroad was constructed across the north end of the county in the early 1870s. Robert Burns moved from Little Rock to the Nevada County community of Moscow, two miles south of the tracks.
“Burns persuaded railroad surveyors to place a town on the line near Moscow,” Teske writes. “In August 1873, four surveyors, including W.H. Prescott, laid out 24 blocks on each side of the rails. Within two weeks, Burns had constructed a frame storehouse. A second store, restaurant and hotel quickly followed. The railroad had established a depot by November. On Nov. 24, Prescott received a post office, and Burns was named postmaster. Prescott was said to resemble an oil boom town in the speed of its growth.” Though most historians believe Prescott was named for the surveyor, railroad executives Thomas Allen and Henry Marquand had a friend of the same name for whom the city could have been named. A Cumberland Presbyterian church was built there in 1875, the same year Prescott’s first newspaper was published. In 1877, Nevada County voters decided to move the county seat from Rosston to Prescott. A school district was also established that year. The first bank at Prescott opened in 1880.
“Prescott continued to thrive as the 20th century approached,” Teske writes. “Ozan Lumber Co. was established at Prescott to harvest southwest Arkansas timber. Reader Railroad was created to link timber operations to the Cairo & Fulton line. Various crops, including peaches, were raised. Icehouses helped preserve the fruit while it awaited shipping.”
James Bemis and Benjamin Whitaker opened a sawmill at Prescott in April 1891. In July of that year, it was incorporated as Ozan Lumber with the name apparently taken from the nearby town of Ozan in Hempstead County.
“Whitaker remained part of the business for only a short period before selling out and embarking on other ventures,” writes historian David Sesser. “The lumber business proved to be successful with timber shipped on the company-owned Prescott & Northwestern Railroad. The company opened a wholesale land office in 1901 under the control of Bemis and his sons, William N. Bemis and J.W. Bemis. The company continued to grow and began harvesting timber in the southern Ouachita Mountains in 1905, building a rail extension known colloquially as the Pea Vine.
“Thomas Rosborough began working for the company around 1905. The brother-in-law of William Bemis, Rosborough had experience in the lumber industry in Kansas and Louisiana. The company owned timberland in the Ouachita Mountains, but the terrain made it difficult to access. With the support of the Bemis family, Rosborough organized financial backers from Kansas City and founded Caddo River Lumber Co.” In December 1915, Ozan Lumber merged with the Grayson-McLeod Co. to form Ozan-Graysonia Lumber Co. James Bemis died in 1918. His sons operated the company until J.W. Be-mis died in 1922.
“J.R. Bemis, the son of Williams Bemis, joined his father to operate a new wholesale lumber company in St. Louis under the name Ozan Lumber Co.,” Sesser writes. “This company moved to Prescott in July 1929 and formally incorporated. Starting as a wholesale lumber business, it expanded into manufacturing the next year. The mill that had opened in 1930 was replaced in 1933 by a two-story mill on the same site.” The company also operated mills at Whelen Springs in Clark County and Delight in Pike County. The Whelen Springs mill closed in 1938, and the Delight mill was destroyed by fire in 1952.
“With the death of William Bemis in 1935, Ozan-Graysonia Lumber Co. and Ozan Lumber Co. merged under the latter’s name,” Sesser writes. “Four retail lumber yards and about 52,000 acres of land were transferred to the new company. The lumber yards were sold by 1941, but Ozan Lumber continued purchasing land. It focused on selective harvesting of timber, moving away from large-scale clear-cutting. By 1956, Ozan Lumber owned more than 132,000 acres.” What was then Potlatch Corp. purchased the company in 1964. With the housing industry battered by the Great Recession, Potlatch closed its Prescott mill in 2008.