Railroads of Southeast Arkansas

Southeast Arkansas’s towns grew up along the tracks. Main lines carried cotton and passengers, and short lines built by lumber companies hauled logs to the mills. Several of the depots, and one steam locomotive, are now on the National Register of Historic Places.

The main lines

W. B. Dumas sold the railroad a right of way across his land in 1867. The Little Rock, Mississippi River & Texas Railroad laid the first line through what became Dumas in 1870. The St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern bought it later that decade, and the route is now part of the Union Pacific (Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, Dumas tour script). In the 1927 flood, Dumas escaped the worst damage, so its railroad kept running (same source).

In 1880, Warren became the western end of the same railroad’s Ouachita Division. The Iron Mountain bought the line in 1887, and it became part of the Missouri Pacific in 1917 (Warren Commercial Historic District nomination).

Monticello’s first railroad came in the 1880s: the St. Louis, Mississippi River & Fort Smith, later part of the Iron Mountain and then the Missouri Pacific (Monticello Commercial Historic District nomination).

At McGehee, the Missouri Pacific put its regional railroad shops in 1905, and the town grew up around them. The railroad was still McGehee’s largest employer through the 1930s. The brick depot dates from about 1910 (McGehee depot nomination). The Van Noy Eating House next to it, also built about 1910, served a restaurant and lunch counter to passengers at this division point (Van Noy Eating House nomination).

The Memphis, Helena & Louisiana Railroad reached Lake Village in 1903. Its depot anchored the west end of Main Street, six blocks from Lake Chicot (Lake Village Commercial Historic District nomination).

The Cotton Belt and Fordyce

Samuel W. Fordyce chose the route of the Texas & St. Louis Railway, better known as the Cotton Belt, and the town that bears his name was established in 1882 (Fordyce Commercial Historic District nomination). The nomination for the town’s Cotton Belt depot gives 1886 for the line through Fordyce. It credits the railroad with eventually drawing the Dallas County seat from Princeton. A brick depot replaced the earlier wooden one by 1925 (Cotton Belt depot nomination).

Fordyce’s Rock Island depot was built about 1925. The Rock Island had taken over the Little Rock & Southern in 1902 and the Malvern & Camden in 1911 (Rock Island depot nomination).

Short lines and the timber trade

The Warren & Ouachita Valley Railway was built by two Warren lumber companies, the Arkansas Lumber Co. and the Southern Lumber Co. It ran 16 miles to a junction with the Rock Island at Banks, and it opened in 1899. Part of its track followed a roadbed graded for the Mississippi, Ouachita & Red River Railroad, which the state chartered in 1852 but which never laid usable track. The line also carried passengers until the Rock Island bought it in 1948. Its Warren station, built in 1909 and largely rebuilt after a 1911 fire, still stands on West Cedar Street (Warren & Ouachita Valley station nomination).

The Ashley, Drew & Northern Railway connected Monticello with Crossett and the Rock Island there. The Monticello nomination, which calls it the “Drew, Ashley and Northern,” dates its arrival to 1913 (Monticello nomination). In 1996, federal regulators approved abandoning the company’s entire 40.5-mile line between Crossett and Monticello (Federal Register, April 24, 1996).

In 1909 the Gould Southwestern, later the Arkansas Railroad, brought Star City its first train, from Gould. The line ran until 1959 (Star City Commercial Historic District nomination).

The Fordyce & Princeton Railroad hauled timber out of Dallas County. Georgia-Pacific bought it in 1963, along with the former Rock Island line from Fordyce to Crossett, and sold it to Genesee & Wyoming in 2004. One of its engines survives. Tennessee, Alabama & Georgia Railway locomotive No. 101 was built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works in September 1922 and sold to the Fordyce & Princeton in 1931. It was shown at the Little Rock Zoo from 1960 and came back to Fordyce in August 2007 (locomotive No. 101 nomination).

For the lumber companies and mill towns these lines served, see Timber, rail and sawmill towns.