Fordyce and Princeton Railroad

The Fordyce and Princeton Railroad (F&P) was one of several southern Arkansas short lines built around the turn of the twentieth century to provide transportation for timber operations at a time when the alternative often was primitive dirt roads. It operated as a freight railroad.

The first successful railroad enterprise to make an incursion into south-central Arkansas was a branch of the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railroad (later known as the Cotton Belt) from Gurdon (Clark County) to Camden (Ouachita County) in 1881. It was the completion of the part of the Texas and St. Louis Railway (T&SL) linking Texarkana (Miller County), Camden, and Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) in 1882 that provided the requisite transportation to open wider swaths of the area to economic development, particularly the timber industry. This railroad route clipped the southeast corner of Dallas County, where the town of Fordyce (Dallas County) arose trackside.

One of the businesses that developed was the Fordyce Lumber Company, which built a tram road to haul logs to its mill. With plans to upgrade the operation to transport logs to the mill and supplies back to the logging camps, the company formed the narrow-gauge Fordyce and Princeton Railroad. Articles of incorporation were filed in early 1890 on behalf of E. E. Mason, Ward E. Farrow, Leroy Kirkland, W. J. Brown, and W. N. Smith. With capital stock of $140,000, it was said at the time that the railroad would extend twenty-two miles from Fordyce to Princeton (Dallas County) in the central part of the county.

F&P tracks extended southward to connect with the Cotton Belt mainline, and northward into the forests. Over the years, track locations evolved as the logging locations shifted, but at one time the mainline extended more than twenty miles northward from Fordyce to Old Junction (Dallas County). There were connections with other F&P branches and with private lines of the Fordyce Lumber Company. But, despite the name, F&P tracks never reached the town of Princeton. F&P and the Fordyce Lumber Company tracks converted to standard gauge in 1907.

A second north-south railroad that would become part of the Rock Island Lines reached the area in 1906, to which F&P would also connect. Rock Island construction would continue southward in two directions, to El Dorado (Union County) and to Crossett (Ashley County).

Fordyce & Princeton operated as a common carrier, and it was one of the railroads investigated by the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) as part of the Tap Line Cases. This affected a group of short-line railroads, concentrated in the Mid-South, that originated as lumber company operations but then became independent corporations with common carrier status. The lumber company typically still retained corporate control, but with the common carrier status, the lumber company through its railroad could negotiate the split or division of the government-regulated freight rates with the connecting trunk-line railroads. The government alleged that some trunk-line railroads were granting unreasonably large divisions of the rate to the lumber company railroad in order to circumvent the prohibition on granting rebates to preferred shippers, creating a competitive disadvantage for others. The ICC’s 1912 Tap Line Order sought to end such practices. In 1914, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the duty of the ICC to control these rate divisions.

Over time, most of the line was abandoned piecemeal. For instance, the ICC approved the abandonment of a 3.5-mile section north of Cynthiana to Bryant’s Spur in 1928, operations having been suspended in 1921 as the timber played out. F&P ran its final log train to Fordyce in 1940. Most of the track was abandoned, leaving six miles between Fordyce and Ivan (Dallas County). By 1944, the length was reduced to four miles. With the acquisition of Fordyce Lumber in 1963, Georgia-Pacific also owned the railroad. The length was reduced to about a mile, with another mile of switching tracks.

The Rock Island bankruptcy meant that thousands of miles of railroad went up for sale or abandonment in 1980. In 1981, F&P bought the piece that connected Fordyce with the Crossett area, home of other Georgia-Pacific forest product and railroad operations. This fifty-seven-mile segment included about five miles of trackage rights at Crossett over the Ashley, Drew & Northern. In order to make the purchase, F&P had to reincorporate. With the demise of AD&N in 1996, F&P bought the AD&N connection.

Following a trend in short-line railroad operations, Georgia-Pacific sought to sell both F&P and sister Georgia-Pacific railroad Arkansas Louisiana & Mississippi to short-line holding company Genesee & Wyoming (G&W). The Surface Transportation Board (STB) approved the sale in 2004. In late 2022, G&W filed with STB to merge F&P into Arkansas Louisiana & Mississippi; this became effective in 2023.

For additional information:
Decisions of the Interstate Commerce Commission of the United States. Interstate Commerce Commission Reports, Vol. XXIII, pp. 277ff, 549ff, 1912.

Genesee & Wyoming Inc.−Control Exemption. Surface Transportation Board Decision ID 34326, Finance Docket No. 34453, January 29, 2004.

Genesee & Wyoming Inc.−Corporate Family Transaction Exemption. Surface Transportation Board Decision ID 51548, Finance Docket No. 36655, January 6, 2023.

Interstate Commerce Commission Reports, Vol. 139 (Finance reports). Washington DC: Government Printing Office, pp. 294ff.

Tedder, Russell. Forest Rails. Bucklin, MO: White River Productions, 2016.

J. L. Gattis
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville