Gustave (Gus) Knobel (1842–1921)

Gustave (Gus) Knobel was a railroad surveyor and early settler of Hope (Hempstead County). The city of Knobel (Clay County) is named after him, and he has long been purported to have played a role in the naming of Texarkana (Miller County).

Born on November 24, 1842, in Bensberg Castle in Vital, Bergisch-Gladbach, Rhineland, Prussia (present-day Germany) as the oldest of three children of Edward David Knobel and Amalie Dümmler Knobel, Gus Knobel started his education at Düsseldorf and later studied at the Institute of Technology. He moved to Silesia to study horticulture, and by the age of eighteen was the superintendent of one of the largest estates in the area. Following his studies, he lived with his father in London, England, and in 1859 they immigrated to St. Louis, Missouri.

(Knobel’s first name is rendered both “Gustav” and “Gustave” in documents from his life, but he seems to have preferred the shortened name “Gus.” Too, during his career, he was regularly referred to as “captain” or “colonel” despite not having performed any military service.)

While in St. Louis, he worked as a bookkeeper in a commission house. In 1867, he got involved with the construction of the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railway, beginning his career as a railroad surveyor. On the 1870 federal census, he was living in Arcadia, Missouri, with other railroad workers and was listed as being the crew’s civil engineer. By December 1872, this railroad had made it to the Arkansas state line, terminating at Moark (Clay County). From there, the railroad merged with the Cairo and Fulton Railroad, which was being built from Birds Point, Missouri (on the south side of the Mississippi River from Cairo, Illinois), to Fulton (Hempstead County) on the Red River. He continued the survey from the Missouri border south to the Texas border by 1875.

In December 1856, a railroad convention was held between the Memphis and El Paso; Cairo and Fulton; and Mississippi, Ouachita and Red River Railroad companies, in which it was decided that, at the junction of these lines, a town of 960 acres would be created along the Arkansas-Texas borderline. Like Moark in the northeastern corner of the state, the border town’s name is derived from surrounding states, in this case Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana. When Knobel’s survey reached the Texas border, he nailed a wooden sign that read “Texarkana” to a tree where Union Station was later built. This event led to the popular belief that Knobel named Texarkana, but he was only carrying out a decision made twenty years prior. A city on the Cairo and Fulton Railroad in Clay County was named Knobel in his honor.

After the line was finished, he settled in southwestern Arkansas and became one of the first residents of Hope. On February 9, 1874, the first marriage in the town was officiated when he married Mary Frances Winn; the couple had nine children. At this time, he began to acquire up to 500 acres of land, with which he applied his horticultural education to the cultivation of strawberries and other crops. He was instrumental in the creation of the Hempstead County Hunting Club, serving as president in 1920.

Not long after settling down, he began surveying for other rail lines. From 1876 to 1877, he led the survey for the Little Rock, Mississippi River and Texas Railway, connecting Little Rock (Pulaski County) to the Mississippi River port at Arkansas City (Desha County). In 1884, he was surveying for the New York, Richfield Springs and Cooperstown Railway. In 1887, he surveyed a spur off the Missouri Pacific to connect to the Alton and Chicago at Marshall, Missouri, and in 1897 he surveyed near Kansas City. In 1888, he worked with the Memphis, Little Rock and Indian Territory Railroad and later the Iron Mountain to survey a spur south of Little Rock connecting to Hot Springs (Garland County). In the 1900s, he was the chief engineer during the Louisiana and Arkansas Railroad construction.

On July 7, 1912, Mary Knobel died; she is buried in Rose Hill Cemetery in Hope. Gus Knobel died on January 20, 1921, and is buried next to his wife.

For additional information:
“All over Arkansas.” Arkansas Gazette, April 28, 1905, p. 2.

“Chapter 11. Few of the First Things in Hope.” Hope Star, June 26, 1936, p. 21.

“The Daily Picayune. Letter from Arkansas.” Times-Picayune, December 19, 1856, p. 2.

“Missouri Pacific Extension.” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, March 30, 1887, p. 5.

“Missouri State News.” Pike County Chronicle, April 1, 1887, p. 1.

“Mrs. Knobel Dead. End Came Suddenly of Heart Failure.” Nashville News, July 10, 1912, p. 2.

“Obituary. Col. Gus Knobel. Well Known Civil Engineer Dies at His Home at Hope.” Arkansas Gazette, January 21, 1921, p. 12.

“Railway Rumblings. The Road to Hot Springs.” Arkansas Gazette, September 15, 1888, p. 8.

“Real Estate. Little Rock, Ark., Oct. 3, 1888.” Arkansas Gazette, October 4, 1888, p. 7.

“A Town Divided—Yet Not Apart.” Camden News, December 15, 1960, p. 10.

Drew A. Calhoun
Clay County Genealogical and Historical Society