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 …
