Carroll

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Entry Category: Carroll

Alpena (Boone and Carroll Counties)

Alpena is a town located predominately in western Boone County, although the town has, since the 2000 census, recorded some of its population also living across the county line in Carroll County. Created by the railroad early in the twentieth century, Alpena is on U.S. Highway 62 and is home to about twenty small businesses. The area was originally part of Carroll County when white settlers began claiming land in the Ozark Mountains. The fertile land along Long Creek attracted John Boyd, who received a land grant in 1849. He was joined by William J. Estes in 1860 and Bailey Stone in 1861. As Carrollton (Carroll County), then the county seat, was only a few miles away, the residents could …

Beaver (Carroll County)

Named for early settler Wilson Ashbury Beaver, the Carroll County town of Beaver is on State Highway 187 about seven miles north of Eureka Springs (Carroll County). Osage hunted and fished in the Ozark Mountains when European and American explorers first entered the region. White settlers gradually displaced the Osage presence. John and Sarah Williams received title to the land that would become Beaver in 1852, although their house had been built on that land around 1836. They sold this house and land to Wilson Ashbury Beaver in 1857. Beaver established several businesses on his land, including a 350-acre farm, a grist mill, a trading post, a ferry across the White River, and an inn, all of which bore the …

Berryville (Carroll County)

  Berryville, located in the Ozark Mountains, is one of the seats of Carroll County and is well known for its small-town quality. Throughout its history, Berryville has been a center for education, as with Clarke’s Academy, as well as agriculture, with farming and raising beef cattle prominent parts of the economy through the 1950s, when these were superseded by the poultry industry, now one of the leading employers. Louisiana Purchase through Early Statehood Brothers Joel and William Plumlee are credited as the first white settlers in the area where the Berryville town square is now located, settling there in 1832. In 1848, Blackburn Henderson Berry moved to Carroll County from Gunter’s Landing in northern Alabama; in 1850, Berry purchased …

Blue Eye (Carroll County)

The town of Blue Eye in Carroll County has two distinctions: it is the northernmost community in Arkansas and also has the smallest population of any incorporated community in Arkansas. Like Texarkana (Miller County) and Junction City (Union County), Blue Eye is actually made up of two communities straddling a state line—on the Arkansas side, Blue Eye is a town with thirty residents, and, in Missouri, it is a village with 167 residents. A highway called the Wilderness Road ran through the area before the Civil War. The Butler, Pitman, Craven, and Rhodes families lived along the road, and the region along the state line was known as Butler’s Barrens. During the Civil War, the region was abandoned, but Elbert …

Carrollton (Carroll County)

Carrollton (Carroll County), the original seat of Carroll County, was one of the area’s largest settlements in the mid-1800s. The town experienced steady growth before the Civil War but never fully recovered from the war’s devastation, nor from the railroad bypassing it in the 1880s. The first settlers, James Jones and Henderson Lafferty, arrived in the fertile Long Creek Valley in 1833, the same year the county was created. Jones had obtained title to approximately eighty acres. Shortly afterward, Lafferty, a Methodist minister, purchased land from Jones and established the first store in the county. When a site for the county seat was being sought, Lafferty was able to convince the appointed commissioners to purchase the land near his business. A …

Eureka Springs (Carroll County)

Eureka Springs (Carroll County) is a northwestern Arkansas tourist town situated in the Ozark Mountains. One of two county seats in Carroll County and home to the legendary healing springs, the city draws a diverse tourist crowd every year and is known for its spas and bathhouses. During the twentieth century, the town attracted an eclectic population, and today it is a mecca for artists, writers, the religious community, and the gay and lesbian community. Prehistory through Early Statehood Paleoindians lived in the Eureka Springs area thousands of years ago. During the Woodland and Archaic periods, residents of the area created projectile points (often described as “arrowheads”) from the chert cobbles they found in gravel bars. By the time of …

Green Forest (Carroll County)

Green Forest, a second-class city in Carroll County, once aspired to be the county seat. Its checkered history includes a fraudulent gold mine and a popular reunion of Civil War veterans that turned into an annual community festival. The first known settler in the area was John Scott, described quaintly in the Goodspeed history of Carroll County as “a maker of sheep and cowbells.” Other settlers soon arrived in the area, which was then known as Scott’s Prairie. A Baptist church, built from logs, opened in 1854. The structure also served as a school. The next year, a post office was established, but it survived only a few months before closing. A Methodist church opened in 1857. In June 1861, a force of between …

Holiday Island (Carroll County)

Holiday Island is a planned community in northwestern Carroll County, a few miles north of Eureka Springs (Carroll County) near the Missouri state line. Located along a portion of Table Rock Lake, which is part of the White River, Holiday Island consists of roughly 4,500 acres and has a population of more than 2,000. Holiday Island citizens approved incorporating Holiday Island as a town on November 3, 2020, and it officially became a second-class city on March 23, 2021. Northern Arkansas was long considered the hunting land of the Osage, who lived to the north in what is now Missouri. By 1825, the Osage had been removed west to what is now Oklahoma, and settlers began attempting to farm the …

Oak Grove (Carroll County)

Oak Grove is a town in northern Carroll County, located at the intersection of State Highways 21 and 103. A narrow strip of land in the town runs north along Indian Creek to the Missouri state line. The town is one of twelve communities in Arkansas identified as Oak Grove, and the only one to be incorporated. When a community in Greene County sought to incorporate with the same name in 1979, it was forced to incorporate as Oak Grove Heights. The forested Ozark Mountains have been sparsely inhabited for centuries. At the time of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the area was frequently visited by the Osage, who lived farther north but came into what would be Arkansas to …

Yocum (Carroll County)

Yocum (Carroll County), one of the county’s earliest settlements, was founded on a small stream near current State Highway 103 north of Green Forest (Carroll County). Little remains of the once prosperous unincorporated community other than a few homes. One of the earliest white settlers recorded in the area, Louis Russell from Illinois, established a homestead in 1822 along a small stream that today bears the name Yocum Creek. Some historians believe him to be the first to settle within the present boundaries of Carroll County. Soon, others arrived. In 1835, the creek and town’s namesake, John Yocum (sometimes spelled Yoachum), built a log grist mill and dam on the creek. His mill was soon processing up to four bushels …