Counties, Cities, and Towns

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Entry Category: Counties, Cities, and Towns - Starting with P

Padgett Island

Padgett Island is bottomland along the White River across from the Oil Trough (Independence County) bottoms and about four miles from Magness (Independence County). To the north and east lies the backwater Big Bottom Slough (a.k.a. Island Sough), forming the “island” surrounded by the White River and the slough. Padgett Island is named for William Benjamin Padgett from Fairfax, Virginia, who farmed the area before the Civil War and married Phoebe Engles, member of a prominent Independence County pioneer family. By 1876, the Padgett Island area was called Big Bottom and appeared on Frank A. Gray’s map of Arkansas. The Sulphur Rock (Independence County) post office served Big Bottom before it had its own post office. A post office was …

Palestine (St. Francis County)

Palestine is located in northeastern Arkansas on Interstate 40 and State Highway 70, with the L’Anguille River on its east side. It is one of the oldest towns in St. Francis County and was also the site of the first county school. Civil War through Reconstruction In 1840, what is now Palestine was part of the much larger L’Anguille Township, which had only nine recorded households. The Prairie Township was formed from part of the L’Anguille Township in the 1870s (including the African-American communities of El Cannon, Shiloh, Hawkins, Weaver, Fullerton, and Cooperwood), and the Palestine area, which was located centrally within the Prairie Township, grew in population. Palestine was named in 1870, when the first post office was established there. …

Palmyra (Lincoln County)

Palmyra is an unincorporated community in southwestern Lincoln County, about five miles west of Star City (Lincoln County) on State Highway 114. Its most distinctive landmark is Bethlehem Missionary Baptist Church. The Baptist church was organized on July 18, 1861, but it met only sporadically during the Civil War. By 1867, it was meeting regularly again; church records show a membership that year of forty-four members—forty who were white and four who were African American. At this time, the church was located in Drew County, as Lincoln County was not created until 1871. Historian William McGriff provides a somewhat tortured explanation of the naming of Palmyra, suggesting that the name honors the memory of Myra Collins, daughter of early settler …

Pangburn (White County)

Pangburn is an incorporated second class city in extreme northwestern White County, located on Arkansas Highway 16 about halfway between Searcy (White County) and Heber Springs (Cleburne County). The city is located a quarter-mile south of the Little Red River, which made possible the arrival of the first white settlers in the 1850s, decades before any railroad was built through the isolated, hilly terrain. Pangburn once served boats on the Little Red back when the river was commercially navigable. It incorporated in 1911, shortly after the Missouri and North Arkansas Railroad (M&NA) built a line through the city. At one time, Native Americans had inhabited the area, as the first white settlers to the area reportedly discovered the remnants of an …

Pankey (Pulaski County)

Pankey is a small African-American community located in western Pulaski County, approximately thirteen miles from downtown Little Rock (Pulaski County). Now a part of Little Rock, it is one of three communities—and the last remaining intact—that were owned and subdivided by real estate agent and land developer Josephine Irvin (or Irving) Harris Pankey. Josephine Pankey was born Josephine Irvin (or Irving) in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1869; her father was a former slave. She was sent to Arkansas by the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in 1892 as a missionary to teach children of sharecroppers and tenant farmers in Prairie County. She moved to Little Rock in the early 1900s; married Samuel Pankey in 1904; taught school in the Little Rock School District for …

Paraclifta (Sevier County)

Paraclifta was the first county seat of Sevier County. An 1850 plat shows fifteen families living in Paraclifta. At this time, however, only the historic Gilliam-Norwood house remains. Sevier County was formed on October 22, 1828, eight years before Arkansas became a state. The county was, at that time, a vast area comprising what is now Sevier, Polk, Little River, and Howard counties. A board of commissioners consisting of George T. Boring, Joseph Ladd, James Holman, David Clark, and Levi Davis was assigned the duty of permanently locating the county seat. They established the county seat at a site that later became Paraclifta. The first courthouse was built of logs at a cost of $150. The second, however, was built …

Paragould (Greene County)

Paragould (Greene County), an Arkansas Community of Excellence and a Main Street Community, is situated atop Crowley’s Ridge. The unique name Paragould is a blend of the names of two highly competitive railroad men, James W. Paramore and Jay Gould, evidencing the importance of railroads in the development of the town. Louisiana Purchase through Early Statehood In 1815, Benjamin Crowley moved his family from Kentucky to Lawrence County in Arkansas. In December 1821, Crowley crossed the Black and Cache rivers to explore the ridge area that now bears his name. Armed with a War of 1812 land grant, he selected a vacated Delaware Indian site that had developed around a large spring. The county seat was in Crowley’s home until …

Paris (Logan County)

Paris, located in north-central Logan County, is one of the county’s two seats. The other county seat, Booneville, is located in the southern part of the county. Built around the courthouse square, Paris is economically supported by agricultural activity, retail business enterprises, and small industries. One of the town’s attractions is the Logan County Museum, located in the old county jail. The museum is dedicated to preservation of the history of Logan County. Tourism related to Mount Magazine, located seventeen miles south of Paris, also has benefited the town. Reconstruction through the Gilded Age When the legislature created Logan County as Sarber County in 1871, naming it after noted “carpetbagger” John Newton Sarber, Paris did not exist. The act creating …

Parkdale (Ashley County)

One of the oldest incorporated communities in Ashley County, Parkdale (formerly known as Poplar Bluff) has benefited from its location on Bayou Bartholomew and on the Missouri Pacific railroad (now the Union Pacific railroad). Once a busy, prosperous, and even violent city, Parkdale has become a relatively quiet community in the twenty-first century. John Tillman Hughes built a store at the present location of Parkdale in 1857. Some farmers were already working the land near the bayou at that time, including William Morris, John Harris, and William Butler. Morris’s son, John William Morris, worked as a clerk in Hughes’s store and later opened his own store. A Methodist church had also been built in the area sometime in the 1850s. The …

Parkin (Cross County)

Parkin of Cross County is located on the east side of the St. Francis River in the heart of the Delta, the mainstay of Arkansas’s agricultural industry. At the turn of the century, Parkin was one of the richest and most flourishing towns in this region. Gradually, through the twentieth century, the town has slowly diminished as industry has left it. Parkin can date its recorded history to the sixteenth century. In 1541, Hernando de Soto’s expedition came through northeast Arkansas and camped with a tribe known as the Casqui. The tribe’s village was located in what is now Parkin. Today, Parkin’s main attraction is the preservation of the Casqui mound at Parkin Archeological State Park. Little is known about …

Parks (Scott County)

Parks is an unincorporated community located along Highway 28 twelve miles southeast of Waldron (Scott County) in eastern Scott County. Originally known as White Church, it was established in 1838 along the Fourche La Fave River as an agricultural community. The earliest people inhabited the area during the Archaic, Woodland, and Mississippian periods. Later inhabitants include Native American people of the Caddo tribe. Several thousand archaeological sites are located throughout the Fourche La Fave River valley, including small burial mounds. During the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, French hunters and tradesmen explored various portions of western Arkansas. These Frenchmen traversed rivers and streams throughout the region, including the Poteau, Petit Jean, and Fourche La Fave rivers. It is probable …

Parnell Springs (Bradley County)

Parnell Springs was located ten miles northwest of Warren (Bradley County) and seven miles south of New Edinburg (Cleveland County), two miles off Highway 8 on a gravel road. It was a booming health resort noted for the healing qualities of its three springs, especially between 1880 and the 1920s. The exact date of the Parnell Springs’ founding is not known, but by 1880, it was both a community and health resort. The community took its name from Joseph M. Parnell, who was the first to capitalize on the water and resort area. In the mid-nineteenth century, many Parnells and their relatives populated the area, including Anna Moseley Parnell, who emigrated from Alabama during the 1840s and was the great-grandmother …

Paroquet (Independence County)

Paroquet, located near Newark (Independence County) and the Black River, was named for a now extinct American bird, the Carolina parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis), which had been found in dense forests, along rivers, and in swamps in North America and especially in Florida and the Carolinas. (Paroquet is an older spelling of “parakeet.”) The Carolina parakeet was also plentiful in parts of Arkansas in the early 1800s and most likely inhabited the swampy regions along Black River. The species was declared extinct in 1939. Paroquet is located at the intersection of Paroquet Road (Sandman Lane) and Duck Puddle Road approximately five miles east-southeast of Newark and about three miles north-northwest of Jacksonport (Jackson County), the location of the confluence of the …

Patmos (Hempstead County)

Patmos is a town in southern Hempstead County on State Highway 355. The town was created by construction of the Louisiana and Arkansas Railway early in the twentieth century, but its most significant years have been in the twenty-first century. Caddo lived and traveled along the Red River not far from Patmos, but no settlement was established in the area at that time. After the Arkansas Territory was established, a network of routes called the Southwest Trail was built across the territory, terminating at Fulton (Hempstead County) on the Red River. Washington (Hempstead County) and other communities were established and grew during these years, but the site of Patmos remained unsettled. Just before the start of the Civil War, in …

Patterson (Woodruff County)

Patterson, located in the southwestern part of Woodruff County, was once an important shipping point for the lumber industry. Today, its economy relies on farm services and granaries. Patterson, like many other settlements, was not always called by that name. It began when the B&B Railroad tracks were built across the Missouri Pacific tracks in the 1880s. Rufus Martin was the construction engineer on the project, and the place where the tracks crossed was named Martin’s Junction. Sanders Sawmill on the Cache River floated logs down the river to Martin’s Junction for shipping. Several other sawmills in the area, as well as a stave mill, used the point for shipping, and businesses began to spring up. At some point, the …