Counties, Cities, and Towns

Subcategories:
Clear

Entry Category: Counties, Cities, and Towns

College City (Lawrence County)

College City of Lawrence County consisted of the campus of Williams Baptist College (now Williams Baptist University), along with residential areas north and south of the campus. Its history as a city was shaped principally by the college, as well as by the Walnut Ridge Army Flying School that preceded the college on the property. Local residents voted to consolidate their city with neighboring Walnut Ridge (Lawrence County) in 2016. Southern Baptist College was established in Pocahontas (Randolph County) in September 1941. Drawing upon the alumni and the resources of several defunct Baptist schools—including Maynard Academy and Jonesboro Baptist College—Hubert Ethridge (H. E.) Williams and Henry Watters assembled a faculty and enrolled forty-two students. Williams became the first president of the college. Three …

Collegeville (Saline County)

Collegeville is one of Arkansas’s oldest unincorporated communities and the oldest in Saline County. The area was first settled by a group of planters led by Major Ezra Owen in an area between present-day Bryant (Saline County) and Alexander (Pulaski and Saline counties) in 1824, when Arkansas was still a frontier territory. In the twenty-first century, the community of Collegeville lies alongside State Highway 5 and Interstate 30, less than twenty miles from Little Rock (Pulaski County). Ezra Owen was born in Halifax County, Virginia, on March 17, 1770. He served with distinction in the War of 1812 with the Illinois Rangers before he moved to what was then Arkansas Territory. He supposedly served with frontiersman Daniel Boone in the Indian …

Colt (St. Francis County)

Colt (St. Francis County), located at the intersection of Arkansas Highway 1 and Highway 306 between the L’Anguille River and Crowley’s Ridge, was an agricultural town that became a stop on several of the main routes through the state. It was a stopping place for many settlers moving out west on Military Road and became the home of Colt Station, a stop on the Iron Mountain Railroad from Memphis, Tennessee, to Fort Smith (Sebastian County). In the twenty-first century, it is used as a research area for agricultural sustainability for the Arkansas Delta. Louisiana Purchase through Early Statehood In 1826, William Mitchell Taylor settled near a creek one mile southeast of present-day Colt, where he built a large log house …

Columbia (Chicot County)

Columbia, founded during the late territorial period, was a busy settlement located on the western bank of the Mississippi River in extreme southeastern Arkansas. The one-time Chicot County seat was an important shipping point for local cotton plantations and the site of a branch of the Arkansas Real Estate Bank. Over time, the banks of the river slowly eroded the town site until it was eventually washed away. When Chicot County was established on October 25, 1823, a board of commissioners selected the settlement of Villemont as the county seat. In 1833, as the county boundaries changed, the seat of government was removed to a more central location a few miles upriver at Columbia. The added importance of being the …

Columbia (Randolph County)

The town of Columbia, cited by many as the second-oldest settlement in northeast Arkansas, was located on the banks of the Fourche Creek in present-day Randolph County. Originally known as Fourche de Thomas, it was established by some of the area’s earliest settlers in the early 1800s and is documented as the site of the first Baptist church in Arkansas. By 1811, a road later known as the Southwest Trail or Military Road, originating in Missouri and extending into the area, crossed the Fourche Creek near a small settlement. This roadway contributed to a steady stream of additional settlers, including the Fletcher, Lindsey, Jarrett, and Hoover families. Some believe that French trappers, who referred to the stream as Fourche de …

Columbia County

Natural resources have been the mainstay of the Columbia County economy, from cotton in the nineteenth century; timber, oil, and gas in the mid-twentieth century; and later bromine. The county’s fortunes have also been closely tied to the evolution of Southern Arkansas University (SAU). Columbia County, named after the female personification of America, wielded significant political influence in Arkansas during the first half of the twentieth century, with family and business ties to governors Thomas McRae, Sidney McMath, and Ben T. Laney, Lieutenant Governor Lawrence E. Wilson, State Auditor T. C. Monroe, U.S. representatives Robert Minor Wallace and Wade Kitchens, and businessman Harvey Couch. Columbia County is typified geographically by low, rolling hills and is heavily forested. Pre-European Exploration through …

Columbus (Hempstead County)

Columbus is an unincorporated community in Hempstead County, on State Highway 73. Along with Washington (Hempstead County) and Fulton (Hempstead County), Columbus is one of the oldest communities in the area and was once a major commercial center. Native Americans lived in the area for centuries before the first white settlers arrived. Caddo were the principal residents of the area when it was purchased from France by the U.S. government in the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Five years later, Abner and Reuben Mouren traveled north from Mooringsport, Louisiana, and built a grist mill and a blacksmith shop out of logs near a natural spring. They were soon joined by several other families. The settlement was known as Pin Hook until …

Company Towns

Company towns are communities that are dependent on a single business for most if not all the functions of town life. Some company towns are owned by businesses, and each piece of property, from the homes to the schools to the stores, is made available for use by employees of the business and their families. Payments to reside in company-owned homes were often withheld directly from the pay of workers, and the use of “scrip” (company-issued money) at company-owned stores limited the purchasing power of the employees. Company towns have existed across Arkansas over the decades, established by a variety of industries, including timber and aluminum manufacturing. Timber-related company towns were scattered throughout the southern, northeastern, and western portions of the …

Concord (Cleburne County)

Concord is a town located in the northeastern corner of Cleburne County. It is perhaps most well known as the home of Rimrock Records. Until 1808, the main inhabitants of Cleburne County were Native Americans who lived in the lowlands around the Little Red River. The Osage controlled most of northern Arkansas and used the area, including Cleburne County, as hunting grounds. In 1808, the United States purchased the land from the Osage, and the first Euro-American settlers arrived. In 1817, the United States established a treaty with the Cherokee, giving them the land between the White and Arkansas rivers west of a line stretching from near Morrilton (Conway County) to just west of Batesville (Independence County). This Old Cherokee …

Congo (Saline County)

Congo is an unincorporated community in Salem Township located approximately six miles north of Benton (Saline County). Primarily a rural community, it is best known for the Congo Mercantile store that served as the heart of the community for decades beginning in the 1920s. Some of the earliest settlers of the Congo area were William and Jesse Wills, Joseph Scott, Willis Pipkin, William Duncan, and Isaac Ally, who arrived in the 1830s. Prior to the Civil War, the McCray, Goodwin, and Vandergrift families settled in the area. Residents of the community farmed the rich soil, raised cattle and hogs, and hunted and fished along the Saline River. Other than agriculture, no other major industries developed in the sparsely settled area …

Convenience (Independence County)

Convenience is a historical community located on Dota Creek on Cedar Grove Road just off Highway 25 about four miles north-northwest of Charlotte (Independence County) and about seven miles southeast of Cave City (Sharp and Independence counties). It is about three and a half miles southwest of Cedar Grove (Independence County). Batesville, the county seat, is located approximately fourteen miles south-southwest. Those who live in the area in the twenty-first century have a Sulphur Rock (Independence County) address. Native Americans made the Black and White rivers area their home in pre-Columbian times. At the beginning of the twentieth century, archaeologist Clarence Bloomfield Moore excavated several sites, including Little Turkey Hill, near what is today Dowdy (Independence County), about eight and …

Conway (Faulkner County)

Conway, the seat of Faulkner County, is a well-known center of education in central Arkansas. It is home to Hendrix College and surrounding historic district, the University of Central Arkansas (UCA), and Central Baptist College. Louisiana Purchase through Early Statehood The Cadron Settlement, approximately five miles west of what is now Conway, was originally an early French trading post on the Arkansas River. Many of the original American settlers were veterans of the War of 1812 who were granted highly speculative “preemptive” land rights in exchange for their prior military service. These allowed them to claim land before patents were issued by the U.S. government. The settlement became the county seat of Pulaski County in June 1820, but the seat was …

Conway County

Conway County was established by an act of the territorial legislature on October 20, 1825, from land taken from Pulaski County. It was named for Henry Wharton Conway, a member of the Arkansas Territory’s delegation to Congress. At the time, it comprised 2,500 square miles and included most of the present Conway, Faulkner, Van Buren, White, Cleburne, and Perry counties and part of Yell County. Located in the Arkansas River Valley, Conway County’s geographic structure ranges from the ridges of the Ozark foothills in the extreme northwest to the rich lowlands near the Arkansas River—a quite varied topography. The county’s native hardwood and pine forests have been a resource for the timber and recreation industries. Cotton was grown in the …