Counties, Cities, and Towns

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Entry Category: Counties, Cities, and Towns

Kirby (Pike County)

Kirby is located on Highway 70 in Pike County, about halfway between Glenwood (Pike County) and Daisy (Pike County). It is six miles east of Daisy State Park, part of the shoreline of Lake Greeson. Although Kirby has nearly 800 residents, it has never incorporated. Among the early landowners in the region were William A. Faries, who bought land just to the west of what is now Kirby in 1856, and Little D. Cantrell, who owned several parcels of land east and south of the community. The town was named for Joseph Lytal Kirby, who actually lived in Red Land (Pike County), several miles away. Before adopting Kirby’s name, the settlement was known as Cross Roads because of the intersection …

Knobel (Clay County)

Knobel is a city in Clay County, about seven miles south of Corning (Clay County). Once a stop on the Iron Mountain Railroad, Knobel remains a minor agricultural center for the surrounding region. Frequently flooded by the Mississippi River and shaken by the New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811–1812, northeastern Arkansas remained sparsely settled until after the Civil War. The region consisted largely of swampland and hardwood forests, and no one lived permanently in the place that would become Knobel until after the Civil War. Many people passed through the area, however, since the site was on the road that connected Chalk Bluff (Clay County) on the St. Francis River to Pocahontas (Randolph County). In 1866, J. H. Allen began farming …

Knoxville (Johnson County)

Knoxville is a city in southeastern Johnson County, close to Lake Dardanelle. Originally developed as a railroad town, Knoxville is crossed by both U.S. Highway 64 and Interstate 40. The Arkansas River Valley has long been inhabited, as can be seen by rock art that still exists in Johnson County. The Osage claimed the area as hunting territory at the time of the Louisiana Purchase, and a treaty later gave the land to the Cherokee for a few years, until a subsequent treaty moved them farther west. The first white man to own the land on which Knoxville would be established was Thomas May, who has been described as Arkansas’s first millionaire. May owned nearly 800 acres of bottomland in Johnson …

Laconia Circle Levee

The Laconia Circle Levee is situated in the southeast corner of Mississippi Township in Desha County. The levee’s circular construction is so unique that Believe it or Not, a syndicated newspaper publication for the unusual, featured the levee in one of its 1970s publications. The levee encircled Laconia Circle, which consisted of 18,000 acres of Delta land located in Desha County, for protection against potential flooding from the Mississippi and White rivers. It was the first levee in the Arkansas Delta to be affected by the Flood of 1927. Before the Civil War, fourteen plantation homes were protected by the levee. The levee and the township were named after the Laconia Landing, one of the most active steamboat landings on …

LaCrosse (Izard County)

The community of LaCrosse in the twenty-first century is practically a ghost town, with only a few occupied houses remaining. This is a striking contrast to earlier decades, when it was a bustling small town, with the LaCrosse Collegiate Institute having a statewide reputation. Located in rolling prairie land, that area of Izard County was first settled in 1845 by three brothers: William Frederick Watkins, James Davis Watkins, and Dr. Owen Thomas Watkins, a graduate of the Medical College at Louisville, Kentucky. The brothers were natives of Tennessee. Land patent records reveal their far-reaching land acquisitions, which extended into Fulton, Sharp, and Independence counties. Their farming ventures included cotton, cattle, blooded horses, hogs, and cotton ginning. Dr. Owen Watkins’s practice extended …

Lafayette County

Lafayette County has always been important to the history of Arkansas, but it was particularly so from its first four decades as a territory through the Civil War. This was partly because one of its residents, James Sevier Conway, was the state’s first governor. European Exploration and Settlement Before the arrival of Europeans, the area’s inhabitants were mostly of the Caddo tribe, and numerous significant archaeological sites relating to the Caddo, some dating back thousands of years, can be found within Lafayette County. Archaeological sites in the county include Battle Mound. The last Caddo village on the Great Bend of the Red River was abandoned around 1778, twenty-five years before the Louisiana Purchase added this land to the United States. …

Lafe (Greene County)

Lafe is a town situated on Crowley’s Ridge in northern Greene County. Much like similar communities on the Grand Prairie farther south, Lafe was founded by German-American settlers, and the community has remained centered around the Lutheran church. No settlers had made a home in the area that was to become Lafe before German immigrant Herman Toelkin arrived in 1886. Toelkin had previously settled in Franklin County, Missouri, and his family was still there when he arrived in Greene County by train. Toelkin took a job with the St. Louis and Iron Mountain Railroad, harvesting trees and making railroad ties. When he had saved forty dollars from his earnings, he bought forty acres of land, constructed a log cabin, and …

LaGrange (Lee County)

LaGrange is a town in southern Lee County, between Marianna (Lee County) and Helena-West Helena (Phillips County). It is near the St. Francis National Forest’s lands that include the southern portion of Crowley’s Ridge. LaGrange appears to be one of the earliest settlements in the area; its French name translates as “the farm.” Settlers were already present when the first government land grant was given to Jonathan Howell in 1820. New Hope Baptist Church was founded at LaGrange in 1848, and a Methodist church also was built before the Civil War. A U.S. post office was established in 1852. At this time, LaGrange was in Phillips County, as Lee County was not created until 1873. By the time of the Civil War, …

Lake City (Craighead County)

Lake City is located in eastern Craighead County near the St. Francis River, in the northeast corner of the state. Along with Jonesboro (Craighead County) in the western side of the county, Lake City acts as one of two county seats, serving the Eastern District of Craighead County. Louisiana Purchase through Early Statehood Nineteenth-century records indicate that a settlement was established at the approximate location of Lake City in the late 1830s. Situated on the St. Francis River at the site of a former Native American camp, it was originally called “Old Town.” A trader and trapper named Jesse Morgan was probably the first white man to settle at the current location of the town. The 1848 field notes of …