Counties, Cities, and Towns

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Entry Category: Counties, Cities, and Towns

New Edinburg (Cleveland County)

Located on Highway 8 between Warren (Bradley County) and Fordyce (Dallas County) is the town of New Edinburg. Before 1873, it was located in Bradley County. In 1873, Bradley County was divided, and New Edinburg landed in Dorsey County (later renamed Cleveland County). The New Edinburg Commercial Historic District is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Native American tribes likely traveled through the area and may have settled along the banks of the Saline River. Many artifacts have been found to support this. Several white families settled in the area in the 1830s. These first families—Marks, Smith, Davis, Crain, Washburn, McDaniel, and Hudson—were wealthy, possessed many slaves, and were well educated. By the 1840s, a group of businessmen met at …

New London (Union County)

New London was the main center of commerce in eastern Union County during the Civil War and the forty years afterward. After the railroad bypassed it in 1902, the town was diminished, and all that remained was a collection of houses around a steepled church with an old cemetery. New London began with the arrival of a wagon train from Gilgal, Alabama, in 1839. The wagons carried sixteen families with livestock and some African American slave families, led by a Baptist minister, Elder C. Norsworthy. Two years later, a second wagon train brought eight families. That group came through Alabama but was from Union County, North Carolina, and followed the route that carried most of the pioneers to Texas from …

Newark (Independence County)

Throughout much of its history, Newark has been one of Independence County’s larger towns. Called by the local newspaper the “Queen City of South Independence” in the early 1900s, the town held great promise to be a significant part of the history of the county. Like most small towns in early twentieth-century Arkansas, its early years were full of hope and prosperity, but it later suffered the loss of its business community and a significant part of its populace. Post-Reconstruction through the Gilded Age Newark was founded as an alternate site to an older town plagued with a major drawback. The pre–Civil War community of Akron (also known as Big Bottom) was subject to the destructive overflows of the White …

Newhope (Pike County)

Newhope is a community in Pike County located eight miles west of Daisy (Pike County) and Lake Greeson. The earliest settlers in the area included Andrew Cannon, who obtained 400 acres from the Federal Land Office in Camden in the area in 1860 and 1861. Several other settlers also purchased land in the area at the same time, including John Gafford and Henry Haynes in 1860. The first business to open in the area, a store owned by George Copley, opened in 1876. Copley moved to nearby Star of the West and operated the post office. A second store opened in 1878, and a post office opened under the direction of postmaster Levi Forester. Other businesses opened in the community, …

Newport (Jackson County)

Newport is a rural community with deep agricultural ties. Its location on the White River at the transition from the Ozark foothills to the Delta flatland is ideal as a northeast Arkansas crossroads for road, river, and rail traffic. Newport’s economy, based upon natural resources, had strong growth through the first half of the twentieth century and the postwar era. Pre-European Exploration through Early European Exploration Newport is located on a wide bend in the White River where it leaves the Ozark hill country and enters the Mississippi Delta flatlands.  It was an ideal crossing point for animals (including deer, bear, and occasionally bison) and for the tribal hunters that followed them.  Native people, likely ancestors of the Quapaw, resided …

Newton County

Located in the Boston Mountains, Newton County can be described as mountainous, rural, and isolated. The land, once respected and protected by Native Americans, has come full circle with a large portion being protected by the U.S. Department of the Interior as a wilderness area. Louisiana Purchase through Early Statehood The area, rich with game and timber, was watered by the Big and Little Buffalo rivers. Until 1808, the Osage claimed the region, and between 1818 and 1828 the land was part of a reservation granted to the Western Cherokee. The county was part of Carroll County when it was created in 1833, and white settlers quickly moved in. A block of marble taken from a hillside near present-day Marble …

Nimmons (Clay County)

Nimmons is a small town in eastern Clay County. It is near the St. Francis River, which forms the border between northeastern Arkansas and the bootheel of Missouri. Nimmons was created as a rail crossing and lumber town early in the twentieth century. Prior to Euro-American settlement, the land that would become northeastern Arkansas and southeastern Missouri was dominated by swamps and hardwood forests. The area was sparsely inhabited, although the Osage and other Native American nations frequently visited the area to hunt and to fish. French explorers traveled on the St. Francis River, but the location that would become Nimmons remained uninhabited throughout the nineteenth century. With the advent of railroads, businessmen began seeking opportunities to harvest the forests …

Nimrod (Perry County)

Nimrod is a small community located near the Fourche La Fave River in western Perry County. Never a large community, today it is best known for its proximity to recreational Lake Nimrod, the state’s oldest U.S. Army Corps of Engineers–constructed lake, and the Ouachita National Forest. Fertile soil and the confluence of the Fourche La Fave River with the Arkansas River attracted settlers as early as 1808. However, until the decade preceding the Civil War, most of that settlement centered on the eastern reaches of the river where the town of Perryville (Perry County) was founded. By 1850, James Wilson built the first house at what later became Nimrod. Among other early settlers were the Young, Cherry, James, Cobb, Hill, …