Garland

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Entry Category: Garland

Hot Springs Village (Garland and Saline Counties)

Hot Springs Village, which stretches across the Garland–Saline County line, began as a developmental project and became a gated community. As the population grew, Hot Springs Village began to attract wealthy retired citizens. Its golf courses and trails also make the town a regional tourist destination. As of the 2020 census, the population is 15,861 (Garland County and Saline County populations combined). A frequently repeated claim that Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto traversed what is now Hot Springs Village accounts for the use of de Soto’s name for one of the lakes in the village and one of its main streets, as well as his image in the community logo. French trappers were probably the first Europeans to enter the …

Jessieville (Garland County)

Jessieville (Garland County) is an unincorporated community located in the Ouachita Mountains northwest of Hot Springs Village (Garland and Saline counties) and fourteen miles north of Hot Springs (Garland County). Accessible by Arkansas Highway 7, Jessieville serves as a bedroom community for Hot Springs and offers services to visitors to the Ouachita National Forest. Early families in the area that would become Jessieville first appear in the 1860 census. Part of Marble Township in what was then Saline County, the area was sparsely settled. Farmers James and Mary Newkirk resided in the township east of the present location of Jessieville with their six children. In 1873, the western portion of Marble Township in Saline County became part of the newly …

Lonsdale (Garland County)

Lonsdale of Garland County is located on Highway 88, seventeen miles northeast of Hot Springs (Garland County). Before the Civil War, families (including the Houpts, Warfords, and Rutherfords) began settling in the area that later became the town of Lonsdale. The Egbert Houpt home became a stage stop/relay station on the stage line that developed between Little Rock (Pulaski County) and Hot Springs. The town was organized circa 1900 and is named for its founder, John Gerdes Lonsdale Sr. (1872–1943), a nationally known Hot Springs banker. Orphaned at an early age, Lonsdale was raised by his uncle, Hot Springs businessman J. P. Mellard. Lonsdale, starting as a clerk in his uncle’s real estate business, became a bond and stock partner …

Mountain Pine (Garland County)

Mountain Pine was the second-largest community in Garland County, behind Hot Springs, from the 1930s through the late 1970s. During that time, it was a typical company mill town of the forested South. Established in the late 1920s by Dierks Lumber and Coal Company (later Dierks Forests, Inc.), Mountain Pine remains as the most visible reminder of the Dierks company’s legacy in Garland County. Dierks Brothers Company was founded in the 1880s by Hans, Herman, Peter, and Henry Dierks, sons of German immigrant Peter Henry Dierks. In 1895, the company became Dierks Lumber and Coal Company, which owned and operated numerous lumber yards in Iowa and Nebraska. By 1900, the Dierks brothers owned twenty-four lumber yards in the Midwest. In …

White Sulphur Springs (Garland County)

White Sulphur Springs was a resort area in Garland County constructed close to a number of mineral springs near the southern slope of Indian Mountain. The area eventually became part of Hot Springs (Garland County). The earliest residents of the area were Native Americans. Novaculite located on the west end of Indian Mountain was useful to them. Early white settlers of the area arrived in the 1820s and established a small community along Gulpha Creek. The ruggedness of the area made large-scale agriculture impossible, but small-scale farms were successful. The Houpt family constructed a grist mill next to the creek in 1827. Novaculite quarries on the south side of the mountain provided early settlers with a ready supply of the …

Whittington (Garland County)

Whittington is a community in eastern Garland County located about three-quarters of a mile southwest of Fountain Lake (Garland County) and ten miles northeast of Hot Springs (Garland County) along Arkansas Highway 5. Whittington is not to be confused with Whittington Park located in Hot Springs. Whittington is likely named for early settler Hiram Whittington, who moved to what would become Garland County in 1832. He obtained hundreds of acres of land in the 1830s in the area that would become Whittington, as well as other locations in Garland and Saline counties. Upon his death in 1890, Whittington was buried with other members of his family in the Whittington Cemetery located on Mill Creek Road. After the cemetery experienced vandalism …