Entries - Entry Category: Land - Starting with I

IC Corporation, formerly Ward Transportation Services, Inc., is a school bus manufacturer that started in Conway (Faulkner County). In 2008, the company had a sixty-two-percent share of the North American school bus market. The company was often technologically innovative and, in 1936, was the first to produce a steel-bodied school bus. IC Corporation also began offering hybrid technology in its buses. IC Corporation was founded in 1933 by blacksmith David H. Ward as Ward Body Works, a company that originally made school bus bodies from wood. The name was later changed to Ward School Bus Manufacturing, Inc., a subsidiary of Ward Industries, Inc., and then to Ward Bus Company. In 1968, the company was handed over to Ward’s son Charles. …

Interstate 40 (often called “I-40”) is a major U.S. interstate highway that crosses Arkansas from west to east, roughly dividing the state in half. The full route of Interstate 40 crosses the country from California to North Carolina, and the Arkansas segment measures just under 285 miles in length, making I-40 the longest interstate highway in Arkansas. Interstate 40 has played a significant role in the economic development of Arkansas, crossing a dozen counties across the state. History Interstate 40 is one of the original trunk highways that formed the backbone of the U.S. interstate highway system. Along with Interstate 30 and Interstate 55, Interstate 40 was one of only three major Arkansas routes included in the first plan for …

Interstate 49 (often called “I-49”) is a U.S. interstate highway with two different segments in western Arkansas. The best-known section of Interstate 49 is in northwestern Arkansas, where a roughly eighty-five-mile segment stretches from Interstate 40 to the Missouri border, passing through Fayetteville (Washington County) and the Bentonville (Benton County) corridor. A second segment of Interstate 49 extends forty-two miles from the Louisiana border to Texarkana (Miller County). Both sections will eventually be united by a third segment of I-49 in Arkansas that will cut through the Ouachita Mountains. Ultimately, a completed Interstate 49 will stretch continuously from New Orleans, Louisiana, to Kansas City, Missouri. While Interstate 49 was not included in the original 1950s Interstate Highway plan, leaders in …

Interstate 630 is an eight-mile-long east-west expressway running through the center of Little Rock (Pulaski County), connecting Interstates 30 (to the east) and 430 (to the west). It was constructed during a two-decade period beginning in the 1960s and is blamed for significant social alterations in the state’s capital city. The interstate originated with Little Rock city planner John Nolen’s work in the 1930s envisioning a cross-city expressway in Arkansas’s largest city. As the city’s population began moving to the west in the 1950s, interest grew in a highway that would provide easy access between the jobs and shopping based downtown and the homes to the city’s west. In 1958, Metroplan (the metropolitan area’s planning organization) released a tentative plan …