Entry Type: Place - Starting with K

Kahoka (Stone County)

Kahoka is in Arbana Township located southwest of Highway 5 (Mountain View Road) on Misenheimer Road (Highway 28) just before its intersection with Berry Lane. Mountain View (Stone County), the county seat, is approximately nine miles northwest of Kahoka, and Pleasant Grove (Stone County) is four miles to the east. The Osage were in the hills when French and Spanish explorers first entered the wilderness. The Cherokee began arriving in the Ozark Mountains around 1817. At the invitation of the Cherokee, Shawnee from the Ohio River Valley entered the Ozarks and settled west of the White River on Crooked Creek, with their main settlement at Shawneetown, which later became Yellville (Marion County). The Cherokee may have expected the Shawnee to aid …

Kansas (Clark County)

Kansas is a community located in southeastern Clark County. It is located about twelve miles southeast of Gurdon (Clark County) and ten miles east of Whelen Springs (Clark County). The earliest settler in the area was Meriwether Lewis Randolph, who obtained thousands of acres of land in 1836 and 1837. He died in 1837 and is buried near the community. William Brown obtained a total of 160 acres in the area in 1860. He lived in the area with his wife, Rebecca, four children, and nine slaves. Other families moved into the area over the next several decades, but the community was never very large. The community was served by the Bee Post Office, which opened in 1902 and consolidated …

Keiser (Mississippi County)

Keiser is a second-class city in Mississippi County. Located on State Highway 181, Keiser is one of several northeastern Arkansas cities founded by the logging and farming operations of Lee Wilson & Company. Until the early twentieth century, the land that would become Keiser was swampland dotted with hardwood forests. Late in the nineteenth century, efforts began to drain the swamps and to protect the newly claimed land with levees. This process, along with the harvesting of the hardwoods, was accelerated by entrepreneur Lee Wilson. Acquiring thousands of acres of land, Wilson profited from building railroads, clearing trees, and establishing new farmland. He and his company established several cities, naming most of them for family members. Keiser is an exception: …

Kelso (Desha County)

Kelso (Desha County) is a historic community fourteen miles northeast of McGehee (Desha County). The community began with the local development of the railroad in the early twentieth century and is known as the site of an experimental agricultural station. The area that would become Kelso was the site of a minor Civil War skirmish that occurred on February 19–20, 1863. The skirmish began at Cypress Bend (Desha County) on the Mississippi River ten miles due east of the area of Kelso. Even today, residents remark of a cannonball embedded in a walnut tree near the Kelso Cemetery. During the war, many people living at Cypress Bend moved to the area of Kelso to escape cannon fire from Union gunboats …

Kenda Drive-In

The Kenda Drive-In was opened in April 1966 in Marshall (Searcy County) by Kenneth and Marilyn Sanders. The Sanderses were already running the in-door Ken Theatre in downtown Marshall when they decided to build a drive-in theater on six acres on the north side of town. They named the new business the Kenda Drive-In after their daughter. The couple ran both theaters for two years until the Ken Theatre burned in 1968. Kenneth and Marilyn Sanders enlisted the help of their sons, Steve and Bill, and daughter Kenda in running the drive-in—mowing, picking up trash, running the projection booth, and working the concessions. Running seven nights a week with a rotation of as many as four movies per week was …

Kensett (White County)

Kensett is a small town in central White County whose early history relates to several railroads that crossed the area. During the first half of the twentieth century, the railroads and the nearby lumber mill provided much employment in the town. Today, Kensett is a bedroom community to nearby Searcy (White County), and most of Kensett’s citizens are employed there. Civil War through Reconstruction Kensett became a town after the Cairo and Fulton Railroad (later the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railroad) was built through White County in 1872. The small settlement was named for Thomas Kensett, a member of the rail line’s board of directors. The post office opened on October 4, 1872, under postmaster John A. Barnett. …

Kentucky (Saline County)

The unincorporated community of Kentucky is approximately six miles northwest of Benton (Saline County) within Kentucky Township. Located on Arkansas State Highway 5, Kentucky was the third established community in Saline County following Saline Crossing and Collegeville in the early 1800s. A rural community since its inception, it is centered on Kentucky Baptist Church and the associated cemetery. The church was the first Missionary Baptist church established south of the Arkansas River in Arkansas, and is one of the oldest continuous Baptist church in Arkansas. In 1815, Caleb Lindsey Sr., Abijah Davis, Levi Spencer, Henry Louis Fletcher, and their respective families left Christian County, Kentucky, for Lawrence County, Arkansas Territory. Around 1824–25, they—along with the families of George James, Samuel Williams, …

Keo (Lonoke County)

Keo is a town in southern Lonoke County. It is located on U.S. Highway 165 between Scott (Pulaski and Lonoke counties) and England (Lonoke County). The region around Keo has long been inhabited, as is demonstrated by the town’s proximity to the Toltec Mounds. White settlers gradually moved into the area during territorial times and early statehood. The Dunham family and Cobb family were two of the region’s main property owners following the Civil War. Lafayette Cobb, who moved to the area in 1873, owned a general store. Established in his store in 1880, the post office was variously called Cobb Settlement and Cobbs. Cobb was also justice of the peace in that part of Lonoke County. Six cotton gins …

Keo Commercial Historic District

The Keo Commercial Historic District in Keo (Lonoke County) was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 15, 2011. The district consists of thirty-five structures, objects, and buildings located primarily on the west side of Main Street. The district boundaries are Arkansas Highway 232 on the north, Fleming Street on the south, and an alley on the west. The east side of Main Street is the eastern boundary. The commercial structures of the district display Standard Twentieth Century architecture and Plain Traditional industrial/agricultural styles. The town of Keo was originally known as Cobb Settlement, Cobbs, or Lafayette Township, and it was situated on Arkansas Highway 15 about one mile north of U.S. 165. The namesake of the …

Keyton (Clark County)

Keyton is an unincorporated community in Clark County, located about four miles northwest of Gurdon (Clark County). The community is about one mile west of Center Point (Clark County) and is directly east of Interstate 30. The first major landowner in the area was Randolph Lewis. He obtained 640 acres on December 1, 1838, including the entire section where Keyton is located. Other landowners gradually moved to the area, but development was slow to reach the future location of Keyton. This changed in the 1880s when the land was purchased by Robert Benjamin Franklin (R. B. F.) Key, from whom the community derived its name. Key was born in Georgia in 1848 and moved to Arkansas with his family about …

Kibler (Crawford County)

East of Van Buren (Crawford County) and south of Alma (Crawford County), the city of Kibler is about halfway between Interstate 40 and the Arkansas River. Although Kibler was not incorporated until 1963, its roots go back to a nineteenth-century settlement originally known as Prairie Grove. Early in the twentieth century, the community (like several others in Crawford County) benefited from the discovery of natural gas deposits in the region. The Arkansas River was a natural transportation route for Native Americans and for early European explorers, but the hilly region of Kibler did not draw the attention of settlers until late in the nineteenth century. John Kibler is said to have arrived from Germany in the 1840s, but the earliest …

Kimberley (Pike County)

Kimberley (Pike County)—spelled “Kimberly” in some sources—is a community that lies south of Murfreesboro (Pike County). It has its origins in the discovery of diamonds in the county. In the early 1900s, John Wesley Huddleston discovered diamonds on his property. Local citizen Millard M. Mauney owned land a half mile from where the diamonds were found, and he believed that his property was perfect for a future mining industry. Railroad owners had planned an extension of the railroad going into Murfreesboro from the southwest. Its route would take it through what is now Kimberley, facilitating more developers and more investments. The area was named Kimberley after the South African city where diamonds were discovered earlier. On January 22 and 23, 1909, Mauney and …

King of Clubs

Part of an informal network of roadside nightclubs, often called roadhouses, the King of Clubs operated for more than fifty years under the ownership of Bob and Evelyn King until they sold the club in 2003. Located on U.S. Highway 67, just north of Swifton (Jackson County), the club was a familiar stop for some of the most famous pioneers in rock and roll music in the 1950s. These performers traveled constantly, making extra money and promoting their records by playing dances and shows in countless venues in cities, small towns, and in roadhouses such as the King of Clubs, which was especially favored by those who played the more southern form of rock and roll commonly termed rockabilly. Those …

Kings Creek (Scott County)

Kings Creek is a historical community in northwestern Scott County located along Highway 378. The community of Kings Creek is situated along a tributary of the Petit Jean River that carries the same name. Agriculture has traditionally been important to Kings Creek and the surrounding area. Prior to European exploration, the area surrounding Kings Creek was an unexplored wilderness. Species of wildlife that longer inhabit the area, such as elk and buffalo, were present throughout the region. Archaeological findings have provided evidence of early inhabitants dating to the Archaic, Woodland, and Mississippian periods. Additional evidence has indicated that the Caddo tribe had a strong presence along the Petit Jean River and other prominent waterways. Throughout the late seventeenth and early …

Kings River

The Kings River runs for about ninety miles through Madison and Carroll counties to its confluence with the White River arm of Table Rock Lake, located on the Missouri–Arkansas border. As with other rivers that begin on the north-facing slopes of the Boston Mountains, the Kings River flows north. The river divides Carroll County politically; in 1883, the Arkansas legislature recognized two judicial districts, at Berryville (Carroll County) and Eureka Springs (Carroll County), on opposite sides of the river, though the river itself was not the legal boundary until 2011. The Kings River drains from two very different subsections of the Ozarks. Its headwaters form in the oak forests of the Boston Mountains sub-region of the Ozark Plateau near the …

Kingsland (Cleveland County)

Birthplace of musical legend Johnny Cash and of famed football coach Paul “Bear” Bryant, the city of Kingsland was created by the railroad industry and the timber industry. Reaching its high point in size and glamour during its first few years of existence, the city has dwindled in size and importance but remains the second-largest city in Cleveland County. Dorsey County—later renamed Cleveland County—was sparsely settled when it was created by the Arkansas General Assembly in 1873. Heavily forested, the region was ready for the harvesting of timber when the Texas & St. Louis Southwestern Railway (known as the Cotton Belt) was built across the county in 1882. Seventy-five people, mostly engaged in the timber industry, lived near the railway …