Entry Type: Place - Starting with P

Pleasant Plains (Independence County)

Pleasant Plains is a town located on U.S. Highway 167 between Bald Knob (White County) and Batesville (Independence County). Although it is not as old as Batesville, Pleasant Plains is one of the oldest settlements in Arkansas, with origins in the territorial period. Families traveling in covered wagons came into Missouri and Arkansas, following the Southwest Trail until they found promising land that was unclaimed. The earliest settlement, which called itself Fairview, was located about two miles north of the present Pleasant Plains. The first settlers wrote to their relatives about the bounty of their new home, with prairie chickens and eggs, wild berries (particularly strawberries), and good timber for firewood and for construction. When the settlers applied for a …

Pleasant Street Historic District

The Pleasant Street Historic District in Hot Springs (Garland County), located near Bathhouse Row in Hot Springs National Park, represents the most intact area of the city’s historic African-American community. In fact, it is the largest historic district in Arkansas composed of buildings constructed by and for African Americans. Originally, the district included ninety-six homes, but that number had fallen to seventy-seven by the twenty-first century. Buildings in the district represent the remaining fragment of the neighborhood, now surrounded by new development and ever-changing major thoroughfares through the city (E. Grand/Highway 70 and Malvern Avenue). Two buildings in the district were previously listed on the National Register of Historic Places: Visitors’ Chapel A.M.E. Church at 317 Church Street and the …

Pleasant Valley (Scott County)

Pleasant Valley is an unincorporated community in eastern Scott County located along Highway 80. The community was established east of Waldron (Scott County) along the Poteau River. The agricultural industry has contributed to the economy and way of life in Pleasant Valley. Prior to European exploration, the area surrounding Pleasant Valley was a wilderness. Several species of wildlife that no longer inhabit the area, such as elk and buffalo, were present throughout the region. Numerous archaeological sites and burial mounds are located along the banks of prominent waterways such as the Poteau River. Archaeological findings have provided evidence of early inhabitants dating to the Archaic, Woodland, and Mississippian periods. Further archaeological evidence has indicated that the people of the Caddo …

Plum Bayou Mounds Archeological State Park

Plum Bayou Mounds Archeological State Park (previously the Toltec Mounds Archeological State Park) near Scott (Pulaski and Lonoke counties) is one of Arkansas’s most significant pre-European archaeological sites. The Toltec Mounds Site, with the state’s tallest Indian mounds, is also a National Historic Landmark. In 1812, Louis Bringier, a French explorer from New Orleans, Louisiana, traveled to present-day Arkansas and became the first European to discover the mounds. His description of the site’s “tolerably regular” alignment of mounds and the height of the two tallest mounds in contrast to the surrounding alluvial flatlands, the first such description, was reported in newspapers in 1821. William Peay Officer and his wife, Mary Eliza, purchased the area in 1849. There they maintained a …

Plumerville (Conway County)

Plumerville was formed as a stagecoach stop in 1858, but the origins of the community are found along the Arkansas River in the early days of the Arkansas Territory. The community moved from the Harrisburg-Portland bottomland area to follow stagecoach and railroad developments. Samuel Plummer came to the area in 1833 and purchased 160 acres of the “first high ground” north of the Arkansas River. Over the next several years, the development of the Military Road from Little Rock (Pulaski County) to Fort Smith (Sebastian County) led to a stop on the Butterfield Overland Mail Company and the construction of the telegraph line across this important choice of land. The later railroad also needed to avoid the overflow areas and …

Pocahontas (Randolph County)

Begun as a river port significant to commerce, Pocahontas joins alluvial Delta bottom with the Ozark foothills. The town has served as Randolph County’s only county seat and continues as a strategic educational and agricultural center in the state. European Exploration and Settlement The first residents of the area arrived roughly 12,000 years ago. During the time of European exploration, what would become Randolph County was part of the hunting territory of the Osage, who lived in southern Missouri. French hunters probably crossed the area in the eighteenth century and established temporary camps, but no permanent settlements were developed until after the Osage surrendered their rights to the land in 1808. The earliest documented settler was Ransom S. Bettis, who …

Pocahontas Commercial Historic District

The Pocahontas Commercial Historic District is the historic downtown area of Pocahontas (Randolph County). This area has been the seat of local and county government, as well its commercial center, since the formation of the county in 1836. The commercial district is roughly bounded by Thomasville, Jordan, Broadway, and Vance streets. The downtown area comprises numerous historic buildings, including two courthouses, a service garage, a theater, a Works Progress Administration (WPA) post office, and the former city hall and city-function buildings, as well as other buildings currently utilized for modern business purposes. Both of the courthouses and the WPA post office are individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The center of the commercial district is dominated by …

Poinsett County

Poinsett County is located in Arkansas’s northeast corner. The St. Francis River travels north to south in the eastern portion of the county, and the L’Anguille River begins at the north boundary and runs south through the center of the county. Crowley’s Ridge, a highland anomaly that begins in southeast Missouri and terminates near Helena (Phillips County), runs through the center of the county. On the eastern side of the ridge is the rich, alluvial land of the Delta, which primarily hosts cotton farming, while on the western side is prairie land used mostly for the cultivation of rice. European Exploration and Settlement When the first permanent settlers arrived in what was to become Poinsett County, a few communities of …

Point Cedar (Hot Spring County)

Point Cedar is an unincorporated community located in western Hot Spring County. Located at the intersection of Arkansas Highways 84 and 347, it is about ten miles northeast of Amity (Clark County) and eight miles northwest of Bismarck (Hot Spring County). The name of the community comes from early settlers who found a point covered with cedar trees located at the mouth of a creek emptying into the Caddo River. At the time the first settlers arrived in the area, it was part of Clark County. The establishment of a post office led to the adoption of Cedar Point as the name of the community, but it was discovered that another Cedar Point existed, leading to the shift of the …

Point Remove (Conway County)

The designation of “Point Remove,” popularly employed to describe the confluence of Point Remove Creek in Conway County with the Arkansas River, is almost certainly derived from the French word remous, meaning “eddy” or “whirlpool.” Most instances of the term in early nineteenth-century documents follow this usage. However, the name “Point Remove” was later mistakenly connected to Indian Removal in Arkansas, supposedly marking the principal geographic point in the description of the boundary of Cherokee land in Arkansas, prior to the Cherokee population’s later relocation to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). William Lovely used the term “point remove byo,” the abbreviation “byo” meaning “bayou” and thus designating the creek, in a public document in 1813. In his book Journal of Travels …

Poison Spring State Park

Location: Ouachita County Size: 85 acres Poison Spring State Park, west of Camden (Ouachita County), commemorates a Civil War engagement that was part of the Camden Expedition of General Frederick Steele. The Engagement at Poison Spring is remembered as a Confederate ambush of Union troops, which resulted in the massacre of many African Americans from the First Kansas Colored Infantry. The park contains interpretive exhibits, as well as picnic sites and a short trail. The name Poison Spring was known to Camden area residents at the time of the engagement and was used in battle reports, but its origins are uncertain. Later legends suggested that Union soldiers became ill after drinking the cold spring water, but no contemporary accounts confirm …

Poke Bayou (Sharp County)

Poke Bayou creek begins near Sidney (Sharp County) at Big Spring in Izard County, flows through Sandtown (Independence County), and empties into the White River just above the bridge at Batesville (Independence County). Izard County historian Denny Elrod stated the following about the area’s history: “It was to this creek many of the early settlers came. Across the White River from Poke Bayou is Wolf Bayou which hosted an Indian camp and trading-post. The creek is picturesque near Sandtown as it flows along the foot of overhanging bluffs.” The original settlement at Batesville dates back to at least an 1814 trading post. When the first post office was established on the confluence of the bayou and the White River on …