Entry Type: Place

Parks (Scott County)

Parks is an unincorporated community located along Highway 28 twelve miles southeast of Waldron (Scott County) in eastern Scott County. Originally known as White Church, it was established in 1838 along the Fourche La Fave River as an agricultural community. The earliest people inhabited the area during the Archaic, Woodland, and Mississippian periods. Later inhabitants include Native American people of the Caddo tribe. Several thousand archaeological sites are located throughout the Fourche La Fave River valley, including small burial mounds. During the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, French hunters and tradesmen explored various portions of western Arkansas. These Frenchmen traversed rivers and streams throughout the region, including the Poteau, Petit Jean, and Fourche La Fave rivers. It is probable …

Parkway Courts Historic District

The Parkway Courts Historic District is a motel and apartment complex located at 815 Park Avenue in Hot Springs (Garland County) originally constructed in 1943. Part of the district was rebuilt in the early 1950s after a fire, and it was added to the National Register of Historic Places on February 11, 2004. Businesses began to appear along Park Avenue in the 1930s to serve the tourists who visited Hot Springs. Construction of motels, restaurants, and similar enterprises continued in the area until the 1950s. The Parkway Courts were constructed by Florence Franklin Newell in 1943. She sold the property to Otto Baker in 1950, and the name of the business was changed to Parkway Apartments. Two years later, the …

Parnell Springs (Bradley County)

Parnell Springs was located ten miles northwest of Warren (Bradley County) and seven miles south of New Edinburg (Cleveland County), two miles off Highway 8 on a gravel road. It was a booming health resort noted for the healing qualities of its three springs, especially between 1880 and the 1920s. The exact date of the Parnell Springs’ founding in Bradley County is not known, but by 1880, it was both a community and health resort. The community took its name from Joseph M. Parnell, who was the first to capitalize on the water and resort area. In the mid-nineteenth century, many Parnells and their relatives populated the area, including Anna Moseley Parnell, who emigrated from Alabama during the 1840s and …

Paroquet (Independence County)

Paroquet, located near Newark (Independence County) and the Black River, was named for a now extinct American bird, the Carolina parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis), which had been found in dense forests, along rivers, and in swamps in North America and especially in Florida and the Carolinas. (Paroquet is an older spelling of “parakeet.”) The Carolina parakeet was also plentiful in parts of Arkansas in the early 1800s and most likely inhabited the swampy regions along the Black River. The species was declared extinct in 1939. Paroquet is located at the intersection of Paroquet Road (Sandman Lane) and Duck Puddle Road approximately five miles east-southeast of Newark and about three miles north-northwest of Jacksonport (Jackson County), the location of the confluence of …

Patmos (Hempstead County)

Patmos is a town in southern Hempstead County on State Highway 355. The town was created by construction of the Louisiana and Arkansas Railway early in the twentieth century, but its most significant years have been in the twenty-first century. Caddo lived and traveled along the Red River not far from Patmos, but no settlement was established in the area at that time. After the Arkansas Territory was established, a network of routes called the Southwest Trail was built across the territory, terminating at Fulton (Hempstead County) on the Red River. Washington (Hempstead County) and other communities were established and grew during these years, but the site of Patmos remained unsettled. Just before the start of the Civil War, in …

Patterson (Woodruff County)

Patterson, located in the southwestern part of Woodruff County, was once an important shipping point for the lumber industry. Today, its economy relies on agricultural services and granaries. Patterson, like many other settlements, was not always called by that name. It began when the B&B Railroad tracks were built across the Missouri Pacific tracks in the 1880s. Rufus Martin was the construction engineer on the project, and the place where the tracks crossed was named Martin’s Junction. Sanders Sawmill on the Cache River floated logs down the river to Martin’s Junction for shipping. Several other sawmills in the area, as well as a stave mill, used the point for shipping, and businesses began to spring up. At some point, the …

Paul Laurence Dunbar High School

aka: Dunbar Junior and Senior High School and Junior College
Dunbar Junior and Senior High School and Junior College, located at the corner of Wright Avenue and Ringo Street in Little Rock (Pulaski County), is significant in four areas: African American history, education history, legal history, and architecture/engineering achievement. From 1929 to 1955, Dunbar offered a comprehensive education for Black students in Little Rock. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. Nearby residential properties comprise the Paul Laurence Dunbar High School Neighborhood Historic District. Known historically as a Rosenwald School and funded in part by Jewish philanthropist Julius Rosenwald—president of Sears, Roebuck and Company—Dunbar Junior and Senior High School and Junior College was completed in 1929 as the Negro School of Industrial Arts. It …

Paul Laurence Dunbar School Neighborhood Historic District

Dotted with homes dating to the 1890s, the Paul Laurence Dunbar School Neighborhood Historic District in downtown Little Rock (Pulaski County) has been described by the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program as “reflecting the varied architectural styles prevalent during the late-nineteenth and early-to-mid-twentieth centuries, exhibiting a broad mix of influences and architectural variants popular during the period.” The district is nestled between the Governor’s Mansion Historic District to the east and the Central High School Neighborhood Historic District to the west. Paul Laurence Dunbar Junior and Senior High School and Junior College, from which the historic district takes its name, was erected in 1929. “The elaborate Art Deco school is undoubtedly the architectural showcase of the neighborhood,” noted the Paul Laurence …

Pea Ridge (Benton County)

The influx of white settlers into the Pea Ridge area of Arkansas began during the decade prior to Arkansas statehood in 1836 and continued through the 1850s. Pea Ridge became one of the earlier college towns in Arkansas, offering business instruction, music education, and training teachers for early northwest Arkansas schools. Pea Ridge National Military Park, occupying the site of the 1862 Civil War Battle of Pea Ridge, is a major Arkansas tourist attraction. As part of the rapidly expanding economy of northwest Arkansas, Pea Ridge is poised for significant growth during the first decade of the twenty-first century. In fact, the city motto is “Anchored to the Past… Rising to the Future.” Louisiana Purchase through Early Statehood Pea Ridge …

Pea Ridge Academy

aka: Mount Vernon Normal College
aka: Mount Vernon Masonic College
aka: Pea Ridge Normal College
The Pea Ridge Academy, organized in 1874, was one of the earliest enduring institutions of higher education in the developing northwest Arkansas area following the Civil War. Contemporary with what is now the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) and the older Cane Hill College, the Pea Ridge Academy played a significant role in advancing education in Benton County. Organized as a private (or subscription) school, the academy soon entered a cooperative venture with the newly developing public school system, providing space for the public elementary and high school grades, while continuing to operate as a private trustee-governed academy offering college-level courses. Though never a large school, it sent out numerous graduates as business leaders and teachers for …

Pea Ridge National Military Park

Located near Rogers (Benton County), the 4,300-acre Pea Ridge National Military Park was created by an act of Congress in 1956. The park, which preserves the battlefield of the 1862 Battle of Pea Ridge, was dedicated as a national park during the nation’s Civil War Centennial in 1963. Pea Ridge is one of the best-preserved Civil War battlefields in the country. The Pea Ridge National Military Park came into being through the work of several Arkansas congressmen. Representative Clyde T. Ellis of Arkansas’s Third Congressional District began corresponding with the National Park Service in 1939, reviving a proposal to preserve the Pea Ridge battlefield. In 1956, the Arkansas congressional delegation proposed legislation to make Pea Ridge a national military park. …

Peach Orchard (Clay County)

Although it was not incorporated until 1910, Peach Orchard is the oldest extant settlement in Clay County. Located on state Highway 90 a few miles south of the Black River, the city reached its peak during the timber harvesting in Clay County that followed construction of the railroad. Since that time, Peach Orchard has slowly dwindled. French explorers traveled the Black River late in the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth century, and their presence in Arkansas did not abruptly end when the United States acquired the land in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Pierre Le Mieux owned a small estate on the south shore of the Black River that may have existed earlier than 1800. In 1816, he deeded that land …

Peel Mansion Museum and Heritage Gardens

The Peel Mansion Museum and Heritage Gardens preserve the Colonel Samuel W. Peel House, constructed in 1875 and located at 400 South Walton Boulevard in Bentonville (Benton County). The house remains a remarkably good example of the Italianate style of architecture, in spite of the later covering of the main body of the house with stucco. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 4, 1995. A native of Arkansas, Samuel Peel was a Civil War veteran who, by the conflict’s end, had risen to the rank of colonel in the Fourth Regiment, Arkansas Infantry. Peel was penniless at the close of the war and set on a career in law immediately after his discharge. He was …

Pencil Bluff (Montgomery County)

Pencil Bluff is an unincorporated community located in Montgomery County, nine miles west of the county seat, Mount Ida (Montgomery County). Today, Pencil Bluff encompasses the two former area communities of White Town and Sock City. White Town grew along Highway 6, which ran from Mount Ida to Fort Smith (Sebastian County). In the early 1920s, a car repair workshop and small store served White Town, followed some years later by a café. In 1930, Highway 6 became U.S. Highway 270 when it was improved and relocated around White Town. Two differing accounts exist documenting how Sock City received its name. According to one, the area’s men hid money in their socks when they met to play poker. The second …

Pendleton (Desha County)

Pendleton (Desha County) is the site of the only highway bridge over the Arkansas River between Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) and the Mississippi River forty miles downriver from the bridge. Pendleton is located in the northwestern-most part of Desha County. It was also the site of a major levee break on April 16, 1927, during the Flood of 1927. The Pendleton Post Office was open from 1867 to 1926 in one of the two general stores at the “town” of Pendleton. When much labor was required to farm the fertile land, a large community thrived in the area. The community was named for Dr. Samuel H. Pendleton, who was born in Amherst, Virginia. He moved his family to the area …

Penters Bluff (Izard County)

aka: Penter’s Bluff (Izard County)
The historic community of Penters Bluff is located on the White River about six and a half miles southeast of Guion (Izard County) and approximately five miles west of Cushman (Independence County). Penters Bluff and the neighboring railroad towns of Switch and Crocker have disappeared without much of a trace. Named for John Penter and family, whose name was often pronounced Painter, the bluff (or really a collection of bluffs) is sometimes called by that name and also by Panthers, Panters, and even Pinters Bluff; the apostrophe is usually left out between the “r” and the “s” in Penter’s Bluff but not always. The main reason Penters Bluff is still on the map is its breath-taking beauty, which attracts tourists …

Perla (Hot Spring County)

Perla of Hot Spring County is one-tenth of a mile east of the city of Malvern (Hot Spring County) on U.S. Highway 67/270. Known for its clay pits, this incorporated community is home to the Perla East Gate Plant and Perla Plant No. 2 of Acme Brick. Later influenced by the brick industry, Perla was actually founded on its timber prospects. Malvern Lumber Company was established in 1880 by Ludolph Adalbert Strauss. Strauss was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1848. He graduated from the College of Preceptors and moved to St. Louis, Missouri, in 1864. He worked in the lumber industry there as well as in Little Rock (Pulaski County) and Shreveport, Louisiana. On a train headed to the spas …