July 30, 1941

Harvey Couch—founder of Arkansas Power and Light (AP&L), president of the Louisiana and Arkansas Railway and Kansas City Southern Railway, and developer of rural telephone systems in northern Louisiana and southern Arkansas—died after spending the last five months of his life at Couchwood, his summer vacation estate. Couchwood, now a Historic District, consists of eight buildings on 170 acres and sits on a peninsula overlooking Lake Catherine (which was named for Couch’s daughter) between Hot Springs (Garland County) and Malvern (Hot Spring County). The property remains in the Couch family and is not open to the public.