KUAR Arkansas’s Amazing Place Names # 39 Mena
In 1896, after Arthur Stilwell, president of the Kansas City, Pittsburg, and Gulf Railroad had tried but failed to accurately name one of his railroad stations in honor of his Dutch financial supporter Jan deGoeijen, he decided to try again, this time by naming a station for deGoeijen’s wife. As noted raconteur Rex Nelson has recently reported, her name was Folmina Margaretha Janssen-de Goeijen, which must have horrified the railroad’s sign painters. But – thankfully – her nickname was Mena. And so came the name of the station, and the community that grew up around it, and pretty quickly Mena became the seat of Polk County. Journalist Ernie Deane mistakenly identifies Mena as deGoeijen’s mother, not his wife, but Deane does correct the common belief that Mena is a short form of the name of the Netherlands Queen Wilhelmina, who has her own Arkansas place name.
Daniel Boice
University of Arkansas at Monticello