Railroad Names Intro
Until well after the Civil War, travel in Arkansas was extremely difficult. Arkansas roads were notoriously bad, so most travel went by the state’s rivers and bayous. That all changed in the decades following the Civil War as railroad companies laid down hundreds of miles of track and, to serve the locomotives and passengers, they built stations every few miles. For railroad timetables and schedules, these stations all needed to have names, of course, and most were named for railroad executives or surveyors. Some stations were named for the landowners who had given or sold land to the railroad. And some stations were named for investors, including a wealthy Dutch family, whose names have been so anglicized as to become nearly unrecognizable. Around these stations, with their access to the wider world, towns often sprang up, and many grew and still exist. Join us as we explore the influence of railroads on Arkansas place names.
Daniel Boice
University of Arkansas at Monticello