Monkey Run

Curious Names         Monkey Run
For KUAR, this is Dan Boice with Naming Arkansas.
Many Arkansas places are named for local animals, including the towns of Bear Mountain and Deer. Less obvious is the origin for the name of Monkey Run in Baxter County. The town was established in the 1870s around Pilgrim’s Rest Baptist Church, and so first called Pilgrim’s Rest, but the official name which came later has at least four stories, three involving a local shopkeeper. In the first, rudely awakened one night by a group of boys, the shopkeeper chased the boys away, yelling “watch them monkeys run.” In the second tale, the rascally boys told each other to “watch that old monkey run.” A third, less delinquent story, says that the shopkeeper bought so many gifts for his sweetheart that he had to travel frequently to Little Rock, and locals said, “There goes the old monkey on his run.” Finally, a marginally more credible tale is of an early settler’s pet monkey that ran away. In any case, later attempts by merchants to change the name back to the more respectable Pilgrim’s Rest failed and the curious monkey name remained.
For the University of Arkansas at Monticello, this is Dan Boice.