Arkansas River
The Arkansas River shaped the historical and commercial development of the state and the area that became North Little Rock. From its source in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, the 1,460-mile long river cuts across Kansas, Oklahoma, and the highlands and low delta of Arkansas on its winding journey to the Mississippi River.
Both the river and the state derive their name from the Quapaw, who settled around the confluence of the Arkansas and Mississippi rivers. The Quapaw called themselves the O-gah-pah or Downstream People, but French explorers who met them in the 1670s translated their identity, given by native guides, as the Arkansas.
For a millennium, the Arkansas River and its tributaries have served as highways and trade routes, first for native populations and then for the Spanish, French, and Americans. Riding the river, hunters and trappers in dugout canoes gained passage into the forests and swamps of the state’s interior. A source of food, the Arkansas and its streams offered an abundance of waterfowl, catfish, bass, and crappie, among a host of other aquatic and land species.
The Arkansas was crucial to western expansion of the United States. After the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, travelers arrived in keelboats, flatboats, barges, and steamboats. Danger lurked in the river’s twists and turns, blocked by logs and snags. Low or high water made it impassable at times for boats. However, when the water level was down, horseback riders and walkers could ford the shallows.
About 1820, Georgia native Edmund Hogan, a brigadier general in the Arkansas Militia, established the first ferry service between the north side and the rocky outcropping known as the rock or little rock. The fledgling town of Little Rock became the capital of the Arkansas Territory in 1821 and the state in 1836. Several other operators ferried people and supplies across the river in Central Arkansas.
Ferry boats plied the river for 70 years, using ropes and pulleys at first, then horses on treadmills, and finally steam power. By the 1890s, they gave way to railroad and highway bridges: the Baring Cross Bridge in 1873, the Junction Bridge in 1884, the free bridge in 1897, and the Choctaw Bridge in 1899.
Although perennial flooding initially inhibited settlement on the north side, until development of the railroads in the 1870s, the alluvial soil of the river’s flood plain enriched agriculture in the fertile delta bottoms downriver from Rose City and eastward.
Regattas, swimming races, and riverboat trips were popular in the early 1900s, though the river mainly fostered commercial interests for decades when accessible to boats. It largely took a back seat, however, to railroads, highways, and eventually air travel.
Since completion in 1971, the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System, with 18 locks and dams, has fostered commercial barge traffic, flood control, fish and wildlife conservation, recreation, local water supplies, and hydroelectric generation. North Little Rock’s Murray Hydroelectric plant has helped provide electricity to homes and businesses in North Little Rock and Sherwood since 1988.
The Arkansas River Trail runs along the north bank from downtown to Cook’s landing near the hydroelectric plant and connects with the Big Dam recreational bridge.
Swamp Stories
Stories in the early 1900s of a werewolf, legends of ghosts, witches, and the Laf’n Rampo, and scary tales of strange, wild creatures unnerved even the most intrepid who stepped into the murky and mysterious Dark Hollow swamp. Dense vegetation, 100-foot-tall Cypress trees that blocked the daylight, and sloughs of soft mud may have given the 2,300-acre swamp its Dark Hollow name by early inhabitants.
The Dark Hollow swamp contained a lake of 13.5 square miles, now in the Interstate 40 right of way. This ancient lake and swamp sustained an ecosystem of land and aquatic mammals, amphibians, reptiles, insects, waterfowl, plants and cypress, oak and gum trees.
Hunters, trappers and fishermen were drawn into the watery world.
Others were drawn by curiosity.
Some who ventured into the thickets didn’t return, according to hearsay meant to warn against foolish adventure.
Dramatic stories circulated of those fortunate enough to survive death-defying challenges.
And, quite naturally, stories of the supernatural fed on fears of the unknown. Folklorist Walter Metz wrote of a fanged, hairy beast, which he called the Cherry Hill werewolf. Eyewitnesses reported seeing the specter walk down a dirt path that led into the Dark Hollow swamp from what is now Park Hill.
“I never did see this werewolf,” Metz assured, “but I have talked with people who said they had seen it.”
Was the purported werewolf a man with a lot of hair? Did he or it attack anyone? Or just scare the daylights out of people who believed in the myth?
Metz thought the story was meant to frighten children from going into the dangerous swamp and linked it to two brutal murders at the time of teenage girls.
Using steam dredges, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began removing the suffocating growth to drain the swamp in 1909. The massive, earth-moving project neared completion two years later.
Talking to locals in 1911, an Arkansas Gazette reporter heard tales of ghosts, witches, and shadow creatures that roamed the swampy woods near their homes.
According to the reporter, residents said that “at night, when the silence of darkness falls upon the place, many weird and inexplicable sounds are heard emanating therefrom.”
A woman said ghosts and witches had started making “funny noises” because the drainage work was disturbing the spirits.
One of the swamp sounds, described by a resident as a “particularly ghoulish laugh,” came from an unseen haunt called the “Laf’n Rampo.”
He and others said it laughed only when it was hungry.
Amid the hazards of the swamp were snakes and swarms of mosquitoes. Bears and panthers also ventured into the gloom to find food. Bullfrogs, the source of frog legs prized in area restaurants, provided nightly choruses. Ducks covered the water like a blanket.
The cacophony excited human imagination, especially in the dark of night.
In 1907, the North Little Rock Times told a harrowing story of a popular druggist who barely escaped the swamp.
Joe White, the popular manager of White Drug Store at 102 West Washington, was hunting in the brush when he waded out into water about two inches deep to retrieve a duck he had shot.
“When he started back to dry land, he was surprised to find that his feet were miring down and finally he was down in the mud to his knees,” the Times reported. With “almost superhuman” effort, however, he extracted himself from the quagmire, losing the buckles and straps pulled from his boots.
On his way out of the dank swamp, White said, he noticed three dead cows trapped in the mud and surmised they had starved to death, unable to get out. White knew he was one lucky man.
–Cary Bradburn
Swamps
Until the 20th century, swamps predominated in the floodplains and bottomland hardwood forests on the north side of the Arkansas River where North Little Rock originated. Storm water flowed naturally from the north ridges to the lowlands near the flood-prone river.
The Dark Hollow, Baring Cross, and Faulkner Lake wetlands supported a diverse ecosystem of land and aquatic mammals, amphibians, reptiles, insects, waterfowl, plants and trees of cypress, oak, and gum.
American settlers avoided these impenetrable wetland fortresses of thick underbrush and tall cypress, fearing illness and fever from miasmic “vapors” and smells emanating from the gloomy and fetid waters.
Although the area’s swamps lured hunters and fishermen to the bounty of game prized by cafés and home kitchens, tales circulated of supernatural creatures, perhaps a warning to stay away.
Snakes, swarms of mosquitoes, and other bugs, as well as the hazards of mires posed real dangers.
A prong of the Dark Hollow swamp reached today’s downtown North Little Rock. Hunters in the 1800s shot ducks in a lake at what is now Fourth and Main streets.
Another prong reached west to what is 13th and Main and to Pike Avenue. In the late 1800s sawmills began cutting the trees for lumber used in construction and manufacturing.
There were accounts in the early 1900s of a lake that covered low areas from Main Street to Pike between 12th to 14th streets. Out of necessity, the railroad bed of the St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern Railway was built up to traverse the lake.
Dark Hollow swamp and Loomis Lake, north of Argenta, covered 2,300 acres, where cypress trees grew as tall as 100 feet. Loomis Lake was named about 1885, after a lumber mill operator, who sawed the great cypress trees down to stumps. His mill produced roofing shingles shipped all over the state.
Protests arose when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began draining the Dark Hollow swamp in 1909, destroying the habitat for frogs, ducks, mud hens, and trout that had provided many a meal for the locals. According to one estimate at the time, half the population of Argenta consumed fish and frog legs from the 13.5 square-mile Loomis Lake.
A similar fate met the Baring Cross swamp, which covered about 60 acres between Pike Avenue and Willow Street northward to Clendenin Hill. As the St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern Railroad expanded its yard and shops in the early 1900s, it drained and filled in the muddy swamp.
The Arkansas Gazette reported in 1906 that steam shovels worked steadily to fill in a swampy six-acre parcel, using 14 wheel scoops, and a work force of 50 Black men encamped on a hill, from which they dug dirt for the “big fill.” By 1908 commercial sawmills in Baring Cross had cut down all the cypress for lumber.
The Faulkner Lake Wetlands in Rose City comprise about 3,700 acres. Much of the area was not subjected to the intense development that affected the Dark Hollow and Baring Cross swamps. Federal protections also have helped in recent decades to preserve the swamps, lakes, and bayous of the 34-square mile area known as the Faulkner Lake Wetlands.
“Mrs. Speer spoke of the great amount of water, swamps, and cypress trees, and the beauty . . .She told of a lake that ran from Main Street to Pike Avenue, and from 12th to 14th streets. She said the (Iron Mountain) railroad bed had been built up out of this lake, and that the property at 521 West 14th was on a bluff overlooking this area,” Messenger wrote.
The Forest
A vast primeval forest covered most of Arkansas before the Europeans came. What is now Little Rock and North Little Rock was a river crossing along a prehistoric trade route from Canada to South America.
Mound builders known as the Plum Bayou culture, flourished from 600 to 950 A.D. east of North Little Rock. In 1994, during highway construction at Springhill, archeologists found charred remnants of a house dated to between 1450 and 1650, including pottery fragments and dart points characteristic of earlier occupants.
When the French arrived in the 1670s, the Quapaw and Osage were armed with bows and arrows and spears, having hunted and fished for generations along the Arkansas River and in the hilly and swampy bottomland hardwoods of mostly oak, cottonwood, and cypress.
Elk, deer, black bears, wildcats, turkeys, foxes, rabbits, and other small animals, as well as geese, grouse, ducks, pheasants, and partridges inhabited the woods. Trees and bushes bore fruits, nuts, berries, and roots. An abundance of fish, frogs, and beavers lived in the waters.
The Quapaw, who were generally friendly with the French and then the Americans, engaged in trade to acquire manufactured products, among which were guns and liquor, in exchange for fur and hides.
Europeans carried flintlock muskets and pistols that revolutionized hunting and warfare for the Quapaw and other native people. With later gun technology in the 19th century, percussion cap rifles and metallic cartridges improved the accuracy and range of weapons.
But contact with the Europeans brought deadly diseases, notably smallpox, which decimated the Quapaw population in the 1700s.
Early maps of the north side of the river that is now downtown North Little Rock, identified the area as “Hunters” or “French Hunters.” By the 1820s the wooded lowlands supported hunting clubs for sportsmen.
The harvest of game and timber drove the economy. Hunting supplied meat, furs, and hides for commercial interests. Lumber mills produced wood for all manner of construction and staves for the crafting of cabinets and furniture.
In the 1870s to 1900s, when railroads began crisscrossing the state, demand grew for rail ties. Koppers Inc., known as Tie Plant, for which the surrounding neighborhood took its name in Rose City, has manufactured creosote railroad ties since 1907.
The forest has diminished in size since the colonial period, replaced by the needs of timber and agriculture. Trees were cut for construction of homes, schools, and businesses. Farmers cleared trees to plant crops. Corn, squash, beans, melons, pumpkins, and grapes, among others, were grown on small farms and taken to markets for sale.
On a larger scale, cotton was the staple for much of the late 1800s and the 1900s, providing for North Little Rock’s early industrial expansion. Extracted from cotton gins, seeds were the raw material for the city’s four large cotton seed oil mills that shipped products by rail to industries in food and clothing. Once the seeds were removed, the cotton or lint went to one of the four cotton compresses in the city, where the size of bales were compressed for export.