Apples, Livestock, Walmart Dominate County History

— Hundreds of roads stretch across Benton County, providing a glimpse of how the region’s culture and economy have transformed through the years.

Roads such as Old Highway 59, Old Wire Road and Old 71 are a few of many that have become a part of the county’s history.

Roads carried Native Americans traveling the Trail of Tears in the 1830s. Confederate and Union soldiers marched along the roads in the 1860s. Thousands of pounds of apples were transported by wagons to train stations starting in the 1880s. The streets were paved for motor vehicles in the 1920s and today are traveled by many Walmart, J.B. Hunt and Tyson Foods corporate employees and many others.

Benton County was carved out of Washington County on Sept. 30, 1836 — a few months after Arkansas was admitted into the union. Prior to statehood the region was known as Arkansas Territory.

A census was made of the Benton County region in 1835 prior to statehood, writes J. Dickson Black in the “History of Benton County.” At that time 7,232 residents lived in the county. The Census Bureau shows 221,339 lived in the county during the 2010 census.

Monte Harris, author of “Bentonville, A Pictorial History” and Rogers Historical Society historian, said the roads were first created by animals traveling from water source to water source.

“Hunters followed the animals and then came the stagecoaches and then the soldiers,” Harris said. She said the roads ultimately changed in the 1920s when they were paved to accommodate cars.

Irish, Scottish and German settlers from Tennessee were among the first to settle Benton County in the 1830s to 1840s, Harris said. The economy was well under way by the 1850s.

“From what I can tell this place was cooking,” Harris said. “The barns were full of food.”

The region was introduced to imports during this time because of steamboats that traveled up the White River to Van Buren, Harris said.

In February 1862 the Union army began moving out of Missouri, Harris said. Bentonville, the county seat, was one of the first places the army stopped.

“Bentonville citizens knew the Union army was coming, so the citizens of Bentonville chose to burn several of the main buildings,” Harris said. “They knew that the Union army could use them and when they were done they would burn them.”

More than 600 Union troops slept on the Bentonville square prior to the start of the Battle of Pea Ridge, Harris said.

In the 1880s the railroad was constructed closely following Old Wire Road, Harris said. She said that helped the region export goods for the first time. The Rogers portion of the railroad was completed in 1881.

“That changed the whole name of the ball game here,” Harris said. “That was the same time that the apple industry was taking off on a level where people had enough apples where they could sell commercially, so that train allowed them to export apples.”

The roads of Benton County were largely used to transport apples to the train station, Harris said. She said the apple industry continued to boom in the county until near the time of the Great Depression. The depression struck Arkansas in 1927 after the flooding of the Mississippi River. A drought followed in 1931.

“After that there were a few apple orchards up until the 1960s, but never the same that were there in the late 1880s and early 1900s,” Harris said.

Mary Marquess, 90, remembers the county Apple Blossoms Fair that was held on the Bentonville square every year.

“Can you imagine Ferris wheels on the square plus little booths selling hamburgers?” Marquess said. “A parade with floats would come up to town and go around the square.”

It was not uncommon for families to buy apples by the bushel, she said.

“They had a big ice plant here and people would buy apples and store them in the ice locker,” Marquess said. “They would have apples all during the winter. You couldn’t buy just anything in the grocery, you know.”

A re-enactment of the robbery at Peoples Bank in Bentonville also was held in the city every year.

“The outlaws always came in on horseback,” Marquess said. The bank was robbed on June 4, 1893, according to Black’s book.

Marquess also remembers darker times.

“During the Depression there just wasn’t any money and the schools at one time had to shut down in the spring and at one point they charged a little tuition and it got so bad that so many children were coming to school with no lunches,” Marquess said.

Farmers would donate beef and it would be prepared into a stew with vegetables, Marquess said.

“They would serve it to the children that needed it on the back of the stage at Old High (Middle School),” Marquess said. “Everybody was poor because there was no money.”

Cary Anderson, a member of the Bentonville Genealogy Society, said he has witnessed a change in the region during recent years. Anderson attended the University of Arkansas in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He left the region after college, but returned in the late 1980s.

The Census Bureau shows 97,499 lived in the county during the 1990 census.

“When I came back I noticed a few changes, but there was still two lanes from Rogers to Bentonville. It was a little country trail,” Anderson said. He said the stretch of Interstate 540 between the two towns hadn’t been built yet.

Walmart changed the economic and cultural diversity of Benton County overnight, Anderson said.

“All of a sudden it just boomed,” Anderson said. “The office building was there, but I think Walmart was still going to vendors and other parts of the world to see merchandise.”

Walmart began in 1962 when Sam Walton opened the company’s first discount store in Rogers, according to the company’s website. The company expanded by opening more stores throughout the country for the decades to follow. In 1990 the store became the top retailer in the country. The company became international with the opening of a retail unit in Mexico City the following year.

Brooks Blevins, Noel Boyd associate professor of Ozarks Studies at Missouri State University, said the entry of corporate businesses such as Walmart, J.B. Hunt and Tyson Foods to Northwest Arkansas has created a cosmopolitan atmosphere in Benton County, along with Washington County.

“Overall it is kind of out of character for the history of the Ozarks,” Blevins said. However, he added there are a lot of things that add to the success of Benton County.

The region is not a rags-to-riches success story, Blevins said.

“If you go back to the earliest days, this was a prosperous place compared to the rest of the state,” Blevins said.

Blevins said the apple industry died, but was replaced with the poultry and cattle industry.

“When you have Tyson and these other poultry companies in the beginning of the 1930s that changes the look of the land and you have all these farmers that can switch to poultry,” Blevins said. “It is around the same time that you have the beginning of the modern cattle industry. All these things happened before Walmart comes along. I would say Northwest Arkansas has a long tradition of being prosperous by Arkansas and Ozarks standards.”

Upcoming Events