Railroad Historians Discuss Railroads in Region

Courtesy Mike Condren Mike Condren snapped this photo in 1965 of a train passing through Alma. Condren, a railroad historian and photographer, will speak on railroads of Crawford County Sunday at the Drennen-Scott Historic Site in Van Buren. Chuck Girard, a member and former national director of the Arkanas-Boston Mountains chapter of the National Railway Historical Society, joins Condren in the presentation.

Courtesy Mike Condren Mike Condren snapped this photo in 1965 of a train passing through Alma. Condren, a railroad historian and photographer, will speak on railroads of Crawford County Sunday at the Drennen-Scott Historic Site in Van Buren. Chuck Girard, a member and former national director of the Arkanas-Boston Mountains chapter of the National Railway Historical Society, joins Condren in the presentation.

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

The Ozarks and Boston Mountains once seemed impenetrable. Steep and rocky, they left western Arkansas isolated from the rest of the country. Crossing the Arkansas River posed another challenge for railroads.

Today, the Arkansas & Missouri Railroad -- named the 2014 Regional Railroad of the Year by Railway Age magazine -- runs from Monet, Mo., to Fort Smith, shuttling goods to continue their journeys on the Kansas City Southern Railroad, Union Pacific Railroad and Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway Co.

Go & Do

Railroad History of Crawford County

Who: Chuck Girard and Mike Condren

When: 1:30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. Sunday

Where: Drennen-Scott Historic Site, 221 N. Third St. in Van Buren

Admission: Free, but reservations are requested

Information: 262-2750, [email protected]

Go & Do

Photography Exhibit

What: 1903 to 1904 photos of Ozark life

When: 1 to 5 p.m. Thursday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday and Saturday, through November

Where: Drennen-Scott Historic Site, 221 N. Third St. in Van Buren

Exhibit opening: 1 p.m. Sunday with Ray Wallace, who discovered the glass negatives, speaking

Admission: Free, but reservations are requested

Information: 262-2750, [email protected]

Fast Facts

National Railway Historical Society

Annual Convention

When: June 12-15

Where: Holiday Inn in Springdale

Tickets: $89, plus $10 each for train excursions

Information: nhrs.com

Sand dredged from the Arkansas River is sent to the cement plants in Northwest Arkansas, and complete trains -- 100 cars long -- carry grain through the area, said Chuck Girard, a member and former national director of the Arkansas-Boston Mountains chapter of the National Railway Historical Society.

"If you think how much a train can can carry per car versus trucks, that's an enormous amount of freight," Girard said.

Girard and Mike Condren, a railroad historian, will speak on railroad history at 1:30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. Sunday at the Drennen-Scott Historic Site, 221 N. Third St. in Van Buren. The presentation is part of the Crawford County Chronicles series offered there.

The Drennens and Scotts were instrumental in bringing the railroad to the River Valley, said Tom Wing, director of the Drennen-Scott site. John Drennen was a founding stockholder in the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad, the first in the region. After he died in 1855, and after the turmoil of the Civil War ended, Drennen's son-in-law, Charles Scott, was able to build the tracks along the north bank of the Arkansas River, Wing continued.

The presenters will wander "all the way back to pre-railroad days," Condren said. "To 1858, and the arrival of the first Butterfield (Overland Mail) stagecoach." Previously, the steamboats on the Arkansas River provided the only transportation to the region, while the rest of greater Fort Smith are was covered by horse and wagon, he explained.

"The railroads were important to the development of Van Buren and Fort Smith because of the need for transportation which could be relied upon," Condren said. "Before the era of the Kerr-McClellan navigation system, the Arkansas River could not be relied upon. In the summer, it was so shallow that boats could not make it to Van Buren on a consistent basis."

The Little Rock and Fort Smith, the first railroad in the River Valley, arrived in Van Buren from Little Rock in the 1870s. The St. Louis-San Francisco Railway (known as the "Frisco") arrived in the early 1880s, continuing around the north side of the Arkansas River to downtown Fort Smith through the Cherokee Nation, Condren said.

"They said, 'To heck with the treaty with the Cherokee Nation,'" he continued. "However, in 1879, the Cherokee Nation took the railroad to federal court and forced them to remove the track back to Van Buren. After that, the railroad again crossed the river to Fort Smith via a ferry (four to six cars at a time).

"It was a very intensive operation," Condren noted. "But the trains weren't the 100-plus-car monsters they are today. They were considerably shorter, about 30 freight cars."

Frisco officials asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the 1880s to build a bridge across the river, Condren continued. It opened in 1891, called the "Helen Gould Bridge," after the daughter of Jay Gould, railroad magnet and owner of local rail lines. His Little Rock and Fort Smith used the bridge to reach Fort Smith.

"The bridge opened a lot of possibilities," Condren said.

Through the years, many railroads traveling through Van Buren and Fort Smith have been merged or sold. The Little Rock and Fort Smith was absorbed into the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railroad, which became part of the Missouri Pacific Railroad. In 1982, the Union Pacific took over. In 1986, the A&M earned the right to operate a line from Monet to the Oklahoma line and south to Fort Smith, Condren said. The rail was purchased from the BNSF.

"There were a lot of railroad names involved," Condren said. "But there were only two railroads in Van Buren at any one time. 'The names have been changed to protect the innocent.'

"The railroad made a very important contribution to the economy of Van Buren," Condren added. "During its heyday, the MoPac had a division point here."

Behind the Missouri Pacific shops during the 1940s, soldiers stationed at Camp Jesse Turner learned to operate trains by working with the railroad employees. Their new skills were put to use on trains in Europe during World War II.

"And (Camp) Chaffee was going full force at the time," with the Missouri Pacific pulling in troop trains, Condren said. In the 1960s, the Frisco did the same. The Union Pacific still operates along the Little Rock and Fort Smith track started by Drennen and finished by Scott.

"The railroad was really important," Wing said. "It replaced steamboats, and we eventually got the highways."

NAN Life on 04/30/2014