Among the questions I am most often asked are those dealing with Arkansas place names. How places received their names, especially unusual ones, seems to hold a fascination for people. And, Arkansas certainly has plenty of towns with odd names.
Tourists often wonder how Little Rock got its name — and, if there is a Big Rock? (Yes, in 1722 Frenchman Bernard de La Harpe named the large rock outcropping on the north shore of the Arkansas River opposite Little Rock, declaring it “French Rock.” Alas, he did not give the name Little Rock to the south shore as so many apparently believe.)
Researching Arkansas place names is difficult, but it’s getting better each year. Most Arkansas counties are now the subject of an historical or genealogical web site. Index Arkansas, which is an online index to publications about the state, contains about 100,000 citations. The Arkansas Genealogical Society has published Arkansas Post Offices From Memdag to Norsk, edited by Russell P. Baker. The late Ernie Deane of Fayetteville published Arkansas Place Names in 1986, the first book on the topic. Deane provided information on communities from Apt (Craighead County) to Zinc (Boone County), as he promised on the front cover.
Most places in Arkansas bear the names of people. Of the state’s 75 counties, 60 are named for people. They range from presidents (Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Van Buren) to Revolutionary War heroes (Pulaski, Lafayette, Montgomery) to local leaders and politicians (Ashley, Crittenden, Desha, Faulkner). Poinsett County in northeastern Arkansas is named for South Carolina botanist, physician and secretary of war Joel Poinsett, the first United States minister to Mexico, who introduced the poinsettia plant to America in 1828.
Many Arkansas communities are named for nearby natural resources. Hot Springs is probably the best known example of this, but other instances range from Bauxite in Saline County to Marble in Newton County. Coal Hill was an early coal mining center in Johnson County. Slatington, an extinct town deep in the mountains of Montgomery County, is evidence of an unsuccessful effort to operate a commercial slate quarry. Calamine, a small settlement in Sharp County, took its name from local deposits of zinc carbonate and ferric oxide — ingredients used in Calamine lotion.
Immigrants named many places after their old homes. French immigrant Antoine Barraque called his Jefferson County settlement New Gascony after the home of his youth. New Gascony, by the way, was the site of a bloody confrontation during the Brooks-Baxter War of 1874, a political conflict that ended Reconstruction in Arkansas.
Hot Spring County, where I now live, has several place names of French origin: De Roche, the name of both a community and a creek, and L’Eau Frais Methodist Church is one of at least two Methodist churches with French names in Hot Spring County, another being Francois Church near Perla. Watermelon Island, formed by the Ouachita River in the southern part of Hot Spring County, was known originally as Isle de Mellon.
Arkansas has several names of German origin. Ulm, the Prairie County community, bears no resemblance to the Bavarian city of that name, but it no doubt reflects the homesickness of the German-speaking immigrants who settled on the Grand Prairie in the 1880s. That first August in Arkansas must have been a brutal reminder that they no longer lived in the Alps.
Germania in Saline County was home to many German speaking immigrants, and the area farmers and merchants prospered. However, during World War I anti-German sentiments forced the town to change its name to Vimy Ridge. This must have been a bitter pill to local German settlers since Vimy Ridge was the site of a French victory against the Germans.
Marche, in northern Pulaski County, was a Polish settlement that somehow bore a French name. Tontitown in Washington County was settled by Italian immigrants and named for Henri de Tonti, who in 1686 established the Poste aux Arkansas, or Arkansas Post, the first permanent European settlement in the lower Mississippi Valley.
Many towns bear the names of local people. Perry County has Ava, while no fewer than five counties have had towns named Chester, and six counties have had communities named Ethel. Settlements named Morton could be found in Baxter, Franklin and Woodruff counties. Three counties had settlements named Mabel, while Pulaski County is home to Mabelvale. The community of Pauline in Franklin County had a post office from 1881 to 1907. Clementine, a post office village in Benton County, was named in 1891 for a female postmaster, Clementine McLaughlin.
Many early communities in Arkansas bore names indicating the idealism of the day. Or, given the number of land speculators, these names could have been chosen for marketing purposes. Communities in both Hot Spring and Saline counties bore the name Friendship. Four different counties have had settlements known as Eden, while Boone County had a post office named Prosperity until the Great Depression. For real estate salesmen with limited expectations, four different Arkansas communities named Okay have had post offices, the one in Howard County lasting until 1972.
Political affiliations of early settlers can certainly be seen in the communities of Democrat, in St. Francis County, and Republican in Faulkner County. Freedom post office was in Montgomery County, while Baxter County had a community named Independence, and Jefferson, Saline, and Union counties each had post offices named Reform.
My favorite place names are the eccentric ones, or perhaps the ones that hint at the complexities of the human condition. Romance (White County) and Eros (Marion County) perhaps debunk notions that our ancestors were prudes. Faith, in Jefferson County, changed its name to Grace for a time. Cleveland County had its Peace community, and Desha County had a Refuge. Was it a sense of humor that caused someone to give the name Caput to a post office in Carroll County? Aptly named, the post office closed after one year.
Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist living near Glen Rose in rural Hot Spring County. Email him at Arktopia.td@gmail. com . An earlier version of this column was published Oct. 18, 2009.