Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Maggie, Arkansas

Along State Highway 10 in southeastern Logan County, Arkansas, running from west to east, the last two incorporated towns are Magazine and Blue Mountain; and east of Blue Mountain  in Yell County is the unincorporated community of Waveland. In one of the examination rooms at a clinic in Fort Smith, I recently saw a map of the railroads in Arkansas from about the year 1900. It was quite interesting. I noticed that along the stretch of the Rock Island railroad corresponding to the area described above along the highway were Magazine. Maggie, and Waveland - but no Blue Mountain.

I had never heard of Maggie, so I asked a couple of local residents who are well-informed on South Logan County history if they knew anything about it. Yes, it happened that they did. Maggie was a small community located just west of Blue Mountain where the highway and railroad cleared the top of the uphill grade coming from the east. The pull was a long one, and evidently Maggie was the logical place to put a railroad stop, instead of at Blue Mountain. There are still a few houses near where Maggie must have been, but the Highway Department has placed no community name sign there, as they frequently do at other unincorporated "wide spots in the road," and so Maggie has pretty much passed from the public's notice.

One wonders who the lady was for whom the community was named.

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