Listed in Arkansas Register of Historic Places on 04/04/07

SUMMARY

Even though the majority of railroad construction took place in Arkansas in the late 1800s after the Civil War, there was still some construction taking place in the first part of the twentieth century. One of the new railroad lines that was built during the first decade of the 1900s was the line of the St. Louis & North Arkansas Railroad, which connected Eureka Springs and Harrison. In order to complete the line, it was necessary to build the Charcoal Gap Tunnel to the northeast of Eureka Springs, one of a total of six railroad tunnels that have been built in Arkansas. Due to its important role in the development of railroad transportation in the Harrison and Eureka Springs areas, the Charcoal Gap Tunnel is being nominated to the Arkansas Register of Historic Places with local significance under Criterion A. Although the large rock slide that blocks most of the portal at the eastern end precludes the tunnel from being eligible for listing in the National Register, the Charcoal Gap Tunnel is still an important part of Arkansas’s railroad past and is eligible for listing in the Arkansas Register.

ELABORATION

Although the first railroad line in the United States was laid in the late 1820s, very little railroad construction was completed in Arkansas prior to the Civil War. The Memphis & Little Rock Railroad, which had laid some track westward from Hopefield and eastward from Little Rock, and the Mississippi, Ouachita, & Red River, which had laid a few miles of track inland from Chicot and Arkansas City, were the only railroads to complete any construction prior to 1860.[1]

The Civil War, however, delayed the building of railroads by a decade, and it was not until the 1870s that railroad building took off again. The St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern built a line south from St. Louis to the Arkansas border. They wanted to go to Texas, and purchased the Cairo & Fulton.Although the Cairo & Fulton had not done any construction, it had secured rights-of-way prior to the Civil War. The St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern reached Little Rock by 1872, and had completed the first line across Arkansas when it reached Texarkana in 1874.[2]

The second railroad line to reach across the state incorporated the Memphis & Little Rock Railroad and the newly constructed Little Rock & Fort Smith, which had reached the coal fields of Clarksville in 1874 and Fort Smith five years later. The Little Rock & Fort Smith was purchased by Jay Gould (who already owned the Iron Mountain lines) in 1882, and became part of the Iron Mountain system – the largest railroad system in the state in the late nineteenth century.[3]

When the realization came that only railroads could be used to exploit the vast tracts of virgin timber in Arkansas, railroads and the timber industry developed as one. As a result, railroad lines were constructed further and further into the forests to enable the harvesting of timber, and occasionally the spurs were linked to become new through lines. The boom in railroad construction also greatly influenced settlement patterns throughout Arkansas. Some towns that had thrived on river trade and travel disappeared and many new towns sprang to life along the railroad lines.[4]

One town that was greatly influenced by the arrival of the railroad line was Eureka Springs. Eureka Springs was a successful, thriving city of notice and notoriety across the country. Even the New York Times sent a correspondent in 1884 to report first hand on life in the city. But the forces that had come together in this most out of the way place envisioned even greater future. Once again the connections and power of former Senator Powell Clayton and the Eureka Improvement Company (EIC) were instrumental in the development of the community in conjunction with the railroad. The Eureka Springs Railroad Company was formed in February 1882 by a group of businessmen and members of the EIC. The board of directors included Logan H. Roots of Little Rock; E.W. Taylor of Jefferson, Texas; Nathan Herrman of New York; A.H. Foote of Little Rock; and C.H. Smith of St. Louis, with Powell Clayton serving as president.[5]

On January 27, 1883, the citizens of Eureka Springs gathered at the newly constructed passenger depot to celebrate the completion of an 18.5 mile railroad line from Seligman, Missouri.[6] On February 1, 1883, a schedule of six to nine trains a day began, many included Pullman parlor and sleeping cars.[7] A continued future for Eureka Springs was secure. Records show that over the next four years, 27,783 passengers took the scenic and pleasant modern rail trip surrounded by wooded slopes, winding along dramatic cliffs, passing over rocky creek beds and through narrow passages and tunnels.[8]

The Eureka Springs railroad complex included a separate freight depot, a roundhouse, a machine shop and its own fast-flowing spring to provide all the water needed for the complex, its passengers, and the locomotive.[9] The city filled with social elite who could now travel in style to the health spa on a weekend excursion. Freight moved freely in and out of the city. Any day of the week hundreds of tourists roamed through the shops and many parks. These visitors explored the many natural springs and amazing vistas and unique landscapes on horseback and wagons provided by the seven livery stables. The Arkansas Gazette newspaper on February 3, 1883, stated in an article about Eureka Springs that, “Its permanency is not a question, but a fixed fact.”[10]

With the success and development that the railroad brought to Eureka Springs, it was not long before other communities in Northern Arkansas hoped to share in the growth and development. Residents of the area had long believed that the mountains in the area acted as a barrier between them and the outside world, and that if the railroad came their lives would be much easier. Harrison, which was the county seat of Boone County, was one specific community that hoped to share in the railroad’s wealth. In 1899, a group of capitalists from Little Rock, St. Louis, and New York decided that they would take on the task of building a railroad line to Harrison and on May 17, 1899, the Arkansas Railroad Commission granted a charter to the St. Louis & North Arkansas Railroad.[11]

Although construction of most of the line was fairly easy, albeit requiring a meandering route to bypass and snake around the rolling hills and mountains of the area, a ridge between Livingston Hollow and the Bee Creek Valley could not be bypassed. As a result, it was necessary to construct the Charcoal Gap Tunnel in order to complete the line to Harrison. Construction of the tunnel likely began late in 1899 or early in 1900, and required the blasting of a 600-foot long bore through the solid rock of the ridge. However, once construction began, it did not take long before the tunnel was finished. On March 22, 1901, the last spike was driven into the line at Harrison and the first train, consisting of a couple of flat cars of crossties pulled by Engine #3, was greeted by an enthusiastic crowd.[12]

Although the Charcoal Gap Tunnel was the key to the line’s completion and success, it was also the line’s weakest link. The rock of the tunnel’s core is solid, but the soil at the portals, especially the eastern portal, is fairly unstable. The soil in the vicinity of the eastern portal is Clarksville very cherty silt loam, which is characterized by 20 to 50 percent slopes, and very gravelly silt loam or very gravelly silty clay to a depth of 72 inches that has weathered from cherty limestone. At the western portal, in addition to Clarksville very cherty silt loam, Arkana-Moko complex soil is present, which is characterized by 20 to 40 percent slopes, and very gravelly or stony silt loam or clay to a depth of approximately 10 to 40 inches that has also weathered from cherty limestone.[13] The steepness of the slopes along with the gravelly nature of the soils meant that the hillsides in the vicinity of the tunnel portals, especially if there was not any vegetation present, would have been susceptible to erosion and slides.

To help stabilize the soil at the western portal, the railroad built stone retaining walls out of rough-faced ashlar stone along the right-of-way for a short distance to the west of the tunnel. The retaining wall on the north side of the right-of-way is approximately 2 feet high, while the wall on the south side of the right-of-way is approximately 10 feet high. The south retaining wall also has holes built into it that appear to have been meant for additional bracing. However, similar measures were not taken at the eastern portal. At least one rock slide occurred at the eastern end of the tunnel c.1950, trapping a train in the tunnel and closing the line until it could be cleared away. A much larger slide occurred sometime after the line was abandoned in 1961 blocking the majority of the eastern portal.

By the time that the Charcoal Gap Tunnel was built c.1900, railroad tunnel construction had been ongoing in the United States for approximately 70 years (the first railroad tunnel built in America was the Staple Bend Tunnel near East Conemaugh, Pennsylvania, built between November 1831 and June 1833 – NHL 04/19/94), but was relatively new to Arkansas. The only other tunnel that had been built in Arkansas by the time the Charcoal Gap Tunnel was built was the Winslow Tunnel in Washington County, which was built in the early 1880s. However, five more tunnels would be built in the northwest part of the state at Cotter, Cricket, Crest, Pyatt, and Conway by 1905 as additional rail lines were built through the mountains.[14]

Even though the construction of the St. Louis & North Arkansas line into Harrison had been greatly supported by the local population, with some of them donating cash or land to the construction effort, the railroad struggled to make a profit. By 1906, the railroad owned several locomotives, five combination cars, four passenger coaches, and 26 freight cars, but it also had a deficit of more than $30,000 for the year. As a result, the railroad went out of business on August 4, 1906, and was soon reorganized to become the Missouri & North Arkansas.[15]

The Missouri & North Arkansas, which would become the Missouri and Arkansas Railway in 1935, eventually extended the route southeast from Harrison until it reached Helena on the Mississippi River. Business for the line fluctuated, but generally remained fair until after World War II, when the railroad’s employees demanded a wage increase of $0.18 ½ an hour. The company was not able to afford the increase, and when the workers struck, the company immediately applied to the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to abandon the line, and the ICC granted the request.[16]

Once the ICC granted the request to abandon the line, it was sold to a group of Eastern capitalists headed by M. P. Gross of South Orange, New Jersey, who were only interested in dismantling the tracks and getting money for the scrap metal. After many protests were received concerning the dismantling of the line, a plan was developed in 1949 to split up the line and sell portions of it and abandon others sections. The section of the line between Seligman, Missouri, and Harrison, which included the Charcoal Gap Tunnel, came under the operation of the Arkansas & Ozarks Railway, which was chartered on March 4, 1949. Gross and M. T. Schwartz of New York City were the principal stockholders in the new railroad, although seven Arkansans were also major investors.[17]

The formal opening ceremonies for the Arkansas & Ozarks were held on February 9, 1950, at the passenger depot in Harrison, but they were not nearly as large an affair as the original opening of the line in 1901. Although traffic on the line during the early 1950s was good, by the late 1950s financial problems had once again set in. However, two events in 1960 eventually brought about the end of the line for the railroad. In the spring of 1960 flash flooding occurred on Lake Leatherwood Creek to the west of the Charcoal Gap Tunnel that wiped away trestles and some of the road bed. Later in the year the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers condemned a 2.7-mile section of the line due to the completion of the Table Rock Dam near Branson, Missouri, which would eventually inundate the line. It was all too much, and in April 1961 the ICC gave the Arkansas & Ozarks Railway permission to abandon the line.[18]

Once the railroad line and the Charcoal Gap Tunnel were abandoned in 1961, salvaging the tracks began in the winter of 1961 and 1962. Work temporarily stopped, however, when the St. Louis-San Francisco Railway (Frisco) filed suit against the Arkansas & Ozarks Railway to stop the proceedings because $30,594 in interchange services had not been paid. However, the companies soon settled the suit and the tracks were finally removed in 1962.[19] Since the abandonment of the tunnel, the tunnel has slowly been taken back by nature and become a largely forgotten relic in the wooded rural wilderness of Carroll County.

The railroads have played an important part in the history of Arkansas, and the St. Louis & North Arkansas line was no exception. The Charcoal Gap Tunnel was the key to the completion of the line and the key to the arrival of the railroad in Harrison in 1901. Although partially blocked at the eastern end, the Charcoal Gap Tunnel remains as the most fascinating and one of the most important remnants of the line, and an important element in the development of railroad travel in the Eureka Springs and Harrison area.

[2] Ibid.

[3] West, p. 55.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Woolery, Dr. D. R. The Grand Old Lady of the Ozarks. Hominy, OK: Eagles’ Nest Press, 2000, p. 17.

[6] Ibid, p. 17.

[7] Tolle, Edwin R. The Eureka Springs Railway: A Short-Line Railroad to a Little Town. Eureka Springs, AR: Edwin R. Tolle, 1992, p. 18.

[8] Woolery, Dr. D. R.. The Grand Old Lady of the Ozarks. Hominy, OK: Eagles’ Nest Press, 2000, p. 18.

[9] Tolle, Edwin R. The Eureka Springs Railway: A Short-Line Railroad to a Little Town. Eureka Springs, AR: Edwin R. Tolle, 1992, p. 18.

[10] Ibid, p.18.

[11] Hull, Clifton E. Shortline Railroads of Arkansas. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1969, p. 51.

[12] Ibid, pp. 51-52.

[13] Information on Arkana-Moko complex soils and Clarksville very cherty silt loam soils found at: http://websoilsurvey.nrcs.usda.gov/app/.

[14] Information on the Cotter, Winslow, Cricket, Crest, and Cadron Ridge tunnels in the files of the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program.

[15] Hull, p. 53.

[16] Hull, p. 102.

[17] Hull, p. 103-104

[18] Hull, pp. 109-111.

[19] Hull, pp. 111-112.

SIGNIFICANCE

Even though the majority of railroad construction took place in Arkansas in the late 1800s after the Civil War, there was still some construction taking place in the first part of the twentieth century. One of the new railroad lines that was built during the first decade of the 1900s was the line of the St. Louis & North Arkansas Railroad, which connected Eureka Springs and Harrison. In order to complete the line, it was necessary to build the Charcoal Gap Tunnel to the northeast of Eureka Springs, one of a total of six railroad tunnels that have been built in Arkansas. Due to its important role in the development of railroad transportation in the Harrison and Eureka Springs areas, the Charcoal Gap Tunnel is being nominated to the Arkansas Register of Historic Places with local significance under Criterion A. Although the large rock slide that blocks most of the portal at the eastern end precludes the tunnel from being eligible for listing in the National Register, the Charcoal Gap Tunnel is still an important part of Arkansas’s railroad past and is eligible for listing in the Arkansas Register.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hull, Clifton E. Shortline Railroads of Arkansas. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1969.

Information on Arkana-Moko complex soils and Clarksville very cherty silt loam soils found at: http://websoilsurvey.nrcs.usda.gov/app/.

Information on the Cotter, Winslow, Cricket, Crest, Pyatt, and Cadron Ridge tunnels in the files of the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program.

Tolle, Edwin R. The Eureka Springs Railway: A Short-Line Railroad to a Little Town. Eureka Springs, AR: Edwin R. Tolle, 1992.

West, Elliott. The WPA Guide to 1930s Arkansas. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1987 reprint of 1941 publication.

Woolery, Dr. D. R. The Grand Old Lady of the Ozarks. Hominy, OK; Eagles’ Nest Press, 2000.