Missouri-Pacific Depot, Bald Knob Arkansas

Date added: March 23, 2025

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The town of Bald Knob began when the Cairo and Fulton Railroad built its line from Little Rock to St. Louis in the 1870s. Layered sandstone rock was quarried to provide ballasting rock for under and around the new railroad tracks, and the town's first residents were quarry workers and their families. As the railroad continued to thrive, so did the town, with as many as 50 trains passing through during a 24-hour period in the late 1880s. The early twentieth century saw Bald Knob develop into a major timber and strawberry shipping station. Although the advent of the automobile had replaced rail transportation by the 1930s and 1940s, Bald Knob still refers to itself as the "Strawberry Center of the World," a holdover from the days when thousands of carloads of berries were shipped to worldwide markets.

This structure was the second depot for Bald Knob; the first was built shortly after the town was incorporated in the late 1870s and was located a few blocks east of this one. The depots' very existence gave the town its economic backbone and stability, as well as a great deal of its social activity, as many residents enjoyed spending their time watching the great steam locomotives come and go.

The Depot's Colonial Revival style architecture is a good representation of the design used by the Missouri-Pacific company along its rail line, and as the only such structure in Bald Knob, and one of a few in White County.

Building Description

Located on the corner of Market and Ramey Streets in Bald Knob, the Missouri-Pacific station is a single-story, hipped-roof structure that utilizes several Colonial Revival features in its design. It is now used by the railroad company as a service and shop building and is still in good condition, although there have been a few alterations to both its interior and exterior throughout the years.

The depot's long, rectangular floorplan is of frame construction that has been covered with a brick facade. Its original red tile roof was replaced with composition shingles during a renovation in 1965, at which time the passenger loading platform was enclosed, partitions that had originally separated black and white passengers were removed and the interior ceiling was lowered. Constructed during a period when the Colonial Revival style reached its peak of popularity, the building incorporates several of its features into its design, including widely overhanging, exposed eaves; large, L-shaped brackets; gable-roofed, eyebrow dormer windows; transoms above the other windows; and a stone belt course on both the east and west elevations.

The passenger loading platform on the north elevation is supported by square brick columns with large L-shaped bracket ornamentation, and is recessed underneath the building's hipped roof. The fenestration, which accents the red brick structure with its white woodwork, consists of one-over-one double-hung sash windows topped with single-pane transoms. The window on the hipped-roof telegrapher's bay, located on the east elevation, is slightly arched and topped with a keystone. The eyebrow dormer windows are located on the west elevation. A brick chimney is located on the interior, near the center of the structure. Each of the doors has a four-paned window on its upper half and, like the windows, is topped with a single-pane transom. The foundation is made of continuous cast concrete, while the roof, as mentioned above, was covered with composition shingles in 1965.