Missouri Pacific Railroad Depot, Earle Arkansas
Early travelers in eastern Arkansas discovered a vast expanse of lands, scoured by an errant Mississippi River in prehistoric times, which was poorly drained and suffered from frequent inundations and overflows. The lowlands of Crittenden County comprised part of what its inhabitants called "the morass" and later journalists labeled the "windlands". Although the agricultural value of its rich soils was quickly recognized, the shallow, swampy lakes, such as Alligator Lake and Blackfish Bayou, deterred settlement, and the county remained sparsely populated into the late nineteenth century.
From 1870 to 1901, several major railroad companies, urged by land grants and untouched natural resources, invaded Arkansas. In 1887-88, Jay Gould, frustrated in his efforts to purchase the Memphis and Little Rock Railroad, constructed a branch line of his own St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railway, later reorganized as the Missouri Pacific, from Bald Knob, Arkansas to Memphis, Tennessee. In 1886, when she learned of the impending construction of the Iron Mountain branch through Crittenden County, Mrs. Josiah Earle, the widow of a Confederate cavalry major, built a small frame shack along the proposed route to entice the railroad to establish a depot. When her offer was accepted, she donated the land for the site, which became the core of the town named for her and her husband.
During the early years of the Iron Mountain in Earle, it was finally renamed Earle in 1944, a frame depot continued to serve the town's and the county's growing and diverse economies. As the timber resources of the Great Lakes region were depleted, lumber interests closely followed the railroads to the untouched reserves of the South. Connected to the main railroad by tram, or "dummy", lines, the Crittenden, Tyronza, and Crown Lumber companies and others shipped logs and rough lumber over the line, which centered at the depot at Earle. By the 1920s, most of the cut-over lands, originally patented as swamp or overflowed land, were reclaimed by a network of levees and drainage ditches and cultivated in cotton, which replaced timber as the major freight of the railroads.
In July 1922, the present depot at Earle was completed. The substantial, one-and-a-half-story, brick building reflected the Missouri Pacific's favorable assessment of the Crittenden County town's continued importance as a rail station. A through, or side, combination station, the depot also represented the most common type of terminal structure. Located alongside a through line, which carried traffic in both directions, the depot also accommodated both passengers and "less-than-carload", or "l.c.l.", freight. Larger shipments were loaded from gins and mills along spurs or sidings and consigned to their destination by depot employees. For most residents, however, the passenger service provided by the small station was its most important function and, during the height of passenger traffic, over a dozen trains stopped daily at the Earle depot.
From its construction, the Earle depot served as the center of transportation and communication for the town and the surrounding area. Business and industrial establishments lined the railroad and radiated from the central structure of the depot. Expansion of the town, the arrangement of the streets, and the more subtle patterns of settlement and residence were also defined by the endless lines of rails. After World War II, alternate forms of transportation forced the decline of the railroads and, in 1959, passenger service on the Missouri Pacific ended. In 1969, the railroad sold its depot, and the former station town became only a whistling post on the Missouri Pacific route.
Building Description
The Earle depot is similar to several other through combination terminal stations constructed by the Missouri Pacific and its parent companies across Arkansas. A substantial, brick, rectangular structure surmounted by a hipped roof sheathed in composition shingles, it features wide overhanging eaves with molded cornices and decorative L-shaped brackets. A 1940s photograph of this building reveals that it was originally covered with clay roof tiles. The north, east, and west elevations of the Earle depot are banded by a brick course that reaches from the depot foundation about two and one-half feet up its sides. The upper portions of these elevations are stuccoed, while a brick header band divides brick from the stucco.
The facade of the Earle depot, which faces south, fronts on and is parallel to the railroad tracks. A central telegrapher's bay commands the facade and projects almost to the edge of the station's eaves, permitting the operator a clear view of the tracks. The bay is sheltered under a hipped dormer. A brick arch rests over three windows in the north face of the bay. Two narrow, two-over-one double-hung windows flank the larger, three-over-one double-hung central window. All three sills rest above the brick header course and are surmounted by transoms that repeat the curve of their brick arch. A door with a transom provides access into the western wall of the bay. On the western end of the facade, facilities for freight service were originally installed. A wide, sliding freight door with eight stationary panes opens onto the tracks almost level with the railroad grade. East of the freight door, well above the header band, a small, one-over-one window is located. Between this window and telegrapher's bay, three more windows with sills set above the header course are evenly arrayed. The central window is double cased and flanked by one-over-one double-hung windows, although the sash is missing from the window nearest the bay. On the eastern end of the facade, an open passenger platform, supported by two square brick columns on a poured concrete slab, provided a boarding area for travelers. Centrally located between the platform and bay, a door with a transom connects the former passenger rooms of the station with the platform. This door is bounded by two more one-over-one double-hung windows with transoms. A poured concrete apron projects from the facade even with the eaves, providing a walkway between the tracks and the station. A smaller concrete projection in front of the central bay window may have secured a signal lamp and a mail crane, common features of most stations. The length of the entire facade is nearly level with the grade of the railroad, which was raised to permit drainage of the bed as it crossed the east Arkansas lowlands.
The western elevation contains a single-wide freight door, identical to the freight door on the south facade. A wooden bumper, fastened below the door, prevented damage to the building as wagons or other vehicles received freight or unloaded it for rail transport.
Dominated by the passenger platform and its columns, the eastern elevation also contains a single door and transom.
A brick chimney with a concrete cap pierces the northern slope of the roof, offset from center and below the ridge. Two small dormers with louvered gables are symmetrically placed on either side of the chimney. On the northern, or rear, elevation, a projecting bay repeats the projection of the telegrapher's bay, although there is no similar dormer. Since the construction of the facade conformed to the elevated track, the opposite, or northern, elevation is approximately four to five feet above ground level. The straight brick course on the other three elevations is not repeated on the rear, which is almost entirely stucco. On the lower half-story, two small doorways that frame the bay provide entrance to a ground-level basement. The door to the west of the bay is recessed under a concrete stairway faced with brick, and which leads to a concrete platform on the upper story. A concrete stairway also provides access to the passenger platform on the eastern end of this elevation. The steps and platforms of both stairways are repeated in a brick pattern against the stucco, a concession to the brick course common to the other elevations. At the eastern end of the north elevation, the step pattern is continued in concrete edged with brick, which also simulates a column on the building's edge and joins the brick course that characterizes the other three elevations.
The lower half-story of the north elevation's bay contains two small windows of unequal size. A small casement or stationary window is located on the eastern half of the bay, while the window on the western side is one-over-one: double-hung. The two windows on the upper story of the bay are the predominant one-over-one double-hung windows with transoms. Between the bay and the passenger platform, three identical windows are evenly spaced.
On the western end of this elevation, next to the bay, a door and transom rests on the platform reached by one of the two concrete stairways. Immediately to the east of the door are three more of the familiar one-over-one double-hung windows and transoms and, finally, two small one-over-one double-hung windows are set between the large windows and the edge of the elevation.
In 1969, the Missouri Pacific sold the depot to a local businessman who, in turn, sold it to Texgas. The interior of the eastern portion of the station, which served the railroad as passenger facilities, was extensively remodeled, but the freight rooms in the western part retained their original hardwood moldings and wainscoting and plaster over lathe walls. In 1976, the terminal was abandoned.
View from southwest (1976)
View from southeast (1976)
View from northeast (1976)
Telegraphers Bay south side (1976)
