Missouri-Pacific Railroad Depot, Gurdon Arkansas
The construction of the railroads played an instrumental part in the birth and growth of a lumbering industry in what had earlier been unreachable stands of timber, and hence in the growth of Gurdon also. The community now known as Gurdon started as a construction camp on the Cairo and Fulton Railroad (later the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern, and then the Missouri-Pacific), first completed in 1873. Soon thereafter the Iron Mountain Railway constructed a branch southeast to Camden leaving the main line from Gurdon, which only increased the activity and regional centrality of the town; by 1906 the Gurdon-Fort Smith Railroad connected Gurdon with the virgin forests of Montgomery County and the lumbering operations which were cutting throughout the Ouachita Forest.
This coincidental accessibility via modern transportation and rapid expansion of surrounding lumbering operations made Gurdon particularly attractive as a mill site and so allowed it to participate in the rapid expansion of the lumbering industry in the South which saw it take over the lead from the Great Lakes region in lumber production by 1899. The forests around Gurdon, and especially to the northwest, contained huge stands of yellow pine, a species particularly well-suited to a rapidly growing and building nation. A large segment of Clark County participated to some degree in the local expansion brought on by the lumbering industry, but Gurdon by far took the lead: in 1888, the mills in Gurdon (and especially the Gurdon Lumber Company) exceeded the number of shipments of cut lumber shipped by the other milling towns in Clark County combined (4,178 carloads vs. the combined total of 3,346 carloads from Arkadelphia, Smithton, Bierne, Whelen and Curtis).
This industrial development naturally led to the commercial growth of the town as well. By 1888 Gurdon could boast of a population of approximately one thousand, most of which were employed at the mills. Gurdon supported six general stores, groceries, meat markets, barber shops, mechanics' shops, two hotels, a livery stable, a weekly newspaper, post office, churches, etc. Four physicians also found sufficient work to remain. By the turn of the century Gurdon's other industries included cotton gins, a brick company, and an ice plant which supplied the Missouri-Pacific railroad as Gurdon was a re-icing stop; it also claimed a bank and several other "similar conveniences."
The Missouri-Pacific Railroad Depot in Gurdon was constructed c. 1917 after the Missouri-Pacific Railroad acquired the old St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern line that ran between Missouri and Texas as part of its ambitious campaign to expand its network of rail lines all over the country, and to establish the railroad's corporate identity through the exclusive use of the Italianate/Mediterranean style of architecture for its passenger and freight depots.
Building Description
The Missouri-Pacific Railroad Depot in Gurdon is a single-story, brick masonry freight and passenger railroad depot designed in the Mediterranean style that was the architectural idiom of choice for several of the railroad lines that traversed Arkansas during the early twentieth century, but especially for the Missouri-Pacific Railroad. Its plan is rectangular, with an open porch at its southern end and a telegrapher's bay projecting from its western elevation. Its two brick chimneys are both placed within the structure: one rising through the southern slope of the building, just to the east of center, and the other rising through the ridge of the roof and just inside the wall of the freight area to the east of the open passageway. Its hipped, asphalt shingle roof and brick walls are supported upon a continuous, cast concrete foundation.
The front or southern elevation consists of the open porch to the west, the central, passenger section, and the freight section to the east, divided from the passenger section by an open passageway. The porch is supported by four large, simple brick columns. Two single-leaf passenger entrances in the passenger section are placed within an assortment of single, paired and tri-partite wood one-over-one wood sash windows, each with its own transom. A large, rolling freight door accesses the freight section at the eastern end. The northern elevation is virtually identical to the elevation opposite, the only exception being the projecting telegrapher's bay, with its window on the eastern face and a single-leaf entry on the western face. Another single-leaf door accesses the eastern freight room from inside the open passageway just inside this elevation.
The western elevation is composed of the open porch with the wall of the passenger section beneath. This wall is lighted with two symmetrically-placed one-over-one wood sash windows, each with a horizontal transom. The eastern elevation is lighted with two symmetrically-placed one-over-one wood sash windows.
Significant exterior details include the quoins around the stucco panels surrounding the windows; the decorative Italianate brackets that ornament the cornice throughout; and the brick parapeted, Spanish dormer, coped with concrete, that adorns the northern roofline directly above the telegrapher's bay.
View from west (1990)
