Missouri and North Arkansas Depot, Leslie Arkansas

Date added: March 21, 2025

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The town of Leslie, nestled among the Ozark Mountains and on a tributary of the Middle Fork of the Little Red River, had been an isolated and remote Ozark Mountain community until the arrival of the fledgling Missouri and North Arkansas Railroad in 1903. The potential of Leslie as a regional lumbering and milling center, taking advantage of both the abundant stands of surrounding hardwood and the water power provided by the stream, no doubt encouraged the Missouri and North Arkansas Railroad decided to extend its line to Leslie from its southern terminus in Harrison, thereby also connecting the growing resort community of Eureka Springs with Leslie's enormous potential for producing building materials.

The arrival of the railroad produced exactly the desired effect, as various lumbering operations expanded rapidly in and around the town thereafter, effectively becoming the sole employer for the community and its residents. Such enterprises as the H. D. Williams Cooperage Company, a producer of wooden barrels, claimed in its heyday to be the largest such operation of its kind in the world. The availability of larger markets to Leslie and its products only increased after the completion in 1909 of the railroad line south from Leslie to Searcy, and Helena beyond, on the Mississippi River.

The town continued to thrive and prosper throughout the first quarter of the twentieth century, though the fortunes of such an otherwise isolated community were always tied to those of the railroad that connected it with the marketplaces that were its lifeblood. However, though the Missouri and North Arkansas Railroad experienced recurrent problems throughout the second decade of the twentieth century, it was during this period that it built its new depot in Leslie.

Building Description

The Missouri and North Arkansas Depot in Leslie is a single-story, stone masonry passenger and freight depot constructed circa 1925 in the Plain Traditional style. The rectangular plan depot has a three-sided telegrapher's bay and is covered by a hipped roof that is bellcast with projecting eaves. The depot is highlighted by a decorative pressed-tin roof with two finials. Two brick chimneys rise through the roof, one on the ridge toward the center of the building and toward the north of the ridge, rising through the northern slope of the roof. The stone walls are ashlar-finished and rest upon a continuous stone foundation.

The northern elevation is punctuated to the east by a series of window openings that originally held single and double windows (only the frames of which remain in those that are visible, though several are boarded over and thus obscured). The wall to the west is blank except for a large freight door flanked by two horizontal window openings placed beneath the cornice. The southern elevation is also punctuated by a series of window openings of varying sizes surrounding the projecting telegrapher's bay, which itself originally held three symmetrically placed windows in the front and a single window on each side.

The western elevation is relieved only by a single loading door opening; the eastern elevation features two symmetrically-placed window openings.

Exterior details are limited to the pressed tin ceiling and the ashlar-faced stone of the walls.