Arkansas Texarkana and Fort Smith Railway Depot, Wilton Arkansas
Wilton merchant, Sergent Smith Prentiss Mills was born in Mississippi in December of 1844. Named for the famous Mississippi orator Sergent Smith Prentiss, Mills came to Arkansas with his parents approximately 1849. The family settled in, what was at that time, Sevier County. Gradually Mills' father built a significant plantation near the Little River. Mills joined the Confederate Army in the fall of 1862 and served at the battles of Pea Ridge, Iuka, and Corinth. Mills left the army on parole, returned home, and spent some time in Mexico with his father during the Civil War. He rejoined an Arkansas Cavalry regiment and closed the war participating in raiding parties in Missouri. Upon returning from Civil War service Mills took up farming. Initially, he worked the family farm, slowly adding property of his own.
Through the 1870s and 1880s, Mills acquired a sizeable amount of property in what was now known as Little River County near the town of Millikin. Historical tradition holds that the Little River County town of Millkin was named in honor of Mills and another large property holder of the area, P. S. Kinsworthy. After a hard-fought election in 1880 the town of Millikin lost its bid for the county seat to Richmond. S.S.P. Mills maintained a home, a hotel, and newspaper in Richmond along with substantial properties in the area of Millkin. Elected as Sherriff in 1886, Mills retained the position through two subsequent elections, serving until 1892. It was Mills position in the county government that undoubtedly led him to the Texarkana and Northern Railroad.
William L. Whitaker was a highly educated merchant and lumber mill owner in Texarkana, TX. Whitaker, about whom we know little, studied at the University of Heidelberg in Germany and at the University of Virginia. From Virginia, Whitaker took a teaching position at the University of Texas. He left the university to pursue private business interests, moving to Texarkana in the early 1880s. Whitaker's lumber company made cross ties and bridge timbers for railroad construction. This, of course, required large timber reserves, many of which Whitaker held near the Red River north of Texarkana. In 1885, William Whitaker and several business partners, including Anthony Ghio, Ben Whitaker, and B.T. Estes built a ten-mile railroad, the Texarkana and Northern Railroad, to reach their timber holdings.
The Texarkana and Northern Railroad served essentially as a feeder railroad bringing raw timber to the mill in Texarkana. It was not until the timber reserves dwindled that Whitaker and his partners undertook the construction of a common carrier railroad. The Texarkana and Northern Railroad was reorganized on July 9th, 1889, and renamed the Texarkana and Fort Smith Railway Company. The goal of the company was to build toward Ft. Smith, Arkansas, and one source suggests that the ultimate goal was for the railroad to reach Kansas City, Missouri.
The Texarkana and Fort Smith Railway Company (T&FS) began purchasing land for right-of-way and structures in 1889 and quickly began construction northward. The Goodspeed Biographical and Historical Memoir noted in 1890, "the line of the Fort Smith & Texarkana Railroad crosses Little River County five miles east of Richmond. Fifteen miles of it are graded within the county, the bridges are being built, and it is expected soon to be completed across the county, thus opening up communication by rail."
After crossing the river at Index, Arkansas, the construction and engineering crews of the Texarkana and Fort Smith explored routes both for the little village of Keller (later Ashdown), and the county seat at Richmond. Landowners in the vicinity of Richmond refused to sell, or to donate land for the railroad; the railroad, in-turn, built east of Richmond. Seizing his opportunity, S.S.P. Mills, who owned land in the area of Millkin, offered land to the railroad. In 1893, Mills sold the Texas and Fort Smith Railroad a right-of-way.
At the time the T&FS was working on construction of the line from Millkin to Winthrop by way of Alleene-originally named Lawrenceville. The T&FS completed its line to Ashdown by 1889 and subsequently completed construction to Millkin in 1891. On July 1st, 1892 at the urging of the railroad's directors, Millkin changed its name to Wilton. Construction proceeded in sections across Little River County to Alleene in late 1892, and to Winthrop where a lack of funding ended construction.
Seeing no available financing opportunities, Whitaker approached Arthur Stillwell, who was building his Kansas City, Nevada & Fort Smith Railroad south toward Fort Smith, about purchasing the T&FS. Stillwell saw, in the T&FS, a great opportunity to quickly expand his line. The Kansas City, Nevada & Fort Smith was reorganized in December 1892 and renamed the Kansas City, Pittsburgh and Gulf Railroad (KCP&G). Stillwell's Kansas City, Pittsburgh and Gulf Railroad purchased all the controlling stock of the T&FS late in 1892. This purchase made the T&FS a subsidiary company of the KCP&G. With the financial backing of the much larger and better-funded KCP&G the directors of the T&FS were able to weather the depression of 1893 and continued to find funding for construction through 1895, building north to Horatio.
Beginning immediately, the T&FS placed a passenger and freight train into service. Passenger trains 3 and 4 ran daily to and from Texarkana. Freight trains 1 and 2 also began and ended in Texarkana, but unlike the passenger train it did not run on Sunday. With regular passenger and freight service, the newly named town of Wilton grew quickly. What had been nothing more than a crossroads was noted to have a population of 103 in 1891.
By 1892, Wilton boasted three blacksmith shops, three livery stables, eight merchants, and eleven professionals. This was due, in large part, to the fact that for a significant portion of 1892 Wilton was the terminus of the T&FS. It is also due to the fact that Wilton was the commercial center for several local sawmill communities, including Rankin. Through the end of the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth Wilton continued to grow in importance as a banking center and as the market center for the surrounding community.
The depot at Wilton served as the gateway for the community. Stillwell used the T&FS subsidiary to build the Texas portion of the Kansas City, Pittsburgh and Gulf. This was to comply with a Texas law requiring railroads operating in the state to be headquartered in the state. In 1897, the final spikes were driven and the railroad was completed from Kansas City to Port Arthur, Texas. The completion of the railroad gave Wilton merchants access to Midwestern markets to the north and foreign markets through Gulf ports to the south. It opened new opportunities for business and travel by way of expanded passenger train service.
The Kansas City, Pittsburgh and Gulf Railroad overextended itself financially and was reorganized as the Kansas City Southern Railway Company in 1900. It was at this time that the Texarkana and Fort Smith ceased to exist as a separate company. However, the town of Wilton continued to prosper. It was in 1900 that S.S.P. Mills moved his dry goods store from Richmond to Wilton. Through the small depot's freight house arrived the majority of goods sold in that store.
Railroad depots became the entry point for the world to their little towns as well as the entry point for the town to the world. It was at the depot that orders from the Sears-Roebuck catalog were telegraphed and where those orders later arrived. The station became the source of all the news and notes from the wider world. Newspapers, magazines, catalogs, and mail all arrived through the station by train. More than these even, the small town depot served as the metropolitan hustle and bustle; the arrival of the train was the busiest part of the day.
Small town depots, like Wilton's, came to regulate life in a powerful way. Western Union's weekly, Thursday noon telegraph set the exact time for the railroad, but it also set the time for the town. Though Wilton's depot had no clock tower, for the local citizens concerned with the accuracy of their watches and clocks the exact time would have been maintained, by the agent, on an interior clock at the station. In this way, unlike company towns, Wilton's depot would have been the heart of the town-the gathering place for news, the source of materials goods, and the regulator of daily life.
Building Description
The former Texarkana & Fort Smith Railway Depot is located in the town of Wilton in the northern part of Little River County. It is a one-story building that was originally used for both freight and passenger service on the Texarkana and Fort Smith Railway. The building was built in approximately 1893 as a frame structure of traditional design with some Stick influence evident. It is the only remaining depot built by the Texarkana and Fort Smith Railway Company. The Texarkana and Fort Smith was purchased by the Kansas City, Pittsburgh and Gulf Railroad Company, later to become the Kansas City Southern Railway. After serving as the town's depot for many years, the building was sold by the Kansas City Southern to private individuals who moved the structure to its present location near the railroad. The depot sits on concrete block piers and the original board and batten siding has been replaced with asbestos. The side gabled roof retains its unique eave braces and trussed gables.
Originally the depot at Wilton, AR, was built for the Texarkana and Fort Smith Railway (T&FS) in approximately 1893. This small depot served as the combination freight and passenger depot for both the Texarkana and Fort Smith and its later owner the Kansas City Southern Railway (KCS). The one-story wood frame building is rectangular and was built in the plain, traditional style with some Stick influence evident in the cross-braced, open eaves and the trussed gable on the west side.
The Kansas City Southern runs on an almost direct north to south course through Wilton. The depot, in its original location, sat on the western side of the main line with the freight portion of the depot to the south. The 1905 photograph reveals that the north-eastern room was perhaps a railway express office and that the north-west room was a waiting room. A 1929 map from the KCS reveals that the north side of the station sat on the south edge of Texarkana Avenue. The depot was located on the main line with two sidings to the east of the main line and one team track of unknown length behind the station to the west.
Railroad depots are notoriously standard buildings. Railroad engineering departments and engineers consistently worked toward the most efficient depot design for any given locale and level of business. Generally a small or temporary depot was built in a town or city and as business grew the depot would be rebuilt or renovated to meet the increasing demand. Many railroads such as the Missouri Pacific, the Union Pacific, and the St. Louis Southwestern had standard designs.
Common to all railroad depots are the telegraph operator and station agents' office. This office is usually in or near the middle of the depot and can be easily noted on the exterior of the building by the placement of a bay window. This bay window allowed the station agent to see up and down the track while continuing work at his desk. The Wilton depot house retains its bay window on the north side of the building, in the middle, with a small hipped roof over the bay.
There are five windows and one door in the north facade of the building. Four of the windows are the original two-over-two double hung. The window on the northeast corner is a replacement four-over-four double hung wooden window most likely added when the freight portion was removed.
In any village, town, or city freight traffic contributed a significant amount to the station's receipts. Each station therefore offered some type of freight office and space. In the smallest stations this could be only a shed roof; in others it could be a separate building. At Wilton the freight portion had no windows but was accessible by large doors. The freight portion of the depot was approximately half of the overall size of the building.
It is unknown at what point the freight portion was removed. However the side/east facade was originally the south facing freight portion of the depot. This section was shortened at an unknown date and two wooden four-over-four double hung windows were added.
The front side was originally the west facing rear of the station. It has two original windows and one original door on the southwest side of the building. The original windows are wooden two-over-two double hung windows. The door is a solid wood, paneled door with three vertical glass panes.
There is one window in the southeast corner of the facade with a replacement window that was originally four-over-four double hung, however, half of the window is missing.
The west side originally had two windows and two four panel wood doors. The doors have been replaced with two panel, four light doors. One door is broken but extant the second door is intact. The original two pane fixed windows remain above the doors. Additionally the two double hung two-over-two windows remain in the building.
At some point after removal from the railroad, a shed roof was added to the west side of the building. This was presumably for a car port. The shed roof does not interfere with the cross-braced gables.
The depot is a wood-frame building that now sits on concrete block piers. The original board and batten siding has been replaced with asbestos siding. There are several missing windows and several replacement windows. The original windows, of which there are six, are of two-over-two arrangement. There are two four-over-four replacement windows and there are three missing windows. The side gabled roof was originally a plain wood shingle roof which has been replaced by composite shingles.
What was originally the north-west waiting room was converted to a bathroom and the formerly north-east room was converted to use as a kitchen. The agents' office and waiting room was converted to use as a living room or combination living room/bedroom.
Though the railroad depot was removed from it's location along the main line of the KCS it is still no more than 400 feet from its original location. There are no buildings or other man-made obstructions in the sight line of the depot to the railroad from its current location. Overall the building continues to look and feel like a former train station.
South elevation and east facade (2007)
North elevation and east facade (2007)
