A City of Many Other Names

North Little Rock is a bundle of small towns with names like Argenta, Baring Cross, Levy and Rose City, among others.

Throw in, too, the 19th century names of DeCantillon and Huntersville.

Each has a history of its own that rests as much on legend as fact.

Before the railroads took hold economically in the 1870s and ‘80s, the north side of the Arkansas River nourished a smattering of homesteads (and plantations down river). Agriculture, timber, hunting, mining and two ferry terminals provided livelihood in the locale, identified on Civil War era maps as “The north side of the Arkansas River opposite Little Rock.”

The river offered blessings and curses. Although enriching the soil, flood waters rose almost annually to threaten life and property in the swampy terrain below Big Rock Mountain. The Flood of 1833 surpassed the more famous flood of 1927 but caused less damage due to the sparse population.

Any dream of founding the town of DeCantillon (named for Richard DeCantillon Collins, who surveyed the 100-acre tract) ended in 1840 under water. The town existed only on paper as a plat filed with the Pulaski County clerk in 1839. Riverfront Park between the Broadway and Main Street bridges now occupies the portion of the ground that hasn’t washed away.

The Memphis and Little Rock Railway, the state’s first railroad, built a depot and shops near the river’s edge in the early 1860s, adjacent to the oldest ferry landing where today the city moors the U.S.S. Razorback submarine. After federal troops captured the railroad facilities and Little Rock in September 1863, newspapers started calling the north side Huntersville. The name also appeared on maps and railroad timetables from the mid-1860s until 1871.

Historians have disagreed on the origin of the name of Huntersville and how long it was in use. Some maps dating back to the 1820s referred to the north side as “French Hunters” or “Hunters,” denoting the plentiful game in the area. Earlier writers claimed without verification that the ferry terminal across the river from the Point of Rocks (the “little rock”) was known as “Huntersville Landing” in the late 1820s.

But the name wasn’t recorded in any documents prior to the mid-1860s, so the best explanation seems to be that it derived from William Hunter, the U.S. military supervisor of the railroad during the union occupation.

In 1866, the heirs of Thomas W. Newton Sr. surveyed and platted a townsite they named Argenta, a derivation of the Latin word for silver. Newton, a politician and entrepreneur, had served as president of a company that worked the Kellogg silver mine about 10 miles north of the river.

The boundaries of the plat, which was filed in the clerk’s office in 1871, stretched north from the river to just past what is Eighth Street today, and east from Main Street (then Newton Avenue) to Locust Street (Woodruff Street). Aided by the boon in railroad construction, Argenta attracted immigrants looking for work and grew tremendously in the two decades before Little Rock annexed the unincorporated territory in 1890.

Meanwhile, Baring Cross also thrived off this economic activity and the proximity of the shops and the round house built by the St. Louis Iron Mountain and Southern Railway just east of Pike Avenue. Three hotels sprang up on Pike Avenue in the 1870s. In 1874, the Iron Mountain acquired the Cairo & Fulton Railway, which had teamed up with the Baring Brothers of London the previous year to build the Baring Cross Bridge, the first permanent span over the Arkansas River.

Baring Cross took its name from the bridge. While the “Baring” part of the name isn’t disputed so much, “Cross” has a couple of variants. It could mean merely a crossing. Or perhaps the developers wanted to honor Judge Edward Cross, who owned the property where the south approach was constructed. Or maybe Cross Street in Little Rock continued onto the bridge’s highway (open from 1877 to 1908 in tandem with the rail), though the street and the bridge don’t quite line up.

Incorporated as a municipality in 1896, Baring Cross administered its own government until North Little Rock annexed it in January 1905. North Little Rock voters overwhelmingly favored annexation, but Baring Cross (a community then of 300) was less enthusiastic with a vote of 13-6 for the proposal. (Only men of means were eligible to vote in those days.)

Ernest Stanley, who gave Levy its name, opened a grocery and dry goods store in the early 1890s near a campground north of the gap where farmers stayed overnight on their way to markets in Little Rock and Argenta. Morris Levy, a Jewish merchant in Little Rock, had staked Stanley $50 and extended a line of credit to get his business off the ground. In return, Stanley named the young community after his benefactor.

Levy, who moved his business and home to North Little Rock in 1904, had emigrated from Germany in 1867 and settled in Little Rock in the early 1880s. His mercantile store at Main and West Washington Avenue was in the heart of downtown Argenta. Before his death in 1916, Levy also leased and managed the old Southern Hotel at 112 North Maple. It later became the Palace Hotel, which operated for almost 50 years until the early 1970s.

In 1917, the community of Levy incorporated a municipality to avoid annexation by North Little Rock. W.F. “Flake” Stanley served as the town’s first mayor for eight years. He didn’t wish to run for a fourth two-year term in 1923, but the townsmen elected him anyway. In all, Levy had eight mayors with one – J.H. Fretwell – serving three different times. Fretwell was also Levy’s last mayor before North Little Rock annexed it in 1946.

Rose City never incorporated a town government prior to annexation by North Little Rock in 1946. According to tradition, Hassell Prothro named the area after his daughter Rose. Prothro, a jack of all trades, worked as a physician, cotton farmer, service station manager and justice of the peace. His name was given to Prothro Junction.

About 1880, Hassell Prothro and his brother Edward bought swamp land, which they converted to cotton, near the intersection today of highways 70 and 161. Rose City east of 70 was prime plantation land.

One of the manors at Atkins Street and East Broadway survived until 1966. Built in 1842 on the Leon “Mimi” LeFevre plantation, the house was where two Confederate generals, John Marmaduke and Lucius Walker, met in the early morning hours of September 6, 1863, to go over the rules of a duel they were about to fight. The two men and others walked to a clearing near the present intersection of highways 70 and 165. Marmaduke, who had called Walker a coward, fatally wounded his compatriot in what historians say was the last formal duel fought in Arkansas.

Other names associated with North Little Rock include Tie Plant, Dixie, Glenview, Dark Hollow, Amboy, Park Hill and Lakewood – but for now they will have to wait.

(Bradburn works for the North Little Rock History Commission. nlrhistory@comcast.net)

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