(The Associated Press circulated the following on August 11.)
SEARCY, Ark. — A passageway to the past was opened in Searcy after construction workers found the remains of a railroad track that meandered through town 100 years ago.
Johnny Brock Excavating and Landscaping, doing dirt work for a new apartment complex in west Searcy, found what was once part of the railbed for Missouri & North Arkansas Railroad.
In 1909, M&NA opened a line from Neosho, Mo., to what is now Helena-West Helena, according to local history buff Reece Wyatt.
“When I was a boy, me and my friends called it the ’May Never Arrive,”’ Wyatt joked of the M&NA.
The M&NA crossed the White River at Georgetown and came to Searcy via West Point, using the same line as the Doniphan, Kensett and Searcy Railroad after passing through Kensett.
It has been 62 years since a train traveled the route where the tracks once ran.
What became visible with the apartment project is a massive crosscut of the roadbed in the shape of an inverted U, covered with large trees on one side of the property.
Dirt and gravel, once hauled by mules, make up several strata, 99 years after the first train passed over the roadbed, according to Wyatt.
Towns north of Searcy serviced by the M&NA included Letona, Pangburn, Heber Springs and Shirley. After a strike crippled the railroad in 1946, service ended, Wyatt said.
Tracks still in use today are on the old M&NA roadbed.
A sidewalk beside Harding Academy was built atop the line. The line ran south of what is now the College of Pharmacy and Physician’s Assistant building and passed down what is now a sidewalk at Burger King.
A sliding door on the side of the now-closed Razorback Feed Store at the corner of Main Street and the Beebe-Capps Expressway was built so cars from the M&NA could be loaded and unloaded at the building.
Actual steel rails of an M&NA spur can still be seen imbedded in the gravel parking lots of businesses along Mulberry Street from Young’s Tire and Auto, by Latino Imports and Bald Eagle Barns to what is now Stephenson Oil Company on Elm Street.
The roadbed continued down what is now the northernmost lane of the Beebe-Capps Expressway to near what is now Southwest Middle School, crossing what is today the expressway and passing behind what is now Total Lawn and Garden.
The railroad crossed Skyline Drive near its intersection with Western Hills.
Steam locomotives hauled passengers and freight, including logs and lumber, along the M&NA to a saw mill built by Wallace Bell.
The saw mill was located at what is now AAA Storage Center.
A small diagonal rise across Arkansas 36 is what’s left of the M&NA roadbed there.
“They cut a big part of that ridge down but didn’t cut it all the way down,” Wyatt said.
Passing behind Fire Station 3, the roadbed later became Chapel Lane, then passed just north of a ridge line as it continued west to the property where the apartment construction is now under way.