Communities got names from Railroad

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Alto, Fry's Mill and Wilbeth. This was all swampland. In the 1800's, the federal government made huge grants of land to railroad companies here and elsewhere to encourage them to open up the areas by building tracks and selling land to settlers. In 1882, a group of investors called the Chatfield Trust bought at least 327,000 acres of land in AR from the Memphis and St. Louis Railroad.The area of these three communities was included.

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