For most of my life I have driven North Second Street in Rogers, since that is the route leading into Rogers from Pea Ridge, and I keep seeing landmarks changing as time passes. When I was a boy, I used to think we were in Rogers when we arrived at the Speas Vinegar Plant. That was the property on the left after we passed Arkansas Highway 12 (Locust Street). The Speas building is still standing, but it has not had a vinegar plant in it for years. I think it is a flea market. The old water tower which served the Speas Plant is still standing. There have been many changes as our towns have grown.
One is the lot where the enormous pile of dirt is near the Daisy Air Rifle Factory on North Second. At one time, in the 1940s and 1950s, a small motel stood there. In those days, that little motel with its separate individual buildings, was a sign that we were nearing Rogers. I recall the Heunefeld Implement Company, located just south of today's House of Webster. Heunefeld's sold New Ideal farm implements, like horse-drawn mowing machines, hay rakes and manure spreaders, and, in the 1950s, they also sold DeLaval Milking Machines. We bought our milking machines from Huenefeld's in 1954 when our farm was starting up in the Grade A milk business.
Just south of House of Webster and the old Huenefeld building is the railroad crossing where the Frisco track leads west to the Rogers industrial section and to Bentonville. That railroad crossing is one of the oldest landmarks on North Second. The St. Louis and San Francisco Railway laid the tracks from Monet, Mo., to Fort Smith, Ark., and opened commercial service on the line in 1881. The city of Rogers counts May 10, 1881, the day when the first Frisco Train stopped there, as the birthday of the town. The crossing at North Second Street was not actually built by Frisco, but by the small Bentonville Railway, established in the late 1890s. In the early 1900s, that line west went through Bentonville, to Gravette and eventually Grove, Okla. In 1919, there was a trolley-like rail car called the Interurban which ferried passengers from the main rail line in Rogers over to Bentonville, to destinations like the Park Spring Hotel. The rails for the Interurban actually went right down NW A Street in Bentonville to the hotel, which was located at Park Springs about eight blocks north of the Bentonville square.
Until recently, there were two rail crossings there on North Second Street in Rogers. The crossings have lately been undergoing extensive renovations, and I'm noticing that they have actually removed the rails from the south crossing. Those were for years part of a curving section of track that served years ago to move cargo into the area now occupied by the new Harps Grocery and the new Mercy Medical Clinic. In the old days that section of track crossed back over the street again and extended into a large shipping yard where freight cars could be loaded and unloaded. I remember that during the hard drought years of 1953 and 1954, the government subsidized shipments of corn to help our local Benton County farmers find feed for our livestock. We could get an allotment of corn for cattle feed, but we had to hand-shovel the corn from the rail car to load our truck or trailer. I had never in my life seen so much corn in one place! Our corn in the fields at home had all dried up and we would have had none at all without that shipment from the mid-west. That old rail shipping yard was so much a part of the community back in those days that I would never have imagined that one day it would be gone, and large businesses would be operating in its place.
The rail line to Bentonville has been gradually shortening over many years. The line west to Centerton, Gravette and Grove didn't last long, and in my early life the rails ended at NW A Street at the Farmers Exchange in Bentonville. Later, when the line became Arkansas and Missouri Railroad, it was shortened to end at a concrete mix plant on NE 8th Street in Bentonville. Then, not long ago it was shortened to end at the NW Arkansas Community College. But, it is still a landmark of North Second Street in Rogers. The old railroad is full of fond memories for me, even though I never rode a train on it. Another long-enduring landmark is the Susie-Q Drive-in, located at North Second and Locust, across from Mercy Medical. Susie-Q has operated there since 1960, under a continuing family ownership. Also, we still have Ivan's Old-Time Meat Shop on north North Second. Ivan's is a true old time meat shop. They were located for long years just across the street south of the Susie Q. A few of the old landmarks remain, but change is everywhere it seems.
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Editor's note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is an award-winning columnist, a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.
Editorial on 05/17/2017