The highly anticipated Missouri and North Arkansas Railroad, constructed in the early 20th century, provided shipping and passenger railway access for the first time to isolated Ozark Mountain communities such as Eureka Springs, terminating in Helena on the Arkansas Delta. But as historian Kenneth Barnes reveals, the promising railway — plagued by infrastructure failures, labor strikes and deadly anti-union mob violence incited by the Ku Klux Klan — was abandoned after four decades of operation. Barnes is authoring a book on the fraught history of the M&NA, to be published by the University of Arkansas Press.
Historian Documents Demise of Embattled Missouri and North Arkansas Railroad
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Route of the new Missouri & North Arkansas Railroad illustrated in this promotional 1912 timetable.
Courtesy Steven C. Hawkins
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M&NA Railroad employee Ed Gregor, posing for a family portrait taken in 1912, was later brutally lynched by anti-union vigilantes near Harrison.
Courtesy Steven C. Hawkins
