Bradford, Arkansas: Strawberries by Rail

Bradford, Arkansas coalesced around a train depot. When the Cairo and Fulton Railroad pushed its line toward the White River in eighteen seventy-two, it named a stop Bradford Allen Station, and the community grew around it. Settlers had actually been in the area much longer, gathering at a riverside village called Old Grand Glaise about six miles to the northeast, but the railroad pulled the center of gravity south.

By nineteen oh eight Bradford had more than twenty businesses. What made it matter regionally was what moved through on the rails: raw and cut timber, cotton, mussel shells, and above all strawberries. The fertile White County bottomlands proved ideal for berry farming, and Bradford became a major strawberry shipping point, loading carloads of fruit bound for markets across the Midwest and South.

The town has stayed small but the railroad that built it still defines its layout today.