Choctaw Route Station, Little Rock
Near Little Rock, Arkansas
The ornate depot near the Arkansas River in Little Rock was built in eighteen ninety-nine for the Choctaw, Oklahoma and Gulf Railroad Company, which was stitching together a line from Memphis west through Little Rock to Oklahoma City and beyond. The Rock Island Railroad absorbed the line in nineteen oh two and kept calling the route the Choctaw Route, a name that stuck for decades. The station served as a major passenger terminal on this Southwest corridor until nineteen sixty-eight.
What set it apart architecturally was highly decorative terra cotta detailing on a single-story brick building, one of the most elaborate examples of railroad architecture in the state. The building survives today as one of the finest turn-of-the-century depots remaining in Arkansas.
