North Little Rock: From Argenta to Arkansas's Railroad Capital
Near Little Rock, Arkansas
On the north bank of the Arkansas River, directly across from Little Rock, sits a city that spent most of its history being told it was just the other side of somewhere else. North Little Rock has never entirely accepted that description.
The area was first settled around eighteen twelve as De Cantillon and drifted through the name Huntersville before settling on Argenta in the late eighteen fifties, taking its identity from the Hotel Argenta, a riverside inn that catered to railroad travelers. That railroad connection was the key to everything. When the Memphis and Little Rock Railroad finally reached the area after being delayed for years by the Civil War, Argenta became the logical place for freight yards and maintenance facilities. The terrain was flat, the river crossing was here, and land was cheaper than in Little Rock proper.
Little Rock noticed and moved to absorb its rival in eighteen ninety by annexation. Argenta resisted, and after a decade of contested governance, the community separately incorporated in nineteen oh one and officially renamed itself North Little Rock. It became a full city in nineteen oh four.
The Missouri Pacific Railroad made North Little Rock its Arkansas hub, constructing classification yards and repair shops that at their peak employed thousands of workers. The freight yard on the north bank became the largest in the state, a sprawling industrial complex of roundhouses, engine sheds, and switching tracks. The economy of North Little Rock for most of the twentieth century was the railroad in ways that were difficult to overstate.
The Argenta Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in nineteen ninety-three, preserves two hundred fifty-eight residential and commercial properties from the late eighteen eighties through the nineteen forties, the physical record of a railroad town building itself into a city.
Today the Union Pacific, successor to the Missouri Pacific, still operates major yards in North Little Rock, making it one of the few mid-sized American cities where rail freight remains a visible, central economic fact rather than an artifact of the industrial past.
