Weldon and the White and Black River Valley Railroad

     This is the view that greets you upon arriving in what remains of Weldon, Arkansas, population 100.  The town is located on Arkansas Route 17 in Jackson County just south of Newport. 
     What you are looking at is the train depot and what may have been an old hotel.  Weldon sits on a section of the now abandoned track of the Rock Island Railroad.  In 1881, a company called the Batesville and Brinkley Railroad, chartered with the State of Arkansas and constructed track between Cotton Plant and Brinkley, the next year expanding to Colpna.  In 1890 the B&B absorbed the nearby Augusta & Southeastern and became known as the White & Black River Valley Railroad.  It was the White & Black that constructed track on to Jacksonport and built this depot.  In 1900 the White & Black was leased to the Choctaw, Oklahoma, and Gulf for a period of eighty years.  Four years later, the CO&G was leased to the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, the famed Rock Island Line, the song originally recorded by blues great Leadbelly and first recorded as a prison workgang song at Cummins Farm in Gould, Arkansas by John and Alan Lomax in 1934.
     The Rock Island RR continued to operate the White & Black on the line until February, 1941 when the last train stopped at the Weldon depot.  The properties were sold to satisfy debts owed by the Rock Island.

Depot view showing the bay window.  This side would have faced the tracks.  I do not expect to see the depot survive the year.

The abandoned cotton gin at Weldon.  A too common sight in many Delta towns.

Arkansas Route 17: Jackson County

During my weekly sojourn from Crowley's Ridge to central Arkansas, I tend to vary my route to provide a better view of the world than that afforded by a four-lane divided highway.  I recently drove down Arkansas Route 17 in Jackson County, south of Newport and discovered some great old communities and the remains of several structures that I knew I needed to photograph before it was too late.  This is the old Murray Gin located in Shoffner, which now mainly consists of the Shoffner Farm Research facility, a privately owned 1,500 acre farm that specializes in Delta row crops. 

I learned from a friend that these great old buildings are disappearing at the rate of several a year in Arkansas and this one looks to be on its way out.  These gins used to be the center of life in these small communities with wagons full of cotton pulled by mules sat waiting to weighed while their drivers chatted about prices, weather, boll weevils, and life in general.  Now they have been replaced by mega-gins that process much faster and without the advantage of community life outside the doors.