Texarkana by way of Steam: A Tale of a Railroad and a Packet
- Robin Cole-Jett
- Jul 21
- 4 min read
Updated: Jul 21
We tend to know the twin city of Texarkana (Miller County, Arkansas and Bowie County, Texas) as a place that was "founded by the railroads" in 1873 (see Encyclopedia of Arkansas and Handbook of Texas, perhaps written by the same person?). But this statement is only half true: yes, it was founded by railroads, but no, it was founded over a decade earlier. And it doesn't just end with that knowledge... Texarkana started life before 1860 by way of the steam railroad and a steam packet boat.
By 1848, the United States spanned from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans. Hoping to connect the east and west coasts with an engineered Northwest Passage, the US surveyed several opportune routes to construct a transcontinental railroad through the nation's Department of War (now, called the Department of Defense), which had always been in charge of recognizing strategic locations for roads. Several paths were proposed, but the one that involved the "old southwest" was championed in 1856 by Jefferson Davis, the future president of the Confederacy (1861-1865) and the Secretary of War in James Buchanan's cabinet. This route would link Cairo, Illinois on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to California by way of Fulton, Arkansas.
In 1852, the Mississippi, Washita & Red River Railroad (the spelling is correct -- they spelled it as Washita instead of Ouachita) formed to build a line from Chicot County, Arkansas at the intersection of the states of Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas to Fulton on the Red River, which itself was where the states of Arkansas and Texas and the Indian Territory met. The appropriately named Cairo and Fulton Railroad, meant to connect the "old Northwest" to Fulton, was chartered and began construction by 1853. That same year also saw the formation of the Memphis, El Paso & Pacific Rail Road Company (let's call it the Memphis RR, and the spelling is how it appeared in the 1850s).
The Memphis RR hired surveyors to conduct investigations on the best route from southwestern Arkansas to El Paso, which -- lucky for us! -- they filed with the Texas General Land Office. They divided the Index Line (the straight-line border between Arkansas and Texas) into mile post sections. They zeroed in on the "97 mile post" as the most ideal place to launch a west-bound railroad. According to the earliest information I could find, the State Gazette (Austin, Texas) labeled this point "Texarkana" in January, 1857.
These railroads were not built until well after the Civil War. The route for the transcontinental railroad was instead designated to pass through the free (meaning not slave-holding) territories of Nebraska and Utah in the Pacific Railway Act of 1862; meanwhile, Arkansas, Indian Territory, and Texas were linked to California via the Butterfield Overland Stagecoach.
But the moniker of "Texarkana" reappears even if the railroads didn't materialize right away. In 1869, the stern wheeler Texarkana was launched by Captain Scovell from Louisville (Ohio), having been specifically designed to navigate the "difficult low water" of the upper Red River. It wasn't very successful in doing so, however. In 1870, the Texarkana collided with the steamboat Era No. 9 "forty-two miles below" Shreveport while traveling to New Orleans. The packet was rounding a bend and in true Red River fashion, it was a blind corner. According to reports, the Texarkana did not sound its horn (whistle) to alert the Era No. 9 that it was in the vicinity.
The Texarkana sank, with lots of cargo still on board, although some of it was recovered. By the way, earlier research that I conducted had the collision occurring north of Shreveport at Cash Point. The wreck is still somewhere along the Red River either below or above Shreveport.
In any case, I want to say "thanks" to reader Tammy Kidd Kelley who asked me to write up some research about the steamboat Texarkana. This led me to discover the railroad-naming story, which occurred a full decade before the city officially existed and is not necessarily printed in any current, official histories for the city. A double thanks!
A few years back, native Texarkanian Dr. John Tennison wrote and directed the documentary, "Texarkana: The Town that forgot it existed." He explained that the city was founded in 1856 and explains original documentation to support this. The documentary doesn't seem to be out yet, but I'll connect you to a link once I find one.
