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DeWitt
Arkansas County, Arkansas
1919 Look
at DeWitt, Arkansas
3000 bbl. Rice Mill, considered one of the largest in the south.
Dewitt, Arkansas County
This is a picture of main street in DeWitt on a quiet evening.
DeWitt is a prosperous little city of 2,000 inhabitants, situated on
the Cotton Belt Railway near the geographic center of Arkansas
County, is the county seat and center of the greatest rice producing
region in the world The four main trunk line highways of the county,
now being macadamized, coverage at DeWitt. The town is putting in
electric lights and water works and is laying ten miles of concrete
sidewalks, and preparing to put down $100,000 street improvements at
once besides the concrete walks.
DeWitt has two banks, the First National Bank and Home Bank of
DeWitt. Both boast of being million dollar institutions, and an
examination of banking statistics will show that they have the
largest business of any banking institutions in the state in a town
of this size. DeWitt has a fine school, three churches, and the best
people in the world, and the beauty of it is their homes are not
mortgaged. She has saw mills, machine shops, a cotton gin, grist
mill, automobile shops, and ice factory.
The DeWitt branch of the Cotton Belt Railroad is admitted by the
company to be the best paying section of the whole Cotton Belt
system. This alone is conclusive evidence of the tremendous export
of lumber, rice, farm products, and live stock, and the
corresponding prosperity of our people. It would require freight
cars ten miles in length to carry at one time the annual export
products of DeWitt.
Hundreds
of people visit Arkansas County each season to hunt and fish. There
are all kinds of game and fish in abundance, and few places in the
United States afford a more pleasant place for a vacation or an
outing than the forests and streams of Arkansas County.
DeWitt Prize Cattle
The
DeWitt Rice Mill
DeWitt has been rightly termed by the Pine Bluff Board of Trace,
"The Queen City of the Rice Belt." The DeWitt Rice Mill is the
largest rice milling concern in this section of the United States
and mills more rice than any mill outside of the New Orleans
district. It takes care of a million and a quarter bushels raised in
this vicinity.
Court House at DeWitt.
Looking
Backward
The writer can hardly believe himself when memory calls him back
fifteen or twenty years. Then the roads of Arkansas County angled at
random across vast prairies and were scattered here and there
throughout the woodlands on their little homesteads. The prairies
were free pasture, few fences, and farm houses being upon them. The
old citizens could not conceive of this land ever been fenced or the
free range being closed. The land when sold brought from $1.25 to
$5.00 per acre and many would not pay a moderate tax to keep the
land.
These few years have passed and how changed. Two thousand miles of
county highway, located mostly on section lines, crossing every
section of the county. The main trunk line roads are now being
macadamized. Every section is fenced and magnificent farm houses,
rice plants, and rice and other crops have taken the place of
prairie grass. The same land that the writer cut hay from and sold
for 75 cents per ton, then worthless, is now selling for $100 to
$150, and produces for its owner from $125 to $200 per acre
annually. Splendid herds of Whiteface and Durham cattle have take
the place of the long horned scrub cow. Poland, China, and Duroe
Jersey hogs have taken the place of the razor-back. The dry land
farmer has learned modern methods and produced every crop grown in
the south in abundance. He is prosperous and happy.
Good churches and schools in every neighborhood. The average term of
the rural white school is eight months, and the teachers get from
$75 to $125.
The homeseeker need go no further. The development of the county is
still in its infancy. There are more automobiles and tractors in use
in Arkansas County than any place in the state in proportion to the
population. We pay a higher per cent of income tax than any other
locality in America.
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