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Dardanelle
Yell
County, Arkansas |
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Eastern District Court House - 1919 Scarce a rifle shot
from the shadow of the Dardanelle Rock, that might tower of stone
that, sheer from the water's edge, looms 300 feet high, midway
between Little Rock and Fort Smith, on the south bank of the
Arkansas River, bowered by stately forest trees and spreading
westward toward the green slopes and blooming orchards of the level
uplands, and horizoned by the beetling heights of Mount Nebo is
situated the old time town of DARDANELLE - named generations ago
from the age-old rock above it, which in turn derived its name from
a musty Indian legend. The town is located near the commercial
center of one of the largest and most fertile bodies of adjoining
cotton plantations extant in any river bottom valley in the South,
and has a population of about 2,500.
Dardanelle has all the modern conveniences of any town of its
size in Arkansas, and owns its own water works. ~ Arkansas
Gazette 1919
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From Carolyn Depp -
cg.depp @
roadrunner.com:
Although your
old Chamber of Commerce press release indicates that
Dardanelle (Yell County) was named for the rock "which in turn
derived its
name from a musty old Indian legend", there is also a possibility
that the
name actually came from an early Arkansas settler. The French family
surname was DARDENNE [later Arkansas generations shortened it to
DARDEN]:
"A Journal of Travels into the Arkansas Territory During the Year
1819", by
Thomas Nuttall, ed. by Savoie Lottinville (Univ. of Arkansas Press,
Fayetteville, 1999), p107 [& footnote]
"9th--I walked about 4 miles to Mr. DARDENNES', where there were two
families residing on the bank of the river, which is agreeably
elevated...Lands of the same fertile quality as that on the border
of the
river, extend here from it for 8 miles without interruption, and
free from
inundation."
[Footnote: "Toussaint DARDENNE was married at Fort de Chartres, the
French
post near Kaskaskia, Ill in 1747. His son Jean Baptiste had a
Spanish grant
on the north bank of the Arkansas". HOUCK (2), II, 97-98]
Son Jean-Baptiste DARDENNE later sold 640 acres on the Arkansas
River to
land speculator William Russell of St. Louis in 1816.
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1919 - Photograph marked "longest pontoon bridge
in the world." |
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1919 Arkansas Gazette article: The surrounding territory is noted for its virgin forests of pine
and hardwood timber and for producing cotton, corn, wheat, oats,
rye, peas, Irish potatoes, sweet potatoes, peaches, apples, plums,
grapes, cherries, strawberries, peanuts, lespedeza, sudan grass,
garlic, sugar cane, broom corn, milo maize, Egyptian wheat, Kaffir
corn, and tobacco. Fine ranches and stock raising of all
kinds. Has coal mines and fine building stone. There are
three railroads entering Dardanelle. In this space
we cannot begin to tell you all we have, or the many enterprises we
need and can support, but will be glad to give you full particulars
if you are interested in this part of Arkansas. We
have a modern, wide-awake Chamber of Commerce membership which is
doing effective work through a system of twelve Bureaus as follows:
Agricultural Market, Buy-at-Home, Civic, Credit, Charity,
Entertainment, Employment, Good Roads, Industrial, Publicity, Real
Estate and Retail Merchants. For further particulars, write
the
Dardanelle Chamber of Commerce G.L. Veazey, President C.L. Russ, Secretary
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