GRAVETTE — Motorists driving along Highway 72 between Gravette and Hiwasse are able to see an unusual “hump” in the terrain that parallels the highway. The hump is visible at several locations. But recently, just east of the Mt. Pleasant Church and Cemetery, it is being destroyed and replaced by earthworks of another kind.

The “hump” was the “bed” that supported ties and rails for a now-defunct railroad, the Arkansas & Oklahoma Railroad.

The rail line served as a vital shipping vehicle for the many agrarian products for which Benton County was at one time famous, particularly strawberries - and apples.

The single-track line had its origin in Rogers. It snaked cross-country to and through Bentonville and then wound its way westward to Hiwasse, Gravette, Southwest City, Mo., and finally ended in Grove, Indian Territory.

The year was 1898 when the line reached Gravette where it intersected with the Kansas City Pittsburg & Gulf line that had been completed in 1893. That line is now the Kansas City Southern.

Leaving Gravette, it continued westward to serve the rural community of Beaty. The following yearit entered southwest Missouri and eventually ended in Grove.

Two years later, the Rogers investors sold the line and it became known as “The Frisco,” which plied the countryside for almost 40 years.

Those were long and eventful years: America fought a World War, there were the flappers and prohibition of the ‘20s, the Great Depression and, finally, the signs of another approaching World War.

During all those years, the heavy “iron horses” approached from the east into Hiwasse. Belching black coal smoke, the lone engine (the firm initially had two locomotives) moved across the countryside to Gravette where it crossed the KCP&G a half block west on Main Street, west of where the Brick Memory Park is nowlocated.

Besides the freight stops at many shipping points, the rail line also had a single passenger car which charged as little as fifteen cents between some stops during the once-a-day round trip.

Weathering the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Frisco “went Hollywood” when the original Jesse James movie, which was for the most part filmed in and near the town of Pineville, Mo., used a relatively straight stretch of Frisco track west of Mt. Pleasant to film a “ night”scene for the movie.

The robbery scene featuring Tyrone Power and Henry Fonda was actually shot in daylight and attracted lots of local attention. As an aside, the city of Pineville still holds a Jesse James celebration every August, during which the original Jesse James movie is shown.

During the intervening years between the turn of the last century and the Depression, the strawberry fields (many were located along Strawberry Ridge Road north of Gravette) were abandoned and the apple orchards fell victim to cedar blight and competition from other areas. The supportive apple drying operations (evaporators) were forced to close.

The year was 1940 when the Frisco line was finally abandoned and the rails were stripped up and sold for scrap metal. Although proof is lacking, legend has it that the metal went to Japan, which was arming itself for World War II.

It was in the early 1980s when the remnants of a telegraph line were removed and for a time a few of the original ties could be seen in a few isolated locations.

During the past 75 years, the “hump” has virtually disappeared in crosscountry terrain, giving way to plows and harrows and other natural and mandriven changes. Today there are no rattling rails.No creosote-soaked ties. No coal smoke. Just diesel fumes from farm tractors.

In recent months, that diesel smoke and noise has been joined by heavy machinery working on the Bella Vista bypass which will cross Highway 72 just east of the Mt. Pleasant Church. This was the area where remnants of that “hump” were most noticeably visible. But no more. The highway work has destroyed the quarter-mile stretch of the “hump” that paralleled Highway 72.

How ironic that the transportation remainsfrom another era are being replaced by a twenty-firstcentury transportation advancement.

News, Pages 9 on 06/27/2012