Bearden & Ouachita River Railroad
The Cotton Belt Lumber Company Mill at Best, Arkansas, near Bearden, was erected in 1885 and was served by the St. Louis Southwestern Railway Company. The tracks and equipment which the lumber company constructed and acquired for hauling logs to its mill were changed over to a railroad corporation which was chartered with the state in June of 1904. It was named the Bearden & Ouachita River Railroad Company. The new corporation was formed by the Cotton Belt Lumber Company for financial reasons and its capital stock of $28,000 was divided among the stockholders of the lumber company. The directors at the time of the charter were J. B. Bachelor, Valley Falls, Kansas; L. A. Best, Kansas City; J. H. Beland; H. C. Homeyer; and A. F. Hooch of Bearden, Arkansas.
The tracks of the line went from the mill at Best in Ouachita County straight south for a distance of about 14 miles to a point known as Caney in Calhoun County. From Caney, logging spurs extended into the woods in different directions. The equipment of the Company was one box car, fifty logging cars, and three locomotives, two of which were used by the lumber company for the movement of carloads of logs over the unincorporated spurs to Caney. From that point the logs were hauled by the railroad to the mill. More than 95% of the freight was logs for the lumber company. The Bearden & Ouachita River Railroad made a small charge to the lumber company to cover the use of the locomotives and logging cars on the spurs in the woods and for unloading the logs at the mill. Other merchandise hauled, such as cotton, fertilizer, feed or supplies, paid a local rate. There was one train daily in each direction on which passengers were permitted to ride without charge. The employees consisted of one train crew and one gang of track men. The woods foreman of the lumber company acted as agent for the station at Caney.
There was a plan for the track to go farther and connect with the Ouachita Valley Railway, and later to go on to the Ouachita River. At least part of the roadbed for the extended track was finished but there is no record of tracks ever being laid past Caney.
The Cotton Belt Lumber Company cut all the timber on the land that they owned and sold out to Stout Lumber Company in 1912. Stout formally took over the mill at Best on June 1 of that year. In May of 1912, the property where the mill at Caney was located was transferred to the stockholders of the Cotton Belt Lumber Company with the Lumber Company retaining the right to logging roads, trams and railroads. The property was sold in 1917 with Stout Lumber Company retaining the same rights. The Bearden & Ouachita River Railway Company remained in service until the 1920s.
The Museum has two bottles found on the property where the logging mill was probably located. There have also been railroad spikes, parts of the track, what appeared to have been a place where coal was unloaded, pieces of broken dishes and some old coins. The picture is of some of the bottles and coins found at the location.
Source: ttarchive.com (Texas Transportation Archive) abstracted from “Tap Line Case”, published in Decisions of the Interstate Commerce Commission, and in Decisions of the United States Supreme Court; Arkansas Democrat, Fri. Jun. 3, 1904, pg. 8; Pine Bluff Daily Graphic, May 16, 1912, Thurs. Pg. 6; Abstract for Land
