Walnut Ridge and Hoxie, Light, Power and Transit Company

A mule car line, The Walnut Ridge and Hoxie, was opened in 1899 between the two towns of Hoxie and Walnut Ridge, Arkansas. The total route was one and a half miles, using a mule car with a ten-passenger capacity, and a fare of five cents one way. The faithful mule of the line, "Old Jack'' made an average of five trips daily for fourteen years.  "Old Jack'', was said to have known the difference between the whistle of a passenger and a freight train on the Frisco. The regular driver for the life of the line was Walter Griffin.

In 1900, Walnut Ridge's population was 845, and by 1905 it had risen to an estimated 2,000. There were twelve passenger trains daily on the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern, (later Missouri Pacific), plus trains on the Frisco. The Frisco and Iron Mountain crossed each other at Hoxie and shared the same two-story station.

In 1903 the Iron Mountain opened a roundhouse just south of town at Hoxie, one and a half miles from Walnut Ridge. At first the workers rode to work from Walnut Ridge on the mule line, but better transportation was needed.

The Walnut Ridge and Hoxie, Light, Power and Transit Co., was chartered on September 9, 1903 and began operating on July 1, 1904, with two double truck cars, built in St. Louis. The new line was two and a half miles long, including in-town and between town trackage. The electric line started from a station on the south side of Main Street in Walnut Ridge, between West 4th and 5th, just east of the Frisco branch line to Pocahontas, beside the present location of Higginbotham's Funeral Home.  It then ran east on Main Street, turning south, and running between Front Street, (now US highway 67) and the Iron Mountain track. It passed the Walnut Ridge iron Mountain Station, the Hoxie business district, and finally ended at the roundhouse, 2 miles away.

There was a covered waiting shed at the Hoxie station for iron Mountain and Frisco passengers waiting for the streetcar. The mule line ran on the east side of the Iron Mountain and there is some evidence that it ran some distance east on Main Street in Walnut Ridge.

For a time the mule line and electric line competed for business, with the mule line lowering its fare to a single penny fare, against the five cent fare of the electric.

The electric trolley system, which eventually superseded the mule line, had a gross income of $17,094 in 1906, $19,116 in 1907 and in 1908 had risen to $21,462.

In 1918 the name of the Walnut Ridge and Hoxie, Light, Power and Transit Company was changed to the Central Power and Light Co. At that time there were four cars in operation, including two double truck combination freight-passenger cars, purchased from the American Car Co., In St. Louis in 1912. In 1919 the company was also in the lighting and power business. Walnut Ridge's population had stabilized at 1,798 residents by 1919, and both the power station and shops were in Walnut Ridge.

In 1923 the Missouri Pacific closed the roundhouse and the mule line was finally abandoned.

  By the late 20's, more and more automobiles came on the scene, and when the streets were finally graveled, the need for the streetcar was at an end. Finally in 1928 or 29, the streetcar line was quietly abandoned. Bob Elkins, day motorman, and his brother, Glover, the night motorman had operated the streetcars for the life of the line.

These are some personal recollections that appeared in the Lawrence County Historical Quarterly, Volume 14, Number 3, Summer 1991, and The Times Dispatch of Walnut Ridge, dated October 30, 1991.

Late one night in 1929, just before midnight, nine-year-old Jimmy Bland and his father returned from a trip to Little Rock. The train let them off in Hoxie, where the streetcar picked them up for the two-mile journey home to Walnut Ridge. When the streetcar stopped, a robber jumped aboard and stole the Blands' money and the $15 the motorman had collected five cents at a time. Unfortunately, the streetcar was plagued by thieves and bandits during the depression years, Bland recalls. It was common for a car to be held up because money was so scarce at the time.

Jeanette Bush, as a five-year old girl, doesn't remember fearing to ride the streetcar by herself to her grandmother's, as she did quite often. She remembers where her father was on a day in 1927 when a tornado struck this small community and left 12 people dead. He was on the streetcar. Bush's father, Hatley Ring, panicked and headed toward the car's exit, but Elkins stopped him and kept him there to keep him out of the tornado's path, possibly saving his life.

Passengers from the trains were the largest part of the streetcar's business, because a train was the only way a person traveled considerable distances back then. But, as in Bush's case, most families only had one automobile and both of the parents worked. When her mother would take the car to her job as a teacher for the Walnut Ridge School District, her father rode the streetcar to his job as an operator for the Missouri Pacific Railroad.

Judge Harry Ponder, who's grandfather, Willis Miles Ponder, a Civil War veteran, founded Walnut Ridge in 1875, attributes much of the streetcar's success to the unreliability of automobiles at that time.

Marguerite Rainwater, lifelong resident, remembers Bob Elkins, who was a friend of her father's, who owned a local drug store on Main Street. Elkins made the store a regular stop on his route where his passengers could get a quick soda or snack. She also remembers as a young girl of six, Elkins taking her for rides on the streetcar and letting her ring the bell to invite passengers to ride.