Ivan, Dallas
County, Arkansas
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Logging has had great impact on Dallas County. Ivan came into
existence as a logging camp that remained a community when
logging operations abandoned clear cutting for selective harvesting.
The typical logging camp had a school, a commissary (company
store), churches, recreational facilities and doctors. Everything,
even the homes, were built portable to transfer from place
to place when an area was logged. Many of the logging families
later moved into Fordyce. Some had homes that were built out
of box cars that could be moved by rail to the new logging
camp locations. By the early 1920's, the eastern, western and
southern sections of Dallas County were rich with railroad
tracks. The timber industry had two main logging railways,
the Fordyce and Princeton (the Fordyce and Princeton never
connected or spurred to the Freeo Valley and never reached
Princeton) and the Freeo Valley (connecting Ouachita County
to Princeton from the Eagle Mills Lumber Company, in operation
in the 1920's).
Ivan was the main logging camp in Dallas County
around 1908. Both of these logging railways had many miles
of spurs (laid by logging crews) that were later abandoned.
Some of the abandoned tracks have since been used for forest
access roads, highway roadbeds and for forest fire protection.
In later logging days, the trains had track laying machines
that both put down track and took up track. The old logging
system was to log down one side of the tracks and then log
down tile other side of the tracks to return. In 1904, Mason
and Kirkland sold the Fordyce Lumber Company to E. S. Crossett
and C. W. Gates. The coal burning logging trains hauled the
timber until the 1930's when the engines were converted to
oil burners. About 1940, most of the logging by train ended
when trucks proved to be more economical.
For a picture of the Fordyce Lumber Company's Camp at Ivan,
cir 1920, click here.
Source: Merritt, Richard (1976) Review of Dallas County,
AR History gleaned from the Bicentennial Edition of the
FORDYCE-NEWS ADVOCATE.
According to Elain Barnes, "the old Ivan postoffice boxes
were in the muesum in Fordyce. Franklin Homey Barnes and
Lillie Wright Barnes ran the first post office and grocery
store in Ivan. Harry Green and Emily Garlington Green started
the second grocery store in Ivan. The community of Ivan was
all colored families except for the two white families operating
the two stores".
Resources
- Cemeteries
- Churches, a list of Ivan Churches, provided by Church Angel.
- Census
- Maps
- Other links
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