PRESCOTT IN 1889
By Geo. Armstead

This article appeared in the Jan. 9, 1889 issue of The Nevada County Picayune.

     Prescott, the county seat of Nevada County, has from 1500-2000 inhabitants, eight
churches of different denominations, lawyers, doctors, and merchants.  It has a first class school
with a large attendance of scholars and number one teachers.  In regard to railroads, there is only
one, but there is the expectation of more. 

     I do my trading at Prescott, but Little Rock is a short run above and St. Louis is easily
reached. 

     I have been here but a short time, and have not had the actual experience that a longer
residence would give me, but I can give you an honest and truthful account of my immediate
vicinity.

     I am raising some fine half breed Percheron ponies.  I turn them loose on the prairie
pasture where they have access to pure water gushing out of an artesian well into a nice, clean
trough and with no food of any kind whatsoever, they are in splendid condition.  Hogs are turned
loose in the woods to make their own living until fattening time. 

     Fruits do well except early peaches which rot considerably and quinces are almost a
failure.  There is a nice market at Prescott.  Portions of the county were settled many years before
the war, but very thinly, and since the railroad a great migration is forming in towns along the
road, which are becoming thickly settled.

     The fruit of Arkansas took first place in the New Orleans Exposition and in St. Louis. 
Grape culture, from our own personal experience, offers great opportunities and glorious wealth
and prosperity.  Our native wines are excellent.  I am told that scuppernong grapes, which do
remarkably well here, make a very superior wine, but I have never tasted it.  I am persuaded that a
young man of industry could make this one of the best paying industries in the Southern states.

     There are I think, four or five soils here-stiff, black land which is most productive and
yields, when well cultivated, from three-fourths to one bale of cotton per acre and 20 to 60
bushels of corn.  The sandy land in next best.  Dirt land is a poor looking, grayish soil but yields
very well, and the sandy land yields finely when fresh, but I am told last but a short time.  The
country is generally hilly, but some level, and most in cultivation with slopes to drain  well. 

     All the county is timbered except the prairie which has no timber save a few trees on the
little rivulets that run through it.  As to labor, it is mostly Negro for farming purposes and of the
usual character-some good and some bad.  We have also a class of white labor that is better than
usual.  A great many northern men are among us who are farming and doing well.  The price of
labor is from ten to fifteen dollars per month.  All varieties of timber grow in the South.  Black,
red, and white oak, walnut, hickory, ash, birch, sweet gum, black gum, pine and other varieties. 
Pine, at present, constitutes the 
greatest industry and there are vast bodies of first class pine in a large part of the state which are
now made into splendid lumber all along our railroad line. 

     Our cultivated land is worth from five to thirty dollars per acre governed by the
productiveness and the proximity to Prescott. 

     Lumber is worth from two and one half to three dollars per thousand at the mills and six
to fifteen after it has been planed at the mill in Prescott.