After decades of effort, Helena secured a major railroad in 1907 by guaranteeing a right-of-way from Cotton Plant to Helena and land for a terminal at no cost, outbidding promises made in Little Rock. The Missouri & North Arkansas then began construction, and the first train reached Helena in fall 1908. Two years later, E.C. Hornor founded West Helena as a modern city, and by its incorporation in 1917 it had become one of Arkansas's busiest industrial towns. Its industrial center quickly filled with mills, lumberyards, cooperages, and woodenware manufacturers producing chairs, elm barrel hoops, wagon parts, and other lumber products. Industry drew the Missouri & North Arkansas, Frisco, and Yazoo & Mississippi Valley railroads, and by 1918 West Helena's industrial area had become a dense network of track, with spur lines reaching fifteen industrial sites, nearly all tied to lumber. The Helena Southwestern Railroad served the large Chicago Mill & Lumber Company works on the west side of town, carrying logs from company forests to the mill and finished products outward. South of town, tracks formed an arc to Helena Crossing, where lines from the south and west met tracks extending south from Helena, and freight traveling east from West Helena followed that route and crossed the river by transfer boat.