West Helena was created as an industrial town as construction quickly began on factories and mills for Helena Veneer Company, Ong Chair Company, Upham & Agler, Southwestern Wagon Company, and Dennison Sawmill. It was the brainchild of E.C. Hornor, president of the Bank of Helena, and his cousin John Sidney Hornor. Spurred by the construction of the Missouri & North Arkansas Railroad into Helena in 1907, E.C. Hornor purchased the old Hoggatt Clopton place, the closest level ground to Helena west of Crowley's Ridge. In 1910, he conveyed the 2,300-acre former plantation to the West Helena Company, which had been incorporated a month earlier by himself, John Sydney Hornor, and James Tappan Hornor. The development of West Helena removed the growth limits imposed by Helena's topography, leading existing wood product companies such as Chicago Mill & Lumber to expand there and attracting new firms including Penrod Walnut & Veneer and Pekin Cooperage. By 1913, twenty-five companies were shipping railroad carloads of lumber, veneer box shooks, barrel staves, elm hoops, chairs, buckets, tubs, oak flooring, vehicle stocks, wagons, and furniture veneer out of Helena-West Helena every day, employing almost 2,000 men and processing 740,000 feet of logs daily, more than 140 miles, while also producing finished goods.