A Shipping Route

Pocahontas, on the west bank of the Black River, grew as Randolph County shifted from subsistence farming to an export economy, with the river serving as the original farm-to-market road. Steamboats carried cotton and other agricultural products downriver, and beginning in the 1850s manganese, iron ore, and other minerals also moved along the Black and White rivers. Mussels and freshwater pearls were important export products as well. By the 1880s, timber companies were harvesting Arkansas's virgin forests, and the Black River carried enormous rafts of white, post, and black walnut, hickory, cottonwood, pecan, and cedar. Timber harvesting continued around the state until about 1920, by which time the ancient forests were depleted.

Pocahontas, Arkansas · United States