From: haynes@cats.ucsc.edu (Jim Haynes)
Newsgroups: alt.suburbs
Subject: Suburb Analysis: Hope, AR
Date: 13 Aug 1992 22:11:39 GMT
Organization: University of California; Santa Cruz
NNTP-Posting-Host: hobbes.ucsc.edu


Well, really, Hope, AR isn't a suburb; but since George Bush's hometown
was featured here recently it seems like Bill Clinton's hometown deserves
equal coverage.

Washington, AR, is a very old town that was prominent back in frontier and
stagecoach days.  A tavern there was said to be a favorite gathering spot
for the likes of Davy Crockett, Sam Houston, and Jim Bowie.  Bowie's
famous knife was made by a blacksmith in Washington.  The Arkansas State
Capitol was moved there briefly during the Civil War when it appeared
Little Rock might be taken.

When a railroad company announced plans to run a line from Memphis
through Little Rock and into Texas the citizens of Washington wanted
no part of the noisy, smelly thing.  So the railroad (eventually to
become the Missouri-Pacific, now part of Union Pacific) ran its line
several miles south of Washington and started a town where its trains
could be serviced.  They named it Hope after the daughter of a railroad
official.  The Frisco railroad (St. Louis-San Francisco, later acquired
by Burlington-Northern) ran a line from Hope into Oklahoma (sold off
by B-N and now operated by the Kiamichi Railroad).  The Louisiana and
Arkansas railroad had its northern terminus in Hope.

So the town owes its existence to the railroads.  The former MoPac
passenger station sits in the very center of town, at the zero origin
of street numbers.  The city water and light plant was just across
the tracks; the city generated its own electricity until the late 1950s;
the electric plant was just recently torn down.  The city hall faces
the railroad.  The second floor of the city hall contains what would be
a nice auditorium, except that noise from passing trains interferes with
this use.  There once were several hotels adjacent to the railroad;
and some leading citizens built their homes on lots facing the railroad.
Today there is little rail traffic on the Kiamichi and perhaps none on
the L&A; but Union Pacific is thriving and has recently increased
trackage in anticipation of increased business through trade with Mexico.

As Hope prospered Washington faded away.  The county seat was moved from
Washington to Hope in the late 1930s.  Most of Washington is now a state
historical park.  Hope peaked sometime in the 1920s, in the sense that
most of the business district buildings were built and occupied then.
There was a second boom during World War II when the Army operated a
proving ground nearby.  U.S. highway 67 passes through Hope, roughly
parallel to the railroad, and now Interstate 30 passes nearby on a
similar route.

Most of the economic activity in the area is farming.  Cotton was the
most important crop until sometime in the 1940s.  There were cotton gins
around town, and a compress (pronounced COM-press) where bales from the
gins were compressed, and a mill that pressed oil from cotton seeds and
processed the residue into cattle feed.  One block of a downtown street
was called "Cotton Row" because a number of cotton brokers' offices were
there.  Now the principal crops are probably soybeans, beef cattle, and
chickens for frying.  The "celebrity" crop is watermelon; Hope is noted
for the world's largest watermelon and continues to have a Watermelon
Festival every summer.

Since the end of World War II the population of Hope has increased only
slightly, to about 10,000.  Local businesses have tended to go out of
business or move away from the center of town, so that in the 1950s the
central business district contained many abandoned stores, and others
occupied by marginal tenants.  Later a lot of the abandoned buildings
were torn down and the central district was "beautified" with narrowed
one-way streets and a fountain; but businesses continued to leave
or cease operation.  When a Wal-Mart store was built there recently
it didn't kill local business so much as it buried the corpses.  There
had previously been a couple of large chain stores built near the
Interstate; both failed.  (TG&Y had a large store; then the chain was
acquired by McCrory, which downsized and later closed the store.  
The Howard Discount chain had a large store; the whole chain went out
of business.)  Lots of people do their shopping, other than day-to-day
necessities, in Texarkana AR-TX, about 35 miles away on the I-30.
There are a number of retail businesses operated out of homes throughout
the residential area.  There were once a number of mansions from the
early days of the town - the kind of houses that Californians would
kill for; but in Hope nobody wants to put that much money into upkeep.
As more county roads have been paved people have built nice homes on
farms, each with its own TV dish; there isn't much advantage to
living in town anymore.  Probably some of these people are part-time
farmers.  One might have a good-paying job and farm a little almost
as a hobby; or one might have a not-so-good-paying job and farm to
add to the family income.  Whether in town or out in the country there
are lots of nice homes, and lots that are dilapidated.

Until the late 1950s Hope was, like the rest of the South, racially
segregated.  There were separate schools, areas of housing, water fountains,
lunch counters, churches, etc. for blacks and whites.  (As Harry Golden
noted, segregation tended to occur wherever people sat down.  Where people
didn't sit, as in retail stores, blacks and whites were served in the
same facilities.)  The schools were peacefully integrated by starting
with the first grade and moving up a grade each year.  Housing today
is segregated more by economics than by explicit racism; the poorest
neighborhoods tend to be all-black, middle-income people are racially
intermixed, and there are few if any black families with enough income
to buy into the newer, upscale neighborhoods.  I imagine there are still
all-white and all-black churches with very different styles of services.
Such racial tensions as do exist tend to revolve around whites' perceptions
that blacks are to blame for most of the crime and drug problems.  Hope
is not the mythical idyllic country town where people feel no need to
lock their doors; and it gets the same TV and movie imagery as the rest
of the nation.

Hope has one newspaper, publishing 5 days a week; one AM radio station, and
a couple of FM stations.  TV comes from Texarkana, Little Rock, and
Shreveport, LA.  One Little Rock daily paper is circulated statewide;
and some people in Hope take a Texarkana paper.
-- 
haynes@cats.ucsc.edu
haynes@cats.bitnet

"Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an Art."
        Charles McCabe, San Francisco Chronicle

Newsgroups: alt.suburbs