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Restoration work resumes for Rock Island Depot in Perry

by | Mar 13, 2024 | Rock Island Railroad

The Rock Island Perry Depot on July 15, 2023 with a pristine roof and foundation, but the siding, windows and doors looked very ragged. A new round of work will improve its appearance. Photo: Michael Hibblen

A new round of construction to restore the Rock Island Railroad depot in Perry, Arkansas is finally getting underway. At the same time, an attorney has been recruited to handle the paperwork needed to create a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, which will oversee subsequent work and eventually operate the city-owned depot when it becomes a community event space and museum telling the history of the area and the railroad. 

$20,000 is being allocated for this latest phase of work that began on Monday, March 11 and is focused on the restoration of the original wood siding, and replacement where necessary with similar materials. We will also start fixing the original windows and doors to make the building’s exterior envelope weathertight. 

“We’re hoping that a total restoration of the outside will be possible,” said Buford Suffridge, who is leading the project. He had served as president of the Perry County Historical and Genealogical Society until it was recently dissolved due to declining membership. It’s not known how long this phase of construction will last.

A westbound passenger train approaches the Perry depot in 1960. Photo: Rock Island photographer Ed Wojtas

Contractor Larry Cates and Perry Mayor Justin Crain have been purchasing needed supplies, offset by an in-kind donation of $500 worth of materials from Weiss Lumber in Perryville. A spike in the cost of building materials during the COVID-19 pandemic slowed the project timeline. While costs have been coming back down, the trade group Associated Builders and Contractors says materials are still about one-third more than before the pandemic began in 2020. 

Last year, the Perry County Quorum Court helped jumpstart our efforts by approving a $20,000 donation from the county. Beyond that, about $7,000 remains from a grant and individual donations received over the years. That $7,000 is being set aside for upcoming legal expenses and fees, though hopefully a large chunk of that will eventually also go toward actual repairs to the depot.

All grants and donations have been going through the nonprofit Perry County Historical Museum, but we were advised that attaining a separate 501(c)(3) designation for the depot would be beneficial, especially as we pursue additional grants and donations. 

This week, the contractor began building a ramp to one entrance which will be compliant with Americans with Disabilities Act specifications. Steps will be added to other doors. To provide power to the site, an account has been opened with First Electric Cooperative. Last week, a line was run to a new pole at the depot, with the meter loop costing $600. Having a box on-site was necessary as workers had previously been running extension cables from a nearby city water pumping station.

Work was underway on March 12, 2024 to build a ramp leading to the door of one of two waiting rooms inside the Perry Depot. Segregated waiting rooms were mandated by Jim Crow laws. Photo: Buford Suffridge

We’re also discussing when to place the vintage semaphore train order signal back in position next to the projecting telegrapher’s booth. Cates first wants to complete other work before pouring a concrete foundation to set it in. 

“I think we’ll have to wait until we see how much fill is going to be placed and where it’s going to be placed,” Suffridge said.

The depot was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on Jan. 8, 2021, a month after being nominated by the state. This designation will allow us to qualify for some grants. 

The depot was built in 1918, replacing a smaller structure, and served a key role for the Rock Island as the midway point between Little Rock and Booneville. Being situated along a main line through the middle of the country, the passenger and freight station played an important role in transportation. After the bankrupt Rock Island was shut down in 1980, the depot continued to be used by the shortline Little Rock & Western Railway.

The campaign to save the depot was launched In 2017 after learning the Little Rock & Western planned to demolish it to make way for an expanded locomotive servicing shop. Since then, thanks to generous support, we were able to cover the cost of a house-moving company relocating the depot to an adjacent city-owned lot; we built a new cinder block foundation to place it on, and we added a new roof to protect the interior from any further deterioration. Much of the work was accomplished thanks to in-kind donations of labor and materials.

The depot has been getting regular treatment from a termite control company. No restoration work has been done to the interior, but an architect who went through the building with Suffridge and Preserve Arkansas Executive Director Rachel Patton in October 2020 found it to be structurally sound, which is attributed to it being constructed with old growth timber.

A crew from Combs Home Builders & House Movers placed steel beams under the depot, then used hydraulic jacks to lift it up. On Sept. 26, 2018, a truck pulled the structure from the spot it had sat on for 100 years. Photo: Michael Hibblen

A ticket window in the white waiting room of the depot on July 15, 2023. Much of the depot still features the faded blue and white paint scheme used by the Rock Island after filing for bankruptcy in the 1970s. Photo: Michael Hibblen

We recently completed a required title search of the property the depot sits on today. The land was sold to the city by the Rock Island for $500 in December 1970, according to a quitclaim deed. A water tank for steam engines once stood on the property. In 2018, the depot building itself was purchased by the city from the Little Rock & Western for a nominal $10.

A five-member board has been created to operate the nonprofit, made up of community leaders and myself — all very invested in this project and eager to one day see the depot again open to the public. The members are:

  • Michael Allison
  • Michael Hibblen
  • Jimmy Middleton
  • Tony Roark
  • Buford Suffridge

The pandemic not only caused the cost of needed materials to increase, concerns about the safety of people getting together halted plans for events we had hoped to hold in the summer of 2020. We have also been unsure about the best way to move forward in fundraising. According to several people we’ve spoken with, the creation of the nonprofit should give us a boost. 

We are closing a GoFundMe account opened in 2018 that was initially intended only to cover the cost of moving the depot. A total of $10,390 was raised through 117 donations. Thanks to everyone who gave! There will eventually be new fundraising campaigns after the nonprofit is created, but for now, we’re wanting to see new work be completed.

“It’s evidence to the public that we’re serious about getting the depot restored,” Suffridge said.

Anyone who would like to donate now can send a check to the city, which has separate accounting for the depot. Be sure to clearly mark that the donation is for the depot project.

City of Perry
P.O. Box 36
Perry, AR 72125

I’ll add subsequent updates as warranted. We look forward to eventually bringing this historic building back to life with a new purpose.

UPDATE — SATURDAY, MARCH 16, 2024: 

Before work begins on the siding, this past week Cates and his crew have been removing some of the interior of the depot that had been added over the years, so there won’t be challenges removing it later, after work to the exterior has been completed.

The condition of the flooring is similar to what was discovered when the roof was replaced in August 2020. There were multiple layers of shingling that had apparently been added on top of the original tin roof whenever leaks would develop.

“In one place there were five layers of flooring, and when they got down to the original [wooden] tongue and groove, some of it was in good condition. Apparently as termites damaged the floor, the railroad just put another layer over it,” Suffridge said.

In many ways, that seems similar to the overall approach by the Rock Island, which — given its precarious financial situation toward the end — deferred maintenance on equipment and track, doing the bare minimum to keep trains rolling. 

Suffridge has been speaking with Cates regularly as decisions are being made about how to proceed. One of the two chimneys had sunk, Suffridge said, “and they were afraid to try to raise it, so they are building the floor to match.”

Buford Suffridge at the freight entrance to the depot on July 15, 2023. Photo: Michael Hibblen

He added, “Nothing is square, and in some places the wall is two inches off from top to bottom. It’s strictly a seat of your pants deal and we’re lucky to have someone who has experience in salvaging ill-built and damaged structures.”

With the latest discoveries, Patton with Preserve Arkansas wrote, “that is pretty typical in historic buildings — especially ones that weren’t necessarily well maintained over the years. There will probably be more surprises!” 

The five of us who will be serving on the soon-to-be-created nonprofit’s board are planning an organizational meeting in about two weeks. I’ll continue posting updates and photos as the project progresses.

UPDATE — THURSDAY, MARCH 21, 2024:

It’s exciting to see work on the depot progressing. Cates and his workers have begun replacing areas of the siding that had rotted and were not salvageable. The new wood looks similar to the design of the previous siding. 

As some of the interior is being cleared out, we’re learned more about the building, including what was original and what was added in later years as the needs of the depot changed or repairs were needed.

Workers replace parts of the siding of the depot on March 20, 2024. Photo: Buford Suffridge

The replacement siding has designs similar to the original siding. Photo: Buford Suffridge

It’s apparent a wall was added or replaced a previous wall on the west side of the depot office. There is also a spot where a tiny bathroom had been. Some of these walls don’t have vertical studs and were very cheaply put up, possibly by railroad workers who were instructed to do the work but didn’t know much about construction. 

“It’s a work in progress,” Suffridge said. “We never know what we’re going to find when we take something off.” 

Hidden inside one of the walls were empty vintage beer bottles covered in grime. Railroads used to be notorious for some employees drinking on the job.

Perry County has provided a dumpster for the discarded materials, which is being filled with wall paneling, layers of flooring and other items that were not original and of value to the project. 

The wall at the controls for the semaphore signals had sunk, so the crew raised it back up to be level with the rest of the building. Inside that wall were many old wasp and dirt dauber nests. With the open at the top allowing insects to come and go, the depot, especially in later years when used only for storage by the Little Rock & Western Railway, likely had them constantly buzzing around.

Inside the center room with the projecting telegrapher’s booth. Photo: Buford Suffridge

Looking from the center room toward the freight room. Photo: Buford Suffridge

As you can see in these photos, new support beams are being built where needed. That includes much of the flooring.The depot had a subfloor of what appears to be untreated wood, with the original tongue and groove flooring on top of that. Much of it was heavily damaged by termites, especially the northeast corner of the building where the main waiting room was located.

With new floor beams in position, the contractor asked Suffridge whether to put any kind of floor down in areas where the original floor can’t be salvaged. 

“We decided since he has things all leveled and no one will be inside, we’ll concentrate on the outside since it’s something people can see and decide on floor replacement later,” Suffridge said.

He noted that fortunately, the old beadboard flooring used in most areas of the depot is still available. The contractor also told him all of the windows can still be opened and will be reglazed. 

What was the white waiting room for the depot. Photo: Buford Suffridge

So far, this latest round of work has already cost about $5,000 — a quarter of what we’re allocating. The materials to hopefully replace the entire outside of the depot have already been purchased. You can learn more about the background of the project and read previous posts at the link below.

UPDATE — SATURDAY, MARCH 30, 2024

After three weeks of work, very solid progress can be seen to restore the outside of the depot. Contractor Larry Cates and his crew have replaced the lower part of the siding all the way around the building. A layer of primer has been added to protect it. No decision has been made about what color we’ll eventually paint the depot once the restoration is complete. As the final layer of paint has been peeling off, the previous red paint is becoming a lot more apparent.

The lower part of the siding has been replaced around the entire structure, as seen on March 29, 2024. A layer of primer has been added to protect it. Photo: Michael Hibblen

The back side of the depot with the freight room doors. Also visible is where the overhang of the roof was restored in 2020 when the roof was replaced. Photo: Michael Hibblen

The front entrance to the freight room with the ADA-compliant ramp that leads to one of the doors. Photo: Michael Hibblen

A large dumpster that was full of rotted materials has been hauled away. The county covered the cost of providing it and I expect the dumpster will be emptied and returned as a thorough cleaning of the inside continues.

Look for more work to be done on the siding in the weeks ahead. Replacing broken windows, then sealing them and the doors will also be completed.

 

Preserving the former Rock Island Depot at Perry, Arkansas

Reporting traffic on WSVN 7 in Miami

by | Feb 17, 2024 | Television

Inspired by my involvement in a grant-funded project to digitize all 26,000 videotapes in the archives of Arkansas PBS, I recently dug into storage containers for videotapes of my own work which haven’t been viewed in decades. They included a few tapes from the brief period of my career when I worked as a traffic reporter for radio and TV stations in Richmond, Virginia, then Miami, Florida in 1997 and 1998.

I have long been digitizing audio tapes of my work and posting those here, but hadn’t made an effort to preserve videotapes. The traffic reports certainly don’t have the historic value of important news stories I’ve covered or the treasure trove of material Arkansas PBS shipped off to be digitized, but after working in the seemingly calm world of public broadcasting for the past 21 years, it’s kind of funny seeing reports I anchored for WSVN, channel 7, the Fox affiliate in Miami. It had the most dramatic presentation of any TV station in the market.

What I appreciate about the video below is that it’s an unedited segment of “Today in Florida,” the station’s morning news program, including three of my traffic reports. Most other tapes I have only include my reports. I would follow weather every 15 minutes, updating traffic conditions while showing live helicopter footage of accidents and backups. I was off-camera. The first report shows a dramatic shot of a vehicle on its side, blocking all lanes in one direction on a major roadway.  

South Florida had terrible traffic congestion, with morning rush backups beginning before 6 a.m. WSVN aimed to give people information they would need about potential problems in their morning commute before leaving for work.

I had only been in Miami about a month at that point and received a quick orientation on the complicated layout of roadways and the lingo before starting on the air. I was working for Metro Networks, a provider of traffic reports for radio and TV stations nationwide, first at its Richmond office, then was able to transfer to Miami. Needless to say, it was a challenge arriving in a new market and trying to talk about the highway system like a local. 

I didn’t find reporting traffic to be as interesting as reporting news. Most days were very redundant with backups in the same places at the same times with a few scattered accidents mixing things up. But working at Metro Networks gave me a lot of good exposure, not only on WSVN, but also being heard at one time or another on about half of the English language radio stations in South Florida. One of those was WIOD, Newsradio 610, where six months after arriving in Miami, I was hired as a news anchor and reporter. 

I’ve never had any nostalgia for my short lived traffic reporting days, but learning recently just how badly videotapes deteriorate after a couple of decades, especially in poor conditions like what I subjected these to while moving around the country, I knew that if I wanted to preserve this footage, I should take action as soon as possible. These tapes weren’t digitized using the most professional standards — I simply slid them into a VCR I still have and dubbed them onto DVDs, which were then ripped to MP4 files. The project I’ve been involved with at Arkansas PBS is using a company that follows a much more formal archival process.

PRESERVING ARKANSAS PBS ARCHIVE

Last year, Arkansas PBS received a $1.13 million grant from the Arkansas Natural and Cultural Resources Council to digitize all 26,000 audio and videotapes that have been saved over the years. Some are 2-inch videotapes going back to when the station went on the air in 1966. I served on a committee that heard proposals from vendors, then selected the George Blood company, which is now digitizing those tapes. It’s a fascinating process with the deteriorating media being carefully handled using an archival process to assess the tapes, then record them into a digital format to get the best footage possible. The first truckload of carefully-wrapped tapes was shipped out on Nov. 27, generating a lot of excitement.

Included in that first shipment were many tapes featuring episodes of “Arkansas Week,” which I now oversee as part of my duties here. Last year, the program marked its 40th anniversary.  Many of the most important stories in the state during that time were discussed in the program, so it’s an important record of Arkansas history. The footage will eventually be available through the website of the American Archive of Public Broadcasting. In December, a second shipment left our building.

On Feb. 15, Arkansas PBS received a hard drive featuring the first digitized footage, which was compared with an inventoried list of tapes that had been sent. Needless to say this has been an exciting project, especially for employees here like David Elmore, who for years has been setting aside and watching over these tapes.

More pallets filled with tapes are in position and will soon be part of a third truckload of tapes to be shipped. For me, having been involved in small personal projects to digitize tapes of my own or radio stations I’ve worked for, it has been a joy seeing this happen on such a large and professional scale.

Trey Stafford discusses growing up in radio

by | Dec 28, 2023 | Radio

It was a joy listening to an interview with Trey Stafford, a boss of mine 33 years ago at KDXY-FM 104.9. An institution in northeast Arkansas broadcasting, he was featured in the latest episode of Paragould Podcast with Jared Pickney. Trey shared details about beginning in radio at the age of 9 on his hometown station KPCA-AM in Marked Tree. More than 50 years later, he dominates morning radio in Jonesboro.

There are several great stories that harken back to what small town radio used to be like, including when — at the age of 10 — he was called to sign the daytime-only station back on the air late one night to warn people of a potential tornado. At the age of 14, when he didn’t become a paid employee as promised, he left the station in a huff, but advanced his career. Trey’s life story is fascinating and I’m glad it was documented in this podcast. Give it a listen!

In addition to co-hosting the morning show with Jim Frigo at what is today known as 104.9 The Fox, Trey is President/ General Manager of Jonesboro Radio Group. He not only survived a tumultuous era of deregulation, he adapted and rose to the top in his market.

What I appreciated in 1990, as I note on the page detailing my experiences at the station,  was the respect he gave a 19-year-old with just a little bit of experience by offering me my first full-time radio position, complete with health insurance and other benefits. I’ve only seen him once since leaving Jonesboro in 1993, but am confident his success is thanks to his broadcasting business savvy and a strong personality that radiates into the community. 

Traveling to see the legendary Al Green!

by | Dec 22, 2023 | Music

It was a spontaneous decision made the moment Glen Hooks and I saw that Al Green was going to be performing near St. Louis on Nov. 25 — we had to go. Among the top musicians to emerge from Arkansas, I can’t begin to say how much his music has meant to me. The concert was the final one of the year for Rev. Green, now 77. While it would mean a five-hour drive each way from Little Rock, Glen immediately took out his phone and bought three tickets, including one for his girlfriend Michelle Henderson.

What did we think of the show? Let us tell you all about it! I’d recently bought a dash cam for my car and recorded our post-concert thoughts during the drive back, mixing that with some good ol’ cell phone footage to provide highlights and analysis.

Maybe you’ll find this mashup of music and thoughts annoying, but I thought I’d try something new. If you’d like to just see the performance, there’s footage of the entire show recorded by other people that can be found on YouTube.

Former North Little Rock Mayor Pat Hays dies at 76

by | Oct 5, 2023 | Arkansas History, News, Railroads, Rock Island Railroad

Former North Little Rock Mayor Patrick Henry Hays, a third generation railroad worker who later became an attorney and entered politics, died Wednesday, Oct. 4. He was 76. The cause of death was cancer, his family said.

I interviewed Hays twice over several decades about his work to preserve the Rock Island bridge over the Arkansas River, which at one point was slated to be torn down. Below is audio and a transcript of our final interview, which also delved into his experiences working as a Missouri Pacific fireman and brakeman while in college. He was always a pleasure to speak with.

Former North Little Rock Mayor Pat Hays speaks during the dedication ceremony for the renovated Rock Island Bridge, which was renamed the Clinton Presidential Park Bridge. Photo: Clinton Foundation screenshot

In the mid-1990s, Hays, Little Rock Mayor Jim Dailey and Pulaski County Judge Buddy Villines oversaw the revitalization of the cities’ downtown areas. One component of that, as I reported in 1996, was to keep the century-old Rock Island Railroad Bridge from being removed. The three took part in negotiations with Union Pacific, which acquired the bridge after the 1980 bankruptcy shutdown of the Rock Island. Union Pacific had said in 1989 that it planned to dismantle the bridge which hadn’t been used in about five years and was considered a liability because it was a hazard to river navigation.  

As part of my research on the Rock Island, I interviewed Hays at his law office on Nov. 23, 2017 about why he felt it was important to save the bridge. After reaching an agreement with Union Pacific, the bridge remained largely untouched — seemingly abandoned to unknowing eyes — until $10.5 million in work was finally completed to convert it into a pedestrian and cycling bridge that is at the eastern end of the 14-mile Arkansas River Trail. I covered the dedication ceremony for the renovated bridge on Sept. 30, 2011, in which Hays spoke alongside former President Bill Clinton, whose presidential library is adjacent to the bridge.

In my interview, Hays also talked about his five years working for the Missouri Pacific, which his father and grandfather had also worked for. It was a typical story for young people in railroad families. 

“Back in 1965 when I graduated from high school, I started taking my student trips the next morning — graduated one night and then I was up at 4 or 5 the next morning,” Hays said. “They needed folks to work during the summer because a lot of the folks would take vacations. We would work off of what they called the extra board and that was just simply a rotation of regular jobs that people had that they wanted off.”

North Little Rock has always been a railroad city, with a sprawling rail yard that today belongs to the Union Pacific. The Rock Island’s primary yard for the state had also located in the city until 1918, when Biddle Yard was constructed in south Little Rock. North Little Rock was also served by the Cotton Belt Railroad, with a passenger station that Hays recalled sitting on top of as a kid to watch circus trains pass. We also talked about his appointment to be chairman of Amtrak’s Mayors Advisory Council, as well as rail transportation elsewhere in the world.

It was a rather informal interview as I primarily wanted to document his recollections and ask for any additional details he could offer regarding the Rock Island. I had grown up in North Little Rock and explained to him my vantage point as a child seeing the final trains of the Rock Island passing in front of my elementary school. Hays was very generous with his time and I’m happy to share audio of the interview here. You can also read a transcript with much of the interview, while I have highlights of our conversation below.  

AUDIO: Part 1 of my interview with former North Little Rock Mayor Pat Hays on Nov. 23, 2017, discussing working for Missouri Pacific.
AUDIO: Part 2 of my interview with Hays on his work to save the Rock Island Bridge and other railroad topics.

Hays served longer than any other North Little Rock mayor, in office from 1989-2012. He previously represented the area in the Arkansas House of Representatives. A funeral service is scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 12, 3 p.m. at North Little Rock First Pentecostal Church at 1401 Calvary Road.

INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS:

Hays discussed the expansion of railroads in central Arkansas and how that led to multiple railroads building rail yards and shops in North Little Rock.

When the rails finally… They came over from Memphis and came down from St. Louis, and they obviously stopped initially in North Little Rock because there wasn’t a rail bridge at the time, or any [Arkansas River] bridges at the time. Because they were ferried across the river, and that obviously was somewhat of a slow process, from what I understand from a historical standpoint, they would take that time and tinker with some of the maintenance issues that they had to do. One thing led to another, and that’s in large measure why North Little Rock became somewhat of a railroad town. When the rails reached here, they paused in going across the river because they had to ferry them.

The Baring Cross Bridge became the first rail bridge built across the Arkansas River, opening in 1873. Just to the east, the original Junction Bridge was constructed in 1884. At the easternmost end of the bridges between Little Rock and North Little Rock, the Choctaw, Oklahoma & Gulf Railroad constructed a 1,200-foot bridge that opened in 1899. In 1902, that railroad was taken over by the Rock Island. Hays told me about his work for the Missouri Pacific, which primarily involved crossing the Junction Bridge.

I used that bridge when we were working on the Valley Division. There was a rail yard — I guess it’s pretty much where the Clinton Library and the Heifer Project are now — and we would go over there when the job picked back up in terms of needing substitute folks. We had what we called the full crew law back in the 1960s, and perhaps before then, where you had to have an engineer, a fireman, a conductor and two brakemen. So you had to have five employees on each freight train. On the yard jobs, you had to have an engineer and a fireman. [The full crew law] was tied to public crossings. If you crossed a public crossing, that’s what kicked the law into effect, in large measure for safety reasons. So I would go over there, and of course there’s a lot of crossings that go up and down on the east side, along the right-of-way going out toward the airport. The Valley Division went through Pine Bluff and then down to McGehee and then on into Alexandria, Louisiana. So the Junction Bridge was the bridge we used primarily.

Hays spoke about what he, Little Rock Mayor Jim Dailey and Pulaski County Judge Buddy Villines envisioned for the unused Rock Island and Junction bridges.

In the early ‘90s, I was part of a program called the Mayor’s Institute of Urban Design. There’s several of them around the country and the one that I was a part of spent two or three days in Atlanta, then we spent two or three days in Chattanooga. While we were in Chattanooga, they have what they call the Walnut Street Bridge, and they had converted that bridge to a pedestrian bridge — totally pedestrian — and so I saw what they had done with that bridge. And I took a trip to Portland, and I think they converted a rail bridge and/or road bridge to a pedestrian — partly-pedestrian bridge. I’m not sure what the name of it is. So the concept of turning a bridge into a modern public use was not a foreign concept to me in recognizing what other communities had done and how they did it. Obviously, there are all sorts of different ways for them to do it.

We had a pretty unique opportunity here in central Arkansas. Buddy and Jim and I worked on a variety of things that jointly could make central Arkansas a much better place — we felt — to live. And the unique opportunity we had were the six bridges that joined Little Rock and North Little Rock. We thought a lot alike about creating an urban environment, trying to redo a downtown environment, how if the core of the community was unhealthy that the entire community was unhealthy. We started learning about different things, about why you wanted to revive an urban lifestyle.

Transportation — the interstate system started in the ‘50s, and really, to me in many respects, destroyed the urban vitality of areas all over the country. So, you were having challenges in trying to provide a healthy and livable place in the urban core for people to live and work and learn and play and do all the things that really made a community much better. And North Little Rock was particularly challenged in many respects because we were surrounded by other jurisdictions: Little Rock in the south across the river; Maumelle out west; Camp Robinson to the north; Sherwood to the north-northeast; and then, in some respects, a lot of improvements have been made, but the flat Delta land had some flood-prone issues. If there are large mosquitoes as there are on the eastern side of our city, the Delta kind of land was more challenging to grow. So we were pretty well surrounded. Fort Smith, maybe, was the only other city in Arkansas, perhaps a little bit in Texarkana, but they still had areas to grow. They weren’t hemmed in by other cities, and then had some geographic challenges or topographical challenges.

So it was real important for me to try to develop the kind of urban environment that would cause people to want to live in that environment. North Little Rock, we had a census one year after I arrived at City Hall in 1989, and we grew a little bit, but for the first time in the city’s history, I think it was the census of 2000, we lost population. We’d been pretty flat since the 1960s. We’d grown by 8,000 to 10,000 people up until the 1960s, but then we pretty well flattened out, and a large reason was because we didn’t have areas to grow by annexation. So I saw my responsibility was to try to create it because we were probably one of the more urban cities because of what I just mentioned.

So [I was] trying to do anything that I could, and the city of North Little Rock could do, to create the kind of an environment that would fertilize growth. And quality growth to me was what other areas were then starting to do to try to revive their urban cores. So, the heart of our urban core and the major asset that we neglected for 50 years or more, maybe 100 years or more, was the Arkansas River. Water has historically… that was our first highway. The rails obviously were second, and then the highways were basically our third — the interstate system particularly.

Hays, Dailey and Villines worked together to negotiate with Union Pacific to address liability concerns to keep the Rock Island and Junction bridges from being torn down so that they could eventually be utilized in a new way.

It was a natural for me to want to encourage the city to be a part of the effort to preserve those bridges because once they’re down, they never would come back. And the Corps of Engineers, because of hazards to navigation, mandates that after a certain period of time — with some exceptions, which I think were granted in the cases of the Junction Bridge and the Rock Island Bridge — are mandated to be taken down. So that hammer was hanging over us and the cost was also hanging over Union Pacific; so there was some opportunity to negotiate with them because of trying to utilize those bridges, and then once they’re utilized again, then they’re no longer a hazard of navigation and there’s not a mandate to tear them down. So we obviously became quick allies.

The fenced Rock Island Bridge over the Arkansas River in January 1994. At that time, Union Pacific was planning to scrap the bridge with the lift span to be used for a bridge in the state of Washington. Photo: Michael Hibblen

Preserving those bridges was a no-brainer, if you want to put it that way, and so the three of us started working together when the site was picked for the [presidential] library. Part of the appeal of that site was because there was an abandoned rail bridge that could be used to be a part of the campus. And they had hoped to raise enough money, the [Clinton] Foundation did, to open the bridge at the same time they dedicated the library, [but] they weren’t able to do that. So they took on the primary fundraising, the foundation did, to try to do the rehabbing of the bridge. I know that they had, I think, a $1 million contribution from Little Rock. I’m not sure exactly how the ownership issues were at the time, whether Little Rock owned it. I don’t think the foundation ever owned it. So when the foundation sort of took the lead in saving it, I took the city council a request for $750,000.

With plans underway to raise money and eventually renovate the Rock Island Bridge, Mayor Hays began working to prepare the North Little Rock side of the bridge for what it would become.

At the time, the city’s ownership of the land came to the seawall, and then it was in private hands for about two blocks until it got to Riverfront Drive. I didn’t want something to be built there at the end of the bridge that would block public access to our end of the bridge, so when I went to the city council and asked for $750,000, I put two conditions on our donation. One: that we would be able to use some of those funds to acquire the land that was at the north end of the bridge up to Riverfront Drive, and I think we acquired that for somewhere in the $300,000 range. The second condition that I wanted, because I had been familiar with the landings of the Big Dam Bridge, and they were pretty well straight — and because I’m a bicyclist at heart and in many respects, in reality, bicyclists and pedestrians don’t mix real well unless they each respect each other. Bicyclists sometimes would go pretty fast down the Big Dam Bridge on both sides of the river. North Little Rock, we have one [ramp], in Little Rock [there are] two, but they’re pretty well straight shots. So I wanted to try to do something that would minimize that kind of a conflict — to be able to curve [the ramp off the Rock Island Bridge] so that it would have some natural tendency to slow people down and provide a little bit more of an aesthetic kind of an ending to our side of the bridge. And so both [conditions] were agreed to.

The change of design probably was somewhere between $100,000 and $150,000 in additional cost. So, for our $750,000, we’ll say somewhere between $450,000 and $500,000 was because of those two requirements, and then the other $250,000 to $300,000 was to help fund some of the remaining obligations of rehabilitation of the bridge for pedestrian use. So we put some of our money where our mouth was to — in my mind — enhance the north side of the bridge.

There were a couple other things that I did which I thought were appropriate. Just before the bridge was dedicated, there was a little two-block stretch that runs parallel to our end of the landing on the bridge. It had a name, but it wasn’t a name that had a whole lot of history to it, maybe a tree designation. So I went to the city council and got them to agree and the landowners, made sure nobody objected to naming that Virginia Kelly Drive, which was Bill Clinton’s mother.

When we dedicated the bridge, I told him, “Mr. President, any time that you’re telling anybody directions to come to the north end of the bridge, it’ll be easy to remember.” And I had a street sign made up that had his mother’s name on it. And I said, “Just tell them to come along Riverfront Drive until they get to Virginia Kelly Drive,” and there’s your end of the bridge.

Then the last thing I did — in fact, the last day I was in office — I was working on this on December 31, 2012. There’s another street that’s three or four blocks. It was named Brother Paul Drive. Paul Holderfield was pretty much an institution, had the Friendly Chapel Soup Kitchen and Church of the Nazarene down there. So his name was on that street — it still is on part of it — but I’d gone to his son, Paul [Holderfield] Jr., and told him what I wanted to do about that two or three block stretch that runs east and west. I thought it’d be nice to name that after Hillary [Clinton’s] mother Dorothy Rodham. So the city council, everybody went along with it, and shortly after I left office — all of the nods had been put in place, so the city council renamed that street Dorothy Rodham. So now we have Virginia Kelly and Dorothy Rodham that meet together right at the north end of the Clinton Bridge, a la the Rock Island Bridge. And I went ahead and put a little bench there — or my successor Joe Smith did — but it was something I wanted to do, and I call that my Forrest Gump bench. So there’s a little bench there that is at the north end of our bridge. So that’s part of the success.

Hays expressed great satisfaction with the project to preserve the former railroad bridges.

I don’t know if when we started the efforts that we felt like we would be able to do it — the cost was pretty significant. It was a dream and a goal and a desire, but certainly some of the things that helped make that happen, probably one of the largest of which was the president selecting that site for his presidential library. Now on the Junction Bridge, we were much more of a financial player, the two cities and the county — still are, for that matter, in terms of the operation and maintenance of it. But the Rock Island Bridge, the partnerships of the Clinton Foundation and the two cities and the county, the asset is, I won’t say greater than the Junction Bridge, but because of the design [with a ramp not requiring people to take stairs or an elevator up to the lift span like on the Junction Bridge] makes it a whole lot more pedestrian friendly in many respects. So that’s a no brainer, you know, a goal, a desire, a hope that because of a variety of circumstances, the reality happened and the public is, I’m sure, very enjoyable in having those two structures available and can be used.

Hays speaks during a dedication ceremony for the bridge on Sept. 30, 2011. Photo: Michael Hibblen

AUDIO: Hays’ remarks during the dedication ceremony for the Rock Island Bridge on Sept. 30, 2011.

UPDATE: A few weeks after Hays’ death, former Pulaski County Judge Buddy Villines — who served in the position from 1991 to 2014 — died on Oct. 21, 2023, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He was 76. Some referred to Villines, Hays and Dailey as “the three amigos” for their collaborative work to improve the region while they were in office.