(March 27, 2018) – A group working to preserve the former Rock Island Railroad depot at Perry, Arkansas is hopefully close to clearing one major hurdle, but as I write this, another more formidable challenge is now confronting its members. The depot was built at least a century ago and for much of that time was part of a major national rail network. It’s believed to be the Rock Island’s last intact wooden depot in the state, the last one remaining west of Little Rock, and is just an incredible relic of a different era.
The shortline that now owns the property and operates a small locomotive servicing shop behind the building has been saying since last summer that it wants the depot to be moved. If it’s not, the depot will be torn down so that a new machinery shop can be built in its place. The Little Rock & Western Railway – which is owned by the Genesee & Wyoming – had initially given preservationists until the end of 2017 to move the building. That deadline clearly wasn’t met. However, good faith progress appears to be in the works and hopefully things will come together soon so that this building can become a museum to tell the history of the community.
The Perry depot in May 1967, six months before passenger service ended for the Rock Island. Photo: Bill Pollard.
51 years later, here’s the Perry depot on March 13, 2018, still featuring “The Rock” logo of the Rock Island’s last five years, as well as the vintage semaphore train order signals. Photo: Michael Hibblen.
Last September I wrote what I could find about the history of the depot, along with details of the early stages of planning to move it by the Perry Country Historical and Genealogical Society, which you can read here. Also included are photos I took of the interior of the depot, thanks to the Little Rock & Western arranging a time for me to go through it. The building features separate waiting rooms for whites and blacks, abiding by Jim Crow laws of the day, a station agent’s office, and a freight area, where many of those who worked in the depot inscribed their names in the ceiling and walls.
The building is in relatively good condition for its age, thanks to it never being completely abandoned, but is deteriorating quickly, which is especially evident in the roof. Below is an update on where things stand at this point, and I’ve been able to include a couple of vintage, newly scanned photos taken by Clifton Hull and railroad historian Bill Pollard.
The initial challenge last year was finding a place to move the depot. Keeping it near the railroad tracks would help it maintain its identity and make it more likely to achieve a designation like being named to the National Register of Historic Places. One possible location suggested was on the opposite side of the tracks, about a half-block east at the corner of Arkansas highways 9 and 10. That spot is also owned by the Little Rock & Western, but because the empty lot is only used to park company vehicles, the historical group was hoping the railroad would be willing donate that piece of the property.
Little Rock & Western General Manager Ryan Richardson said he forwarded the request to the railroad’s corporate parent company, but told me last month they eventually decided against it out of concern that vehicles crossing the railroad tracks on Highway 9 wouldn’t be able to see an approaching train.
“With federal regulations and sight distances, certain regulatory agencies prohibit anything that blocks the view,” Richardson said. “When people come to railroad tracks, they’ve got to be able to see the train coming.”
The Perry depot in May 1965. Note the Western Union sign on the nearest corner of building and the Railway Express Agency sign near the other end. Photo by Clifton Hull, courtesy of Bill Pollard.
With that ruled out, Jimmy Middleton, who was key in helping to preserve a high school gymnasium in the community, approached the mayor of Perry, who said the town would likely allow a piece of land nearby to be used for the project. It’s a few hundred feet from where the depot is now and had originally been the site of Perry’s water and waste treatment plant. Today the area is only used to burn limbs and other debris. Mayor Britt Ryles also is said to have offered to help arrange for the ground to be made level, according to Buford Suffridge with the Perry Country Historical and Genealogical Society.
The Perry Town Council will need to give final approval for the proposal. The newspaper Petit Jean Country Headlight reports members discussed the proposal March 15, but there were too many unanswered questions at that point to make a decision. Who would own the depot: the town, a museum board or the historical society? Who would be responsible for insurance coverage? Would the property be donated for the project or leased? The mayor ended up tabling the measure until additional details could be worked out.
With the new location looking promising, Suffridge says he approached a house moving company for an estimate in moving the depot. He’d been told a house in the area had been moved for $5,000, and that if it wasn’t far, the cost could be as low of $2,500. But he says a company in Conway told him the cost would likely range from $18,000 to $24,000.
Lynda Suffridge speaking to members of the Perry County Historical and Genealogical Society at the monthly meeting March 13, 2018.
“The estimate is a little bit more than we can handle right now,” Suffridge said. “We’re working on that, perhaps trying to raise some money to pay for that, but also looking around to see if we can find a company that will move it for a more reasonable price.”
His group has pledged $3,500 for the project and other people have said they would be willing to make donations. I suggested launching an online GoFundMe campaign or something similar, but for now Suffridge is checking with other possible movers or seeing if there’s room to negotiate.
Something will likely need to happen soon if the depot is to be preserved. As I mentioned, the Little Rock & Western originally wanted it to be removed from the property by the end of 2017. With word that a location may have been found, Richardson said they are going to move a storage container to the depot soon and begin cleaning it out. Its rooms are filled with boxes of files, tools and other objects that have been put there in recent years.
The dispatcher’s telephone mounted on a telescoping arm with a microphone and headset. This photo was taken February 14, 2012, but five years later there was no sign of it inside.
Also included with the property are important relics of its earlier life with the Rock Island that should also be moved. They include the semaphore signals beside the tracks with their controls inside the projected telegrapher’s booth, vintage circuit boxes that were used for communication, including Western Union telegraph messages, and hopefully somewhere inside the depot is the dispatcher’s microphone and headset, which I photographed while looking into a window of the depot in 2012, but which I couldn’t find while going through it last April.
On March 13 I spoke at the monthly meeting of the Perry Country Historical and Genealogical Society sharing what knowledge I have about the history of the railroad and what I’ve heard about other projects. I’ve seen plenty of other former Rock Island depots that were once in much worse conditions be brought back to life, including those in Brinkley and North Little Rock. I hope the backers of this project can make this happen.
After that meeting, I recorded an interview with its head, Buford Suffridge, which I’ll include in my forthcoming podcast series about the Rock Island in Arkansas. He spoke about why this is so important for him:
There’s a lot of history. Of course Perry was created because of the railroad. Perryville was the county seat, but the railroad chose not to come through this area, so any freight, grocery stores here in Perryville, all their freight came by way of the railroad, was hauled over Perry Mountain to the stores and there’s just a lot of history there. The men that were going off to World War II, many of them came through that depot at Perry because this is how they transported them to their training camps and many of them arrived back home after World War II through the Perry depot. So it’s just a historic site that we would like to preserve. A lot of us, I grew up in this county and I can remember going there to pick up my aunt and uncle who would come up to visit us. They would ride the railroad up from Little Rock, so about anyone my age, and I’m 77, anyone my age has some history with that depot. We’ve all been there and we all remember it.
Preserving the Perry depot isn’t just about railroad history, but the broader history of the area, as historian Bill Pollard noted in an email.
This building is so much more than just a weathered old depot. Consider what a critical role this building played in years past… medicine, merchandise, and a variety of items not available locally were ordered by catalog and shipped in by Railway Express, yesteryear’s version of United Parcel Service. The Western Union wire brought all kinds of news, good and bad, from baseball scores to declarations of war. Western Union telegrams also brought news of a more personal nature, sometimes good news such as the birth of a child, but often bad news, such as a War Department notice that a soldier had been lost in combat. How many tearful farewells took place in that depot, and how many joyful reunions? Even the post office relied heavily on the railroad, and every passenger train, whether or not they stopped at Perry, would exchange mail. For the trains that didn’t stop, a pouch of outbound mail was hung on a mail crane near the depot. A postal clerk in the railway post office car would snag the pouch as the train passed by at speed, while another clerk tossed out a pouch of mail destined for the Perry post office. People mailed letters and knew when to check their post office boxes based on train schedules. All mail sorted aboard the RPO received a distinctive postmark, and overnight letter delivery from Perry was the norm for a several state area. Watching all this activity was an enjoyable pastime, as well as giving people a reliable connection to the rest of the world. The Perry depot was a social and communication center of the town for many years. Hopefully Perry can join a small but elite group of cities that have successfully preserved their train stations, providing a tangible connection from the past to the present and the future.
The distinctive Railway Post Office stamp
for a letter carried on the last day of mail service on Rock Island train 22. Courtesy of Bill Pollard.
The cancelling of the mail contract was what brought an end to passenger service on the line. By 1967, more Americans were traveling by car on recently-constructed interstates or flying by plane. Handling the mail kept passenger trains profitable. But with the loss of the contract, the Rock Island petitioned the Interstate Commerce Commission to end passenger service. The last day of mail service in that area was September 29, 1967. The eastern half of the RPO ran from Memphis to McAlester, Oklahoma, while the western half ran from McAlester to Amarillo, Texas. The final regular passenger trains ran about a month and a half later on November 10, 1967.
Finally, in worse case scenarios, here are a couple of thoughts on the Perry depot. First from Dr. Pollard:
It occurs to me that rather than losing the entire depot, what would it cost to move half of it? The baggage end could be substantially reduced in length without impacting the appearance or the general historical integrity. There is some precedent for that, when Hazen restored their station but could not afford to restore the express end where the roof was falling in. That part is now an open patio area, so the “footprint” of the original structure was preserved. The western 1/3 could easily be sacrificed, just need enough space to install a baggage door on the “track side” – bay window side of the building.
After speaking to the historical society on the evening of March 13, 2018, I stopped by the depot that evening to a photo of it at night.
As written in my previous post on this, if the depot does end up being torn down, I hope the Little Rock & Western will allow the artifacts mentioned above to be preserved and donated to the Arkansas Railroad Museum in Pine Bluff. When the Rock Island’s depot at the town of Ola was torn down more than a decade ago, the unique triangle-shaped block signal there was donated and has been restored by the museum.
I welcome any comments, corrections or additional information at feedback@hibblenradio.com. If you’d like to contact Mr. Suffridge, he said I can share his home phone number which is 501-771-1012.
The Perry depot isn’t just about railroad history, but represents a totally different era of life in the U.S., when railroads were the connection to the outside world. Please help us preserve it!
UPDATES ON THE PERRY DEPOT:
Since this was written we were able to raise money to move the depot to an adjacent lot, place it on a new foundation, replace the roof and get it listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The depot is largely protected from further deterioration at this point, but there’s still much work to do. You can read subsequent updates on the link below.
Preserving the Former Rock Island Passenger Depot at Perry, Arkansas
I welcome any additional information, photos, stories, comments or corrections. Write to: michael@hibblenradio.com.
