Arkansas & Oklahoma Railroad

The railroad was built by a promoter and a banker. John Melville Bayless of Cassville, Missouri, led the project, and William R. Felker, who owned the Bank of Rogers, was the other main stockholder. The Ozark Construction Company laid track for $8,000 a mile, with Bentonville and Rogers raising subsidies of $25,000 and $20,000. Rails reached Gravette in November 1898 and crossed the Kansas City, Pittsburg & Gulf line there, then ran on toward Southwest City, Missouri, and Grove, in Indian Territory. The Frisco bought the line for $357,000, and Bayless and Felker reportedly profited.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Walmart Museum — 14 mi
  Sam Walton's 1950 variety store on the Bentonville square, now a free museum with his 1979 pickup, a recreated office, the 1945 Newport store door and a 1950s-style soda counter.
• Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art — 14 mi
  A 2011 Moshe Safdie building on 120 acres of Ozark forest in Bentonville, with free admission, six trails, two ponds, a spring, an arboretum and a relocated Frank Lloyd Wright house.
• Pea Ridge National Military Park — 24 mi
  Where Union troops held the March 1862 Civil War battle that kept Missouri in the Union, with Elkhorn Tavern, a Cherokee Trail of Tears road and a signed tour route.

More markers nearby

• Camp Jackson — 3.2 mi
• Camp Walker — 6.6 mi
• Battle of Maysville — 8.5 mi
• Fort Wayne — 9.9 mi