The Benton Courier

W. A. Webber started the Saline County Digest in 1876 as the county Democrats' voice. It became the Review in 1882 and the Saline Courier in 1883 under Colonel Samuel Houston Whitthorne, and a fire gutted the office that December. L. B. White bought it on November 12, 1906, renamed it the Benton Courier, and owned it for decades. A second fire after World War II, set by a ten-year-old, sent the printing to Malvern and then Little Rock. Samuel Hodges made it a daily in 1970, and in August 2010 it took back the name Saline Courier.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Pinnacle Mountain State Park — 20 mi
  A day-use state park west of Little Rock around a 1,011-foot Ouachita peak, with a strenuous summit trail, the Arkansas Arboretum and a visitor center above the Arkansas River.
• Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site — 20 mi
  The 1927 high school where nine Black students entered under federal troops on September 25, 1957, with a National Park Service visitor center across the intersection.
• Big Dam Bridge — 20 mi
  A 14-foot-wide walking and cycling bridge built onto Murray Lock and Dam, 90 feet over the Arkansas River between Little Rock and North Little Rock.
• Arkansas State Capitol — 21 mi
  The neo-classical Capitol built from 1899 to 1915 on the old penitentiary site with state convict labor, free to enter, with the Little Rock Nine monument on the grounds.

More markers nearby

• Saline County in the Civil War — steps away
• Saline County Records — steps away
• Old Southwest Trail — 0.2 mi
• The Gann Building — 0.3 mi