Moving on to Rogers, Arkansas

Fayetteville is definitely a city guaranteed to make your eyes sore -- so much to see, but leaving the cemeteries, I decided to go on to Rogers for the night. That would give me most of a full-day to visit the battlefield at Pea Ridge. 

I found a really nice motel, easy in and easy out - my kind of place, pull right up to the door.  After I unloaded and started making plans for sight-seeing the next day, I knew this would be my spot for a 2-night stop so I could 'recover' from the previous days and not have to hurry through the sights in Rogers, Bentonville and Springdale. 

ROGERS ARKANSAS

The city has been taking great steps into renovating and restoring the downtown area.  I love the brick streets!

Rogers was founded as a stop on the St. Louis–San Francisco Railway (Frisco) and developed as a shipping point for apples and a trade center for the surrounding rural area.

Settlers began to arrive in the vicinity around 1830. Most came from the Upper South states, especially Tennessee. The foundation of the local economy in the mid-1800s was subsistence farming, with tobacco as the main cash crop. The many streams in the region provided power for grist and lumber mills, and the availability of timber allowed early industrialist Peter Van Winkle to establish a lumber empire near the hamlet of War Eagle, east of what is today Rogers.

The route used by the Overland Mail Company organized in 1857 by John Butterfield to carry mail from Tipton, Missouri, to California, ran through the area.  Callahan’s Tavern, a stagecoach inn near a large spring in what is now Rogers, was a stop on the Butterfield route. The Butterfield Overland Mail route was discontinued after the outbreak of the Civil War.

The Civil War put local residents in the crossfire between Union and Confederate armies. There were major military camps within a few miles of Rogers, and in March 1862, the Battle of Pea Ridge took place nearby. The area was devastated as many barns, mills, and homes were destroyed.

Residents were determined to rebuild and in the 1880s, the rail road arrived. The Frisco followed a route through eastern Benton County, bypassing the county seat of Bentonville.  Rogers celebrates May 10, 1881, as its birthday, the day the first train pulled into town, named for Captain Charles Warrington Rogers, general manager of the Frisco. The town owed its growth to the fact that it was both a local trade center and a major shipping point for apples and apple products.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, orchards surrounded Rogers. Along the railroad tracks were produce houses, apple evaporators where apples were sliced and dried, and an enormous apple cider vinegar plant. By the early 1900s, Rogers boasted a brick commercial district, concrete sidewalks, an electric light plant, public schools and a private academy, and an opera house.

By the 1930s, the apple industry was in decline; disease and insects had begun to plague the orchards. Soon poultry replaced apples as the main agricultural product.

All but one of the community’s banks failed during the depression. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) offered employment and completed a number of local projects, including the building of Lake Atalanta in 1936. Today, Lake Atalanta is a reservoir along Prairie Creek used primarily for recreation.

After World War II, industries expanded.  Companies from other areas relocated and opened plants. Among the first was Daisy Manufacturing, maker of air guns.  It moved its entire operation to Rogers from Plymouth, Michigan, in 1958. During the next 40 years, the poultry industry expanded, and new industrial plants opened. The construction of Beaver Dam in 1960, created Beaver Lake, a recreational area and a supply of water for the area.

During its early years, the economy of Rogers was dependent upon agriculture. Poultry growing and processing became important in the 1930s and remain so today. In 1962, Sam Walton opened his very first WalMart store in Rogers.