Railroad construction unearths historic LR spring, resident says
A construction project in southwest Little Rock recently struck water, and at least one person believes the signs point to the underground water source.
Mike Hood, a civil engineering manager for the city’s Public Works Department, said crews recently encountered water while working on a railroad overpass near the intersection of Geyer Springs Road and West 65th Street.
The railroad overpass is part of a federally funded regional safety improvement program for railroads. Construction started during a rainy season, and a hole that crews dug filled back up to the point that water had to be pumped out of it. Additional rocks had to be purchased, but Hood said it was a minimal addition to the project’s roughly $10 million cost.
Hood said the water could have come from one of a number of underground springs believed to be in the area, but a resident who lives in Geyer Springs believes he knows exactly which spring is responsible.
Alistar Langford says the water comes from the spring that served as a water source for the Geyer family, Austrian immigrants who settled in the area in the 1860s and for whom the Geyer Springs area was named.
Langford, a member of Geyer Springs Methodist Church, bases his opinion on consultations with other church members who are familiar with the area’s history.
He said the site was a communal meeting point for pioneers and travelers, and he believes it’s important that people remember the area’s history.
“We must not forget the depths of reassurance and gratitude drawn out of hard worn differences and the location of this water for their horses, livestock and wooden barrels were just one other place in the South that healing miracles occurred,” Langford wrote in a letter to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Earl Edward Rowan, the last of the Geyer descendants, lived on the road and
died in 2004, according to an obituary that ran in Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. The newspaper reported that the family’s spring was capped off by railroad tracks in 1930.
A few blocks north of the current construction site, a plaque dedicated in 1976 declares the grounds of Greater Second Baptist Church at 5615 Geyer Springs Road as the site of “the original Geyer Spring.”
Like Hood, longtime southwest Little Rock resident and At-large City Director Joan Adcock said she believes there are multiple underground springs throughout the area.
The city director recalled that a man who lived about a block from Geyer Springs Road said he never had to water his garden because of a hidden spring. She also mentioned another spring near an apartment complex at 7600 North Chicot Road, where she said water rises in the fall and spring.
Adcock said she joined Greater Second Baptist Church in 1958 and remembers a spring on the grounds, which was capped when the church built a new building.