TidBit in time

Jones Mill in northern Hot Spring County was practically untouched land before an electric company constructed a dam on the Ouachita River in the 1920s and an aluminum company built a metal reduction plant in the 1940s.

“This place was a real wilderness,” Wayne McQueen, a native of northern HSC said. His maternal grandfather, Ebner Coston, came up to the area from Louisiana on a flatboat through the Arkansas and Ouachita Rivers.

“It was just a country community,” he said. “The area was nothing but timberlands and corn fields along with a few scattered residences 100 years ago.”

A utility company completed Remmel Dam on the Ouachita River to generate electricity. The dam, which created Lake Catherine, an 11-mile-long body of water that covers 1940 acres, was Arkansas’ first major hydroelectric facility.

Remmel Dam back in the 1920s was a great thing,” McQueen said, although he didn’t come along for several years after its 1924 completion. His father, though, worked on the dam.

Harvey Couch, the founder of Arkansas Power and Light Company, wanted to build hydroelectric dams on the Ouachita River.

“He was familiar with a lot of people, governors and others,” McQueen said. “He went through Congress and got a law.”

Remmel Dam, named for Army Col. H. L. Remmel, produced Lake Catherine, named for Couch’s daughter.

“He was quite a person. I never met him, but I met his daughter Catherine,” McQueen said. Couch went onto head up the construction of another dam further up the Ouachita.

McQueen said he spent a good part of his youth hunting and fishing around the dam, less than a mile from Jones Mill. He pulled bass, perch, catfish and other fish out of the river. The river and lake are still widely used for fishing.

More progress was made in the area when President Franklin D. Roosevelt visited in 1936 for the state’s centennial celebration. Arkansas 270 from Malvern to Hot Springs was paved to ease the president’s transportation.

“The only road that came in here was an old muddy road from 270,” McQueen said. “That wouldn’t do for the President of the United States. They built Highway 270 from Hot Springs to Malvern . . . They had every piece of equipment the state had out there,” he said with a laugh.

The community was named Jones Mill around the time the aluminum company set up camp in the 1940s. There was a small sawmill called Jones Mill in the area, so that became the name of the town.

“Around the time of World War II, ALCOA bought 60 acres and constructed an aluminum reduction plant. Housing was erected for the employees,” McQueen explained.

The metal work created quite a need for power in Jones Mill.

“They used a tremendous amount of power to remove the aluminum from the ore,” McQueen noted. “They built a steam electric generating plant up on the lake to supply power for the aluminum reduction plant.” McQueen worked at that plant for 30 years, serving as plant manager for a time.

This Tidbit in Time shared by the Hot Spring County Historical Society

The Heritage, Vol. 37, p.77-78