A piece of history
Miller County business site nears bicentennial
FOUKE, Ark.—The South Miller County Committee for Historic Preservation is interested in preserving a business site near the Sulphur and Red rivers that will be 200 years old next year.
Frank McFerrin, curator of the Fouke-based Miller County Historical and Family Museum, recently delivered a presentation at Fouke’s Stanley Davis Community Center to a group of at least 60 area residents about the former Sulphur Fork Factory and Indian Trading Post on the Sulphur River’s west bank.
The presentation signaled the launch for plans the committee has to commemorate the bicentennial of the factory’s founding, which is slated to take place during a three-day ceremony April 6-8, 2018, in Doddridge, Ark. The committee itself recently formed in an effort to recognize southern Miller County’s business history.
McFerrin said during a slide presentation that the factory took its name from the Sulphur River. The presentation featured a 1988 artist’s rendition of what the original factory may have looked like.
He added that the factory exists thanks to the historical contributions of four separate national and international players—the Spanish, the French, the Caddo Indians and the American pioneers.
The factory has its roots in the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, when the U.S. bought 15 million acres of land from France for 3 cents an acre. While the French were selling land and the Spanish were spreading Roman Catholicism in the area, American pioneers were attempting to settle in the newly purchased area while the Caddo Indians were becoming expert buffalo and bear hunters with bows and arrows.
This expertise led the Caddos to start trading buffalo and bear skins and other goods with the early European settlers. Eventually, Louisiana’s Natchitoches factory moved to the Sulphur Fork area. There, it took on the name Sulphur Fork Factory.
“It took 25 days to get this factory moved and set up on the bluff where it used to stand,” McFerrin said. “The place had a main building, along with a lumber house.”
McFerrin also said that the term factory became more or less synonymous with the phrase trading post, since the word factory had an earlier meaning of trade.
In 1820, two years after the factory-trading post opened, McFerrin said Arkansas established Miller County.
But illnesses and diseases brought by white settlers eventually took a toll on the Caddo population.
The place where the factory used to be is now privately owned and often leased to hunters. McFerrin said he would eventually like to see a walking trail established near the site.
Miller County Historical and Family Museum curator Frank McFerrin said the factory exists thanks to the historical contributions of four separate national and international players—the Spanish, the French, the Caddo Indians and the American pioneers.