Take a walk into the Murder and Mayhem of early Texarkana,
TEXARKANA, Ark. — The Texarkana Museums System invites you to take a walk on the wild side of Texarkana, so wild that murder is involved.
The TMS hosts its Murder and Mayhem Walking Tour starting at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, July 25. Tour participants will meet at the P.J. Ahern Home, and from there they can spy how a Wild West mentality dominated Texarkana history during its early years.
TMS Curator Jamie Simmons said a grant from the Arkansas Department of Heritage helped fund what’s not a typical walking tour of downtown.
“We will see some great historic landmarks, but we’re really going to go back to the first 20 years of Texarkana’s history — 1870s, 1880s, and really into the 1890s a little bit — really talk about how Texarkana was more of a Wild West town when it was founded rather than traditional Southern town,” Simmons said.
Texarkana grew up rapidly and with many people coming to one spot at one time, the legal system was slow to catch up, she explained.
“The Arkansas side actually was not even a formally incorporated town until the 1880s, so they were relying on county officials to keep law and order,” Simmons said. “There’s a little bit of a lawless element to that.”
As the tour proceeds, they will discuss points of interest and stories associated with them.
“As we go through on the tour we’ll be able to see some of those little incidents,” Simmons said. “Murder and mayhem” refers to episodes where prominent residents were killed, plus comedic aspects of law enforcement.
“We’ll actually have costumed interpreters to act out
some of these incidents,” Simmons said, noting some of these events read like a movie, “an old Wild Weststyle movie.”
The tour will visit these various downtown destinations and include a snack break at The Flying Crow.
“We are going to be going through the oldest part of the city, so we’ll be going down the part of Broad Street on the east side that still has buildings that date back as early as the 1880s,” Simmons said. “Costumed interpreters are going to be stationed at the spot where their incident took place.”
One murder, for example, happened on Olive Street. In between these locations, they’ll discuss sites such as the Texarkana, Arkansas, City Hall, connecting them to the “lawless era of our town’s history,” the curator said.
The state line, she noted, added to the chaos because of crime that may have crossed the Texas-Arkansas border.
This tour is geared towards adults and should last about an hour-and-a-half. Because it is outside, the number restriction will be higher, she said. “We are asking people to wear a mask if they come,” Simmons said. The TMS can provide this recommended mask if needed. They’ll provide bottled water. Interpreters won’t be masked but will practice social distancing. This is the first time for a “Murder and Mayhem” tour with costumed interpreters for the TMS. They hope to continue offer these types of tours. The next similar event will happen in October with a cemetery tour.
(Tour admission is $10 per person or $5 for Texarkana Museums System members. Recommended pre-registration at TexarkanaMuseums.org/events or via the P.J Ahern Home Facebook page. The P.J. Ahern Home is located at 403 Laurel St. More info: 903-793-4831.)