Early county post offices establish names, service

Reprinted from Weekly Vista, June 7, 1977 Early county post offices establish names, service BY GEORGE H. PHILLIPS

Considerable mystery surrounds the site of the first post office in the northern part of Benton County. According to the Records of the Appointment of Post Masters, on file in the National Archives in Washington, D.C., the first post office was Sugar Creek. It was actually the third post office established in Benton County, the first two being Hubbard on Dec. 31, 1836, in the general vicinity of present-day Lowell, and Osage, established on the same date, in the general vicinity of present-day Bentonville.

The Post Office Department has a record of “Location Reports,” but these do not begin until after the Civil War. Thus, there is no report on the site for any of these first three post offices. However, the Post Office Department published postal route maps which showed the location of the post offices and the distances between them. One such map, published in 1837, shows a mail route from Fayetteville to Hubbard to Osage and thence to Sugar Creek. The map shows all three post offices being in the tier of townships (Congressional townships) known as Range 30 W. It would appear from the map that the first Sugar Creek was located somewhere in the area of present-day Bella Vista, perhaps not far from the Village Service Center or the Cunningham Farm.

The first postmaster at Sugar Creek was Samuel Burk, an early-day landowner and settler. The first Sugar Creek was discontinued Dec. 17, 1838, hence lasted about two years. But a biography of Samuel Burk Jr., published in an early atlas says he was born in 1837 in the area of Elk Horn.

The postal route maps were generally accepted as being quite accurate, and the distances indicated on the maps were the basis of pay for the contractors who carried the mail in those days.

The Sugar Creek post office was re-established on April 3, 1840, and again there are no official location reports, but maps of the period show it to be in the general area of present-day Pea Ridge. It lasted only about a year, being discontinued April 17, 1841, and was not again re-established until February 1869, and eventually finally discontinued in February 1881. In the final instance, the post office was located some 8 or 10 miles east of Pea Ridge.

A search of the records of deeds in the courthouse fails to show that Samuel Burk owned any land in the area indicated by the 1837 map, but this in itself proves nothing because Burk could well have either squatted on the land or have started to homestead there. The records show him as eventually owning large amounts of land in the Bentonville area and also some in the southeast part of the county. My own belief is that the 1837 map is correct, and that the first post office in the northern part of the county was Sugar Creek, and that it was located in the area presently included in Bella Vista.

Pea Ridge, which of course is not far from the eastern limits of Bella Vista, was established in August 1850. Just north and a bit east of the present Hiwasse, the Post Office Department established a post office called Dickson in August 1871. It was changed to Hiwasse in 1897. An attempt to locate the building in which the Dickson post office was located has thus far proved futile. It probably was not far from the western border of present-day Bella Vista, or at least of Cooper Communities’ land holdings to the west.

In the years preceding the Civil War, there was a post office named Smith’s Mills which was located on the Missouri side of the line, but just about on the border and, judging from maps, about where the Little Sugar Inn is now located. Also, a bit later, there was a post office called Caverna a short distance from there.

Rago was the name of the post office which was located, from 1897 to 1906, in the building … southeast of Metfield Center. The building was damaged by vandals a couple of years ago and then apparently burned by arsonists in 1976. The one and only postmaster was Wilson Brown, and the place was called the “Wilson Brown House” by older residents. Brown’s daughter, Mrs. Howard Stroud, presently lives in Pea Ridge. The post office was discontinued when the Post Office Department decided to run a rural route through the area in 1906.

Bella Vista was never an official independent post office. It was established as a “Rural Station” under the jurisdiction of the Bentonville postmaster in 1921, and operated in the old Bella Vista Lodge as a summer post office. It was manned entirely by clerks from Bentonville. It was discontinued in the 1930s and was not in operation again until 1965 when Cooper Communities Inc., undertook to run it as a “contract” postal station under the jurisdiction of Bentonville. It had a postmark then, as before. It was discontinued in December 1972, but Cooper Communities still operate postage meters with Bella Vista in the dater circle. One such is used in the company headquarters, which is in Bentonville across the square from the Bentonville Post Office. It is, of course, authorized by the Postal Service.

North and a bit west of the Pea Ridge Military Park, less than a quarter of a mile south of the Missouri line (Section 14, Township 21, Range 29), a post office named Jewell was established in 1875, but it lasted only a year. The one and only postmaster was a man named John Price. About a year later, a post office was again operated on the same quarter section of land, this time by H.K. Legg, followed by John Legg. They called it Line Store, and apparently it was a country store which came by its name because it was located almost on the state line. It was also on or near the spot where the “Old Wire Road” crossed the state line. It ceased operation in 1878, but on almost precisely the same site Levi Pippin was granted a post office that the government permitted him to call Pippin. It was established in 1898 and lasted until 1906 — about the same period as Rago. And it may have been the establishment of a rural route which also brought about the discontinuance of Pippin.

The official location reports show the sites of Jewel, Line Store and Pippin to have been on the same quarter section of land. The most unusual thing about them, perhaps, is that ordinary procedure would have been to re-establish the post office under its first name on each occasion. This could have been forestalled, however, had some other post office in Arkansas taken the name, Jewell, during the period of discontinuance. To my knowledge, there is no marker on the site.

It must be remembered that in the case of these small post offices in the early days, the government provided no building or paid any rent. In fact, the postmasters received no pay, their only remuneration being the money that they received from the sale of stamps and postal stationery. In a few instances, the postmasters were merely performing a fine service for their neighbors. In other cases, the postmasters had some general stores, mills, or shops of some kind which profited somewhere from the traffic which the post office produced.

The so-called “Old Wire Road,” also known as the “State Road” was the first road through this part of Arkansas and, in general, ran along the route of present-day Highway 62. The famous Butterfield Overland Mail Stage, which was started in 1858 to carry mail from St. Louis to San Francisco, ran over the State Road. Although it is said to have stopped at Elk Horn Tavern, the first station in Arkansas was Callahan’s Tavern, which is now within the present boundaries of Rogers.

George Phillips is a Village resident with a long career in journalism and an interest in post office history. He was chairman of the Journalism School at the University of South Dakota and has published two books dealing with post office history in that area.

Editor’s note: George Phillips died in 1990, at the age of 82.