Monte Ne - Railroad

Railroad

Harvey needed a way to get people to Monte Ne. In 1900, there were few adequate roads and automobiles were not yet practical. The natural solution seemed to be to build a railroad from Lowell, Arkansas to Monte Ne. The Arkansas Railroad Commission granted a charter on April 26, 1902, and the Monte Ne Railway Company was incorporated in May 1902, with a capital stock of $250,000. Besides Harvey, the company included: Carl A. Starck, P.G. Davidson, A.L. Williams, B.R. Davidson, J.H. McIlroy, J.W. Kimmons, F.F. Freeman, J.F. Felker, Robert H. Harven and Thomas W. Harvey (Coin's Brother). Another of Harvey's brothers, who was a banker at Huntington, West Virginia, furnished $25,000. Of the 250 shares in the company, 240 were registered in Harvey’s name. The five-mile (8 km) private railroad spur started at the Lowell transfer station. Fourteen thousand oak railway ties were laid running through Cross Hollows, south of Rogers, where two ravines met. It then passed through Limedale, terminating above Big Spring Lake at a Log Cabin depot with open-air waiting rooms. Harvey leased an engine, tender, and a passenger coach from the St. Louis and San Francisco Railroad. The railway opened on June 19, 1902. Harvey imported a 50 foot (15 m) gondola from Venice, Italy in July 1901 to meet guests arriving by rail and carry them to the resort.

The gondola was a very popular attraction, and Harvey often promoted Monte Ne as: "the only place in America where the gondola meets the train."

The little railroad went broke a few years later. At about this time, the Arkansas, Oklahoma & Western Railroad (AO&W) was forming. The railroad ran from Rogers to Siloam Springs, over a distance of approximately 30 miles (43 km). It was opened for traffic New Year's Day 1908, connecting with the Frisco at Rogers and the Kansas City, Pittsburgh and Gulf (P&G) at Siloam Springs. AO&W planned to build eastward to Eureka Springs. On December 1, 1909 the AO&W purchased the Monte Ne railroad. To connect the AO&W and the Monte Ne, a track would have to be laid from Hazelwood, Arkansas on the AO&W to Lowell; the Frisco line was in the way and they would not allow a connection. AO&W instead built an expensive underpass of the Frisco. The construction of the underpass enabled the Monte Ne line to turn over much of its outbound freight business to the AO&W rather than competitor Frisco. So the line enjoyed a brief but substantial volume of outgoing freight traffic from the Rogers White Lime Company located at Limedale. The underpass still exists and is still crossed by trains of Frisco Central Division successor Arkansas and Missouri Railroad.

The AO&W went bankrupt a few years later and was bought by another startup railroad, the Kansas City & Memphis Railroad (KC&M) in early 1911. It would build from Cave Springs, Arkansas a few miles west of Rogers, through Fayetteville, Arkansas and towards Memphis, Tennessee. In 1912 the Ozark Land and Lumber Company began construction of a 5 mile extension east of Monte Ne from the White River to the Piney community and leased the line to the KC&M. The White River bridge consisted of 780 feet of trestle and 2, 152 foot steel spans making it the longest railroad bridge in Benton County. This extension was used to haul out forestry products. The KC&M entered receivership in 1914, and in September of that year passenger service to Monte Ne ended. When World War I began, many railroads were seized by the United States government. The KC&M was not seized, and due to unfavorable rulings by the United States Railroad Administration and Arkansas Railroad Commission saw much of its revenue evaporate. In January 1918 Roscoe Hobbs, one of the court-appointed receivers of the KC&M, went to Washington DC to provide testimony to the Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce on the effects of these decisions on small railroads. As part of that testimony Hobbs reported 215 cars from the Rogers White Lime Company and 216 cars of pit props and railroad ties being hauled on the Monte Ne portion of the railway in 1917. Hobbs was unsuccessful in having the decisions reversed and most portions of the KC&M were abandoned by October 1918. The Monte Ne portion was used until 1919. The White River bridge survived longer and was used for horse and foot traffic before becoming unsafe. The steel spans were scrapped during World War II.