Little Rock Apartment Reviews

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Little Rock Information

Ah, well. History ain't what it used to be.

The rock, known by frontiersmen in frontier times as la petit roche and by the natives as "The Point of Rock," can be reached from Riverfront Park, downtown. A marker gives the history of the site, which I pretty much reiterate here.

The rock was a landmark used by bargemen, traders and trappers and was called the "little rock" to distinguish it from the "big rock" bluffs just upstream, pictured here. These 150-foot bluffs overlook the river on the north bank about a dozen miles upstream from the little rock in the top picture.

The history of Arkansas often seems like a catalog of real estate scandals, and the story of the origins of Little Rock belongs on the cover of that catalog. The first white settler at the little rock was a trader/trapper named William Lewis who started camping at the point of rocks in 1819 and laid legal claim to a big swath of it the next year based on rules governing claiming land within the Louisianna Purchase. A St. Louis land speculator named William Russell got some partners together and they bought Lewis out.

However, about seven years earlier and two hundred miles to the northeast in New Madrid, MO, there had been a devastating series of earthquakes (estimated strength 8.7) which changed the course of the Mississippi River; and land belonging to lots of settlers was completely ruined if it wasn't swallowed up altogether. As earthquake relief, the U.S. government issued to the earthquake victims certificates good for free land in the Missourri Territory's "public domain," and that included Arkansas. These certificates were bought up by another land speculator, also from St. Louis and also named William. Last name O'Hara.