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Little Rock, Mississippi River and Texas Railway

American railway company

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionFeb 8, 2025
Entity authorityQ114054933 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Little Rock, Mississippi River and Texas Railway (L. R., M. R. & T.), commonly known as the Arkansas Valley Route, was an American railway company that operated in southeastern Arkansas from 1875 to 1887. The railway's mainline was 113 miles (182 km) long and ran between Little Rock (near the center of the state) and Arkansas City (near the Mississippi River), passing through Pine Bluff. It had about 172 miles (277 km) of track, including sidings, rail yards and branch lines, including the Ouachita Division to Collins (with stage for points in southeastern Arkansas and northern Louisiana) and Monticello.

History

The mainline to Pine Bluff was completed by the Little Rock, Pine Bluff and New Orleans Railroad in 1873, and then to Little Rock by the Little Rock, Mississippi River and Texas Railway on February 25, 1881. Sold under foreclosure to the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railway on January 28, 1887, it was subsequently merged into the Missouri Pacific Railroad. Today, most of the line is owned and operated by Union Pacific.

See also

List of Arkansas railroads

References

Further reading

Woodruff, William E. Jr. (1879). The Arkansas Year Book for 1879.

Editorial summary

“Little Rock, Mississippi River and Texas Railway” enters the record as american railway company. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Little, Rock and Mississippi can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA useful synthesis for locating the documentary relationships between formal authority, participants and affected communities. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1875, 1887, 1873, 1881—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1875-12-10. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Little, Rock and Mississippi.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Little Rock, Mississippi River and Texas Railway” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Little, Rock and Mississippi provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 8, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q114054933. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1875, 1887, 1873 and 1881.

Critical limits

Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Little Rock, Mississippi River and Texas Railway”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Little Rock, Mississippi River and Texas Railway primary sources, Little Rock, Mississippi River and Texas Railway archive and Little research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Little Rock, Mississippi River and Texas Railway”?
  2. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
  3. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Little Rock, Mississippi River and Texas Railway” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.