Last Summer I stumbled upon an old stretch of Old Wire Road near the Arkansas-Missouri border, a seldom-traveled dirt road that I unwittingly followed straight to the foundation of everything Ozarkbahn. This drive led to an immersion into the original Ozarks byway, a fascinating convergence of history and contemporary driving culture that has held a dozen different names over hundreds of years. Thus the Old Wire Project. Everything starts here.
Pea Ridge NMP map, trail marker at Avoca, AR, and trail placard in downtown Rogers, AR.
The road has been an Ozark workhorse for centuries, carrying indigenous hunters, stagecoaches, Civil War armies, telegraph line, dwarves, and all manner of modern travel and commerce. It's no coincidence that even America's "Mother Road," Historic Route 66, echoes the Old Wire Road in places. The Wire Road has roots in Native American times, plotting a course from St. Louis down through the Boston Mountains of Arkansas and into Oklahoma near Fort Smith. The order of contemporary Northwest Arkansas - linking Avoca, Rogers, Springdale, and Fayetteville - owes itself to the people and fortunes once carried by this rough pike through the hills.
Butterfield Trail Elementary in Fayetteville, Old Wire Road Elementary in Rogers, and Butterfield historical marker in Lowell.
Modern references to the Old Wire Road are abundant in local signage and place names. For example, I attended Fayetteville's Butterfield Trail Elementary and biked to school down Stagecoach Road, both references to the road's term as the primary carriage artery in America. While historic associations dot the area, today their significance is often an afterthought and largely ignored. Take a closer look, and a compelling picture of Ozark history comes together.
History
By the time of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (you know, the early 1800s), the Osage Nation was the dominant tribe in Western Missouri, and had a well-established network of horse trails extending into the Ozarks and beyond. In the decades following the Louisiana Purchase, American settlers drove Westward into the Missouri Territory and formed the town of Springfield in the 1830s. The Trail of the Osages bore the tribe's years of navigation experience through the difficult Ozark terrain, and white migrants adopted it for their own use. The link between Springfield and the frontier outpost at Fort Smith became known as the Fayetteville Road (or Old Missouri Road, among other monikers).
Trail of Tears map and marker at Pea Ridge NMP, a dream catcher memorial at Cross Hollows along Old Wire Road near Lowell.
The Fayetteville Road was immediately put to use as a part of the Trail of Tears, a forced relocation of Eastern tribes to Oklahoma in the early 19th century. The brutal march of the Cherokee from Georgia in 1838 took many on a Northern route through St. Louis and Springfield, then South through Northwest Arkansas to Fort Smith. The Ozarks are now home to portions of the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail and auto tour routes.
Another flurry of activity along the Old Wire Road began with the establishment of the Butterfield Overland Mail Company in 1858. Before then, it was an adventure to move people and their unintelligible cursive letters between the coasts. In response, petticoat enthusiast John Butterfield secured a federal postal contract and funded an ambitious surge of road improvements and station construction.
Stagecoach imagery in Avoca, Lowell, and Springdale.
Butterfield's colossal support network of coaches, personnel, horses, and mules spanned America from St. Louis to San Francisco, and blazed straight through the Ozarks. The Boston Mountains between Fayetteville and Fort Smith were among the most challenging portions of the 2,700-mile, 24-day journey. Waterman Ormsby, inaugural passenger and proto-Ozarkbahner wrote, "I might say our road was steep, rugged, jagged, rough, and mountainous - and then wish for some more expressive words in the language."
[Charlie Alison's article on the Butterfield Overland Mail Route]
[Butterfield Overland Stagecoach Route map]
The Ozarks are home to some of the few remaining structures used by the Butterfield Route. Pea Ridge National Military Park contains the restored Elkhorn Tavern of 1833 vintage, a popular stop for coach passengers just South of the Missouri border. Given the unforgiving combination of wooden wheels and prickly trails, most people were in the mood for a drink by the time they reached Arkansas. The park also preserves nearly a mile of the serene, but coarse Old Wire Road as it stood 150 years ago.
Elkhorn tavern today mirrors a line drawing of the stagecoach era at Pea Ridge NMP; next door the Old Wire Road is also preserved in 19th-century form.
Horses and mules also needed pit stops, and a rare stage stop still stands 20 miles South of Elkhorn Tavern. Fitzgerald's Station unceremoniously borders what is now a busy stretch of contemporary Arkansas 265 in Springdale, hemmed in by a cement plant and a subdivision. The original stone horse barn remains within easy view of the road, along with a "newer" home built in the 1870s. Traffic rarely looks twice, but it's one of the most historically significant spots on the Old Wire Road.
[Arkansas Archeological Survey of Fitzgerald Station]
Many traces of history survive, but what about the "wire" in Old Wire Road? During a minor chapter of Southern history called the War of Northern Aggression, the U.S. military used text messaging to communicate with the field. To keep tabs on the Western front, their telegraph network required a cable be run from St. Louis to Fort Smith down our favorite byway. Sabotage and obsolescence eventually eliminated the telegraph line, but the name stuck. Today the road's most persistent name is still the "Old Wire Road."
A wealth to explore along the original Ozarkbahn.
The Old Wire Road represents an Ozarks narrative of the past and present that is impossible to acknowledge in one sitting. There's so much to the story that the best thing to do next is hit the road and drive.
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