Roy L Wilson

Sheridan and Grant County Roy L Wilson

Land fever delivered people to the Sheridan area as the first settlers' idea of progress meant acquiring and improving land. In the 1820s, Pulaski and Clark Counties governed the area, followed by Saline, Hot Spring, and Jefferson Counties, until 1869 when Sheridan and Grant County were Reconstruction-mandated and named to honor Union generals. In the 1830s, the Little Rock to Monticello stagecoach road extended through the Orion community southward near Darysaw Creek. The Little Rock to Camden stagecoach road, propelled into history by the Battle of Jenkins' Ferry during the Civil War, ran through the Belfast community down the ridge between Lost Creek and Polk Creek southward across the Saline River. The Civil War and its traumatic aftermath delayed progress for almost a century. The Great Depression and World War II were bitter setbacks. During those years, farmland started four blocks north of the courthouse. For most people, logging and growing cotton provided income until non-sawmill industries arrived in the late 1950s. Readers of Sheridan and Grant County will contemplate lives filled with suffering, as well as joy, evoked by this collection of amazing images of the area's history.