Marion Co TOC

(Note: Cotter is in Baxter County)

By Julie Stewart
Special to the Echo

The crusade to preserve a portion of this once-bustling boomtown will move door-to-door soon, as researchers retrace the history of more than two dozen downtown buildings.

The buildings - including two former churches, a hotel, and a Masonic lodge - were constructed during Cotter's railroad heyday in the first half of the 20th century. Local leaders hope to get the buildings listed as a National Register Historic District.

The Arkansas Historic Preservation Program recently agreed to preliminary boundaries for a historic commercial district, said Gil Stammer, president of the Cotter Area Chamber of Commerce. The district would encompass a narrow strip of adjoining properties and 29 buildings.

Researchers will begin canvassing the properties this fall, documenting their past to prepare the district's nomination to the Nation Register of Historic Places, said Sonny Sharp, a Cotter businessman and chairman of the nearly year-old chamber effort.

"It's a pretty detailed process," Sharp said. "It will involve a detailed history on essentially every one of the 29 buildings in the proposed area."

The chamber is looking for volunteers to conduct the surveys. The volunteers would be trained by the staffers from the Historic Preservation Program.

The proposed district would start at the old Methodist Church at 233 Combs St. and run west along the northside of the Combs to Second Street. The boundary would turn south on both sides of the Second St. and run two blocks to South St. The area would include most of the dwellings between Second and Third Sts. on the south. The district also would include some of the buildings on McLean Avenue between First and Second Sts.

Kara Oosterhous, National Register and survey coordinator for the Historic Preservation Program, said the state agency would evaluate the surveys before finalizing the district boundaries. The agency also would help local volunteers write the National Register Nomination.

The nomination would go to the program's state review board, which would determine whether to recommend the district to the National Register of Historic Places in Washington.

Sharp said they hope to conduct the surveys in early October and have the nomination ready for the review board's March 2002 meeting.

There are about 100 historic districts in Arkansas, said march Christ, community outreach director for the Historic Preservation Program. The districts range in size from about 1,600 properties in Hillcrest Historict District in Little Rock, to three properties in a historic district in Arkansas City, he said.

"Cotter - or any historic district - is kind of a snapshot of a place in time," Christ said.

Cotter's district would reflect the city between the early 1900s through the 1930s, Sharp said.

The city was legally incorporated in 1905. But explorer and ethnographer Henry Rowe Schoolcraft visited the site 113 years earlier, said local historian Anne Ramey. Schoocraft later wrote of "the assembled tributaries flowing in a smooth, board, deep, and majestic current...skirted at a short distance by mountains of the most imposing grandeur."

During the winter of 1838-39 a group of 1,00 Cherokee Indians crossed the river near Cotter on the infamous Trail of Tears, the U.S. government's forced relocation of the Cherokee nation from it's homelands in the eastern United States.

Future President Herbert Hoover spent the summer of 1892 helping the state geologist survey the Cotter area, Ramey said. And by the turn of the last century, Cotter was a traffic hub for dozens of mining companies operating in Baxter and Marion counties.

But Cotter really took off in the early 1900s. The post office opened in 1903. A year later, the Cotter school boasted 40 pupils. When the town incorporated in 1905, it had 600 residents and more than 40 businesses, including six general stores, two pools halls, three barbershops, six hotels and boarding houses, and three restaurants.

The first passenger train arrived in Cotter in 1906, and the city became the headquarters of the White River branch of the Missouri Pacific and Iron Mountain Railroad.

In 1930, the city dedicated the newly-built March Constructional Co. Rainbow Arch Bridge, an engineering marvel of its time and a national civil engineering landmark.

The last passenger train pulled out of Cotter on March 21, 1960, Ramey said.

Many of the old railroad-era buildings are gone or have been modernized to the point that they cannot be considered for National Register status, Sharp said.

But local residents, including former railroad workers and their descendents, are reclaiming Cotter's former glory. A volunteer group called the Cotter Care Crew has instituted a successful city beautification effort, including parks and walking trails. The group is building a memorial celebrating the railroad, including a display of vintage rail cars and a life-sized bronze statue of a railroad worker.

Sharp said establishing a National Register Historic District will continue the reclamation effort, as well as provide an emotional boost.

"It's just pride, to be able to have your community recognized as a historic area. There's not that many," he said. "And it would be based on the city's contributions to this region. That's a prideful thing to many folks."

A common misconception about historic district status is that it limits individual property rights, Christ said. "That's false," Christ said. "Those rights are not affected in any way. However, there are advantages," he added.

Property owners who rehabilitate a historic structure may qualify for a 20 percent federal tax credit on the rehabilitation cost. The Historic Preservation Program is conduction a preliminary study to determine how historic district status affects property values.

Similar studies in other states have found a positive impact. "Almost invariably, property values rise after an area is declared a historic district," Christ said.

From Linda: A search of the internet didn't turn up any additional information on this. Anyone out there know if the historical district was ever approved?