Point Chicot, a boat landing on the Mississippi River in what is now Chicot County was named either by men going up and down the river or by eighteenth-century French colonists in the area. Chicot means stumpy or knobby, and the area was given the name due to the many Cypress trees growing there.
One of the earliest settlers on Point Chicot was Carlos Villimont who claimed the property under a Spanish grant to his father in part payment for the construction of a military road from Point Chicot to Arkansas Post. The property was later transferred by the Supreme Court and Major William Gaines from Kentucky built his plantation there. He made a road from the landing through the plantation which became a gateway to Southeast Arkansas.
Freight was often hauled overland from the river down this road to the outlying settlements. The road was also used by settlers who came by boat on the river and then hauled their belongings west. Later it was linked with a stagecoach route and mail route and went through Drew County to Independence (later named Monticello) and on across Bradley and Calhoun Counties to Ecore a Fabre (later Camden) following much of the Chicot Trace.
The early Territorial law of Arkansas Territory declared that for a road to be built in a township twelve landowners must petition the local court. The court would then appoint a commission of three to five men to choose the best site for the road. The law also declared that all men, free and slave, from the age of sixteen to the age of forty-five would be required to work on the road in their township as assigned by the court.
In November of 1836, the new state of Arkansas declared all the public roads of the territory to be public roads of the state under the responsibility of the County Courts. They codified the existing territorial laws into state law with fines of $2.00 for any male who refused to do roadwork. No more than twelve days in one year or more than four consecutive days in any one month was required.
In 1842, the first settler in the Coal Springs community on the old Chicot Trace was Hamp Williams. He had carried the mail on this trail, or road, between Warren and Camden, and at the time he built his house the only other house between the two towns belonged to Hamp’s father across the Moro in Bradley County. People coming through the trail or road going toward Texas would stop by his house for rest and supplies. Usually, three or four families would be traveling together. Sometime around the mid-1800s, the road began to be called the Gaines’ Landing Road.
William J. Dunn came to what is now Calhoun County in 1843. He came up the Ouachita River in a skiff, in which he brought his personal effects. He settled in the county and was obliged to clear the roads to the different places where he had business to attend to. He was made road overseer of the county and with twentyfive men cleared out the fortymile wagon road from Moro to Camden in six days. The next road was the thirty-mile Little Bay and Chambersville Road and then the thirty-five-mile Little Bay and Princeton Road.
Robert F. Dedman, County Judge of Calhoun County from 1888 to 1890 was very active in improving the roads and building bridges in the County. The law at that time, and up to at least 1895, required the men of the county to work on the roads. There was a document written by Dr. D. F. Wilson and quoted by Mary Strickland in her book, The Hogskinner, that stated that a certain local citizen was not able to perform manual labor and should be excused from working on the road. It was dated May 6, 1895.
Sources: wikipedia; digitalheritage.arkansas. gov/chicot-county; freepages.rootsweb.com; civilwararkansas150. wordpress.com; Chicot Trace DAR, Fordyce Arkansas; Biographical and Historical MemoirsofSouthernArkansas, Goodspeed Publishing, 1890; Arkansas Plaindealer, April 28, 1955, Vol. 54 from an article in the Fordyce Advocate; Monticellolive. com; encyclopediaofarkansas; The Hogskinner, by Mary A. Bounds Strickland
