A Cheap Home in Arkansas [Title on Verso]

“Arkansas wants you and all your friends to get a CHEAP HOME while there is yet time and LAND IS CHEAP.”

This scarce and interesting promotional brochure was issued in the early 1880s by the St. Louis, Iron Mountain, and Southern Railway; shortly after the company was acquired by Jay Gould. A central map shows the lines in operation and under construction between Kansas City and Texarkana, with labeled stops crammed in the blank spaces along each route.

Panels of flowery text and engraved views on both sides highlight the robust agricultural opportunities, healthful climate, and inexpensive cost of living for settlers across Arkansas. Notable sections include “Advantages to Poor People”, promotions for Hot Springs, “Inducements to New Settlers in Arkansas”, and a scene in the upper right that’s apparently representative of rapid economic success.

A cluster of fine homes and outbuildings surrounded by productive fields and livestock shows an unnamed farmer’s ‘third year in the timber’. The caption immediately above reads, “A small space well cared for in Arkansas, together with the Range, assures a man a living very soon, and an independent and comfortable life in three or four years.”