Part 2

[Synopsis: Part 1, last week: 1820 Little Rock. This week: Oh, Oops, there's a north side of the Arkansas River. Community names began popping up like rabid Pogo sticks.]

In 1838, U.S. Army officer Richard DeCantillon Collins established DeCantillon, (Why his middle name?) a river ferry landing to Little Rock, way after which it became Huntington, in honor of killing small animals in the swamps and bogs, and, briefly, before the completion of the north river-side of the Memphis & Little Rock Railroad in 1871.

  The family of yet another Army officer, Richard Newton, renamed Huntington "Argenta," in honor of his father's reported discovery of silver (in Spanish, argenta). The nearby argenta mines never panned out, so to speak.

  Meanwhile, 19th-century Little Rock, despite being Arkansas' capital, was economically dependent on the kindness of strangers.

  All its goods were hauled by ambient river barge traffic or ferried from cross-river railroad yards until 1873, when a railroad bridge was built between Argenta and Baring Cross, a nearby neighbor and namesake of the London, England bank that floated the bridge money.

  Obviously this new dry road across the river was an attractive nuisance for every kind of imaginable traffic, besides trains, including rickshaws (maybe), underscoring the truism, timing is everything.

  Incidentally, the railroad bridge was anchored on the south side by The "little rock," which was consequently reduced to an even littler little rock by wanton construction.

  In 1890 Little Rock reached north across the river and annexed Argenta as its 8th ward. In a defensive move to avoid further annexation, a community just north of Argenta incorporated as North Little Rock, a misnomer, considering it wasn't really north, and therefore should have named itself Nearly North Little Rock.

  In 1904, the state Supreme Court allowed (Nearly) North Little Rock to annex Little Rock's 8th ward, Argenta, and the two were consolidated as Argenta.

  Not to blemish a perfect record of schizophrenia, Argenta's city council voted in 1917 to rename itself North Little Rock, despite the fact that its 1915 city hall had (and still has) "Argenta" boldly engraved on its ornamentations.

  Grumbling about the name change can still be heard from old timers, who steadfastly refer to our state capital, Little Rock, as South Argenta.

  Since the U.S. postmaster has reduced our town names to zip codes, let's send not-so-subtle messages to our governor: The Honorable Mike Bebee, State Capitol, South Argenta, 72701.