Odd Named Towns In Arkansas

[Mith242]

I noticed there was a topic like this under the Coffeehouse forum and Khashbaatar_Tsagaanbaatar had posted many of the Arkansas ones. Although I couldn't believe he forgot Bald Knob. But I thought it might be interesting to post something like that here and also see if maybe people knew the reasons behind their names. I thought I'd start off with two of the Bald Knob and Smackover.

Bald Knob is on the eastern edge of the Ozarks. It's name isn't too hard to figure out. While most of the Ozarks tend to be forested there are sometimes some areas that restrict tree growth. Occasionally this happens on a mountain or hill. The Ozarks being mainly settled by people from the Appalachias also picked up some of the terminology that was used there. Knobs and hollows being two examples. Knobs tend to be distinctive shaped hills or mountains. In this case the knob didn't have trees on it for a variety of reasons. Giving you the term bald knob.

Smackover is located in southern Arkansas, near the small petroleum area we have in our state. But the name might surprise many people because it's not what you might think. Much of the state have place names that were named by French explorers. Although the Ozarks seem to be the one area of the state that doesn't seem to have been influenced as much by the French explorers. But anyway, Smackover actually started off as Sumac Couvert. Sumac being a type of tree and a couvert is a french term not used much anymore at least in Arkansas. A couvert is a stream or creek that has overgrown vegetation along it's banks. A number of the French names over time became corrupted in pronounciation. As did Sumac Couvert into Smackover.

Since I'm on a roll here I thought I'd do one more although it's the name of a mountain. Mt Magazine, the tallest mountain in Arkansas and also between the Rockies and Appalachias. It was also originally named by the French. The original word and spelling was Magasin. Which happens to mean barn in French. They apparently thought it was barn-shaped.