To most residents of the Fort Smith area, Arkoma is just that “small town just past the railroad underpass off Wheeler Avenue” but few know that the failure of a proposed railway line in 1912 from Arkoma to Wiburton may have been what sealed the border town’s fate to forever being a “bedroom community” to Fort Smith
In 1908 the Fort Smith, Arkoma and Southwestern Railroad Company applied for incorporation to build a railroad through the area but failed to lay the tracks.
By 1911 a town had been organized on the property of Capt. James Reynolds, a Civil War veteran who intermarried into the Choctaw Nation. He amassed a small fortune in Indian Territory and in 1890 built a castle in the nearby town of Cameron.
Arkoma was to be the last of several major business enterprises for Reynolds after he settled in the region in the “Braden Bottoms” area after arriving in Indian Territory around 1867.
Reynolds was born on July 17, 1837 and died on June 26, 1920 at the age of 83. He joined the the Civil War at the age of 25. He was raised in a southern family, so naturally he quickly joined sides with the Confederates.
He rose through the ranks of Company K, the company was known as the “Dixie Boys” of Carroll County. Through hard work he became its captain just before the war ended.
He suffered many injuries during the Battle of New Hope in the Atlanta Campaign. with one of those injuries being so serious that he would have died had it not been for the kindness and care that the two daughters of his commanding officer provided him.
After the war he finally settled in Indian Territory with his wife Felicity, settling with his family just outside of Fort Smith the Arkoma area. He prospered in this area and became a successful merchant and rancher. Also becoming heavily involved in the development of coal mines in the area.
Reynolds developed Arkoma as a suburb of Fort Smith, platted the town, constructed rent houses, and induced the Fort Smith Light and Traction Company to build tracks and run a regular interurban route to the new community.
Reynolds named the town because of its relation to the Arkansas-Oklahoma border.
In 1890, his wife purchased the title to a parcel of land in Cameron, and Reynolds began the construction of what is now know as the “Captains Castle.” After a few years, the medieval-like castle was completed.
The Captain’s Castle is a private residence but it can be viewed from Castle Street in Cameron, to this day and It remains as one of the few castles ever built in the South. It is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
When Reynolds died in 1920, his monument placed at his burial site in the historic Oak Cemetery in Fort Smith paid homage to the two teenage girls who had helped nurse him back to health during the Civil War.
He made sure their kindness was remembered by commissioning this monument before his death and the figures portrayed are those two teenage girls.
A proposed Fort Smith, Arkoma and Wilburton Railway Company (chartered in 1912), which would build a sixty-mile line from Wilburton to Arkoma, never materialized.
The organizers of that failed effort — Reynolds family members among them — had hoped to establish a manufacturing industry at the town site.
In 1917 the streetcar service discontinued. By 1918 the town had a general store and by the 1930s a brick plant, but Arkoma has always served as a residential community for workers commuting to Fort Smith.
In 1936 the Works Progress Administration (WPA) constructed a school building, which was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1988
In 1946 officially Arkoma incorporated, and by 1950 the population stood at 1,691. The number of inhabitants increased to 1,862 in 1960 and to 2,098 in 1970. The town’s first high school opened in the 1970s, with its first graduation occurring in 1975.
Now, nearly 106 years after the town was originally founded Arkoma contains one convenience store, several loan and finance companies, a nursing home and a few other small businesses.
The latest population county for the community stands at 1,987 many of who live there still work, play and shop in Fort Smith every day enhancing the long standing “bedroom community” reputation of the town.
