Our Home Town — Holly Grove Came to Life with Arrival of Railroad
By Richard Allin Staff Writer
Holly Grove, Ark. July 6. — A change in transportation methods brought Holly Grove to life.
When the steamboat held sway over the field of commerce, the town of Lawrenceville, then the county seat of Monroe County, was an active business center in the area. Holly Grove was just a plantation store and a house or two.
As the railroad pushed westward from Helena about 1868, a shakeup in population occurred which eventually made Lawrenceville non-existent and promoted the growth of Holly Grove.
The ribbons of rail stretching over Phillips and Monroe counties proved enticing to merchants, who abandoned Lawrenceville to build businesses beside the tracks in the little town of the holly trees to the north.
Today, Holly Grove is a thriving town of about 800 people whose economy is geared to agriculture. The main product is cotton, and the gins in and around the town turn out between 12,000 and 15,000 bales per year.
Soybeans and rice also make up part of the crops of the area.
The municipal government is headed by Mayor Ralph Abramson, planter and merchant. The town has four aldermen, a city recorder and chief of police.
Holly Grove is on a natural gas line and owns it own waterworks. Its fire department is modern and is equipped with a new heavy duty fire truck which, as one resident puts it, “makes the town look like a city every time they bring it out.”
It is a quiet town but by no means an inactive one. Neat paving covers its streets, helping it maintain a clean appearance, and venerable shade trees, more numerous than the citizenry, shield large sections of the town from the summer sun.
The residents are proud of their schools. The consolidated white school has about 600 students.
The Negro school was built about two years ago and provides for about 900 students. It boasts a new gymnasium-auditorium which cost about $100,000. The new Negro school was built after the old school, itself up-to-date, burned to the ground several years ago.
About 25 to 30 years ago, Holly Grove had a larger population than it does now. It topped 1,000. The decline has been attributed to the fact that the tractor displaced men at farm work.
Not far to the south are Maddox Bay, East Lake and Indian Bay, well known to duck hunters and fishermen throughout the country.
