Indigenous Peoples, European Settlement and Quapaw Cession The area along the
Arkansas River had been inhabited for thousands of years by
indigenous peoples of various cultures. They used the river for transportation as did European settlers after them, and for fishing. By the time of encounter with Europeans, the historical
Quapaw were the chief people in the area, having migrated from the
Ohio River valley centuries before. Records dating back to 1801 show that “fifty miles up the Arkansas River on the Bonne Reserve lived
Joseph Bonne, Michael Bonne and other taxpayers named Bonne.” Joseph Bonne was interpreter for the
United States government at the signing of the Quapaw Cession at
St. Louis,
Missouri, August 21, 1818. Joseph Bonne, also written as Bone, Bona, or Bon. Bonne had Quapaw, French, and Plains Apache ancestry. Due to a great flood in 1819, Bonne and his wife, Mary Imbeau, moved five miles upstream from the Bonne Reserve to the place later named Pine Bluff. This was the first bluff above the mouth of the river and was covered by towering pine trees, the eastern boundary of the coastal plain of
South Arkansas.
Founding, Trail of Tears and the Antebellum Era (1832–1861) Bonne built a log cabin with a lean-to which served as his home... as well as a tavern with lodging accommodations for travelers. The settlement was officially named “The Town of Pine Bluff” by the county court on October 16, 1832. From 1832 to 1858, the town was a station on the Trail of Tears for the
Seminole and their
slaves, who were forcibly removed from
Florida Territory to the Indian Territory. They included the legendary Black Seminole leader
John Horse, who arrived in the city via the steamboat
Swan in 1842.
Civil War, Reconstruction and the Gilded Age (1861–1902) Pine Bluff was prospering by the outbreak of the
Civil War; most of its wealth was based on the commodity crop of cotton. This was cultivated on large plantations by hundreds of thousands of
enslaved Africans throughout the state, but especially in the Delta. The city had one of the largest slave populations in the state by 1860, and
Jefferson County, Arkansas was second in cotton production in the state. When
Federal forces occupied
Little Rock, a group of Pine Bluff residents asked commanding Major General
Frederick Steele to send Federal forces to occupy their town to protect them from bands of Confederate
bushwhackers. Federal troops under
Colonel Powell Clayton arrived September 17, 1863, and stayed until the war was over. On October 25, 1863,
Confederate cavalry, led by Brigadier-General
John S. Marmaduke, attempted to expel Federal
occupation forces commanded by Colonel
Powell Clayton; but were defeated by a combined force of
federal troops and
freedmen (former slaves freed by U.S. President
Abraham Lincoln's recent
Emancipation Proclamation) near
Jefferson Court-House. In the final year of the Civil War, the
1st Kansas Colored Infantry Regiment (composed primarily of escaped slaves from
Arkansas and
Missouri), was the first regiment of
U.S. Colored Troops to see combat. It was dispatched to guard Pine Bluff and eventually
mustered out there. Because of the Federal forces, Pine Bluff attracted many
refugees and freedmen after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in early 1863. The Federal troops set up a contraband camp there to house the runaway slaves and refugees behind Confederate lines. After the war, freed slaves worked with the
American Missionary Association to start schools for the education of blacks, who had been prohibited from learning to read and write by southern laws. Both adults and children eagerly started learning. By September 1872, Professor
Joseph C. Corbin opened the Branch Normal School of the Arkansas Industrial University, a
historically black college. Founded as Arkansas's first black public college, today it is the
University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. Pine Bluff and the region suffered lasting effects from defeat, the aftermath of war, and the trauma of slavery and exploitation. Recovery was slow at first. Construction of
railroads improved access to markets, and with increased production of cotton as more
plantations were reactivated, the economy began to recover. The first railroad reached Pine Bluff in December 1873. This same year Pine Bluff's first utility was formed when Pine Bluff Gas Company began furnishing
manufactured gas from
coke fuel for lighting purposes. The state's economy remained highly dependent on cotton and agriculture, which suffered a decline through the 19th century. As personal fortunes increased from the 1870s onward, community leaders constructed large
Victorian-style homes west of Main Street. Meanwhile, the Reconstruction era of the 1870s brought a stark mix of progress and challenge for African Americans. Most blacks joined the Republican Party, and several were elected in Pine Bluff to county offices and the state legislature for the first time in history. Several black-owned businesses were also opened, including banks, bars, barbershops, and other establishments. But in postwar violence in 1866, an altercation with whites ensued at a refugee camp, and 24 black men, women and children were found hanging from trees in one of the worst mass
lynchings in U.S. history. The rate of lynchings of black males was high across the South during this period of social tensions and white resistance to Reconstruction. Armistad Johnson was lynched in 1889, and John Kelly and Gulbert Harris in 1892 in front of the
Jefferson County Courthouse, after a mob of hundreds rapidly escalated to thousands of whites vehemently demanding execution, despite Kelly's pleas of innocence and lack of trial. The angry mob eventually forced over his custody from an Officer adamantly attempting to deliver the suspect to the jail house, then the crowd watched enthusiastically as he was hung and riddled with bullets. That same year the state adopted a
poll tax amendment that disenfranchised many African-American and poor white voters. The Election Law of 1891 had already made voting more difficult and also caused voter rolls to decrease. With the Democratic Party consolidating its power in what became a one-party state, the atmosphere was grim toward the end of the 19th century for many African Americans. Democrats imposed legal segregation and other
Jim Crow laws. Bishop
Henry McNeal Turner's "Back to Africa" movement attracted numbers of local African-American residents who purchased tickets and/or sought information on emigration. Arkansas had 650 emigrants depart to the colony of
Liberia in West Africa, more than from any other state in the United States. The majority of these emigrants came from the black-majority Jefferson, St. Francis, Pulaski, Pope, and Conway counties. According to historian James Leslie, Pine Bluff entered its "Golden Era" in the 1880s. Cotton production and river commerce helped the city draw industries, public institutions and residents to the area, making it by 1890 the state's third-largest city. The first telephone system was placed in service March 31, 1883.
Wiley Jones, a freedman who achieved wealth by his own business, built the first mule-drawn, street-car line in October 1886. The first light, power and water plant was completed in 1887; a more dependable light and water system was put in place in 1912. Throughout the 1880s and 1890s, economic expansion was also fueled by the growing
lumber industry in the region.
Early 20th century and the Great Depression (1902–1941) Situated on the Arkansas River, Pine Bluff depended on river traffic and trade. Community leaders were concerned that the main channel would leave the city. The
United States Army Corps of Engineers built a
levee opposite Pine Bluff to try to keep the river flowing by the city. During a later flood, the main channel of the river moved away from the city, leaving a small oxbow lake (later expanded into Lake Pine Bluff). River traffic diminished, even as the river was a barrier separating one part of the county from the other. After many years of regional haggling, because the bond issue involved raised taxes, the county built the Free Bridge, which opened in 1914. For the first time, it united the county on a permanent basis. African Americans in Pine Bluff were damaged by the state's
disfranchisement in 1891–1892 and exclusion from the political system. But they continued to work for their rights; they joined activists in Little Rock and Hot Springs in a sustained boycott of streetcars, protesting passage in 1903 of the Segregated Streetcar Act, part of a series of
Jim Crow laws passed by the white-dominated legislature. They did not achieve change then. Development in the city's business district grew rapidly. The Masonic Lodge, built by and for the African-American chapter in the city, was the tallest building in Pine Bluff when completed in 1904. The Hotel Pines, constructed in 1912, had an intricate marble interior and classical design, and was considered one of Arkansas' showcase hotels. The 1,500-seat
Saenger Theater, built in 1924, was one of the largest such facilities in the state; it operated the state's largest pipe organ. When
Dollarway Road was completed in 1914, it was the longest continuous stretch of concrete road in the United States. The first radio station (
WOK) broadcast in Arkansas occurred in Pine Bluff on February 18, 1922. Two natural disasters had devastating effects on the area's economy. The first was the
Great Flood of 1927, a
100-year flood. Due to levee breaks, most of northern and southeastern Jefferson County were flooded. The severe drought of 1930 caused another failure of crops, adding to the problems of economic conditions during the
Great Depression. Pine Bluff residents scrambled to survive. In 1930, two of the larger banks failed. During the 1933 Mississippi River flood, country singer
Johnny Cash evacuated to Pine Bluff. The state's highway construction program in the later 1920s and early 1930s, facilitating trade between Pine Bluff and other communities throughout southeast Arkansas, was critical to Jefferson County, too. After the inauguration of President
Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, he launched many government programs to benefit local communities. Through the
Works Progress Administration (WPA) and public works funding, Pine Bluff built new schools and a football stadium, and developed Oakland Park as its first major recreation facility. To encourage diversification in agriculture, the county built a
stockyard in 1936 to serve as a sales outlet for farmers' livestock. From 1936 to 1938, the WPA through the
Federal Writers' Project initiated a project to collect and publish oral histories of former slaves. Writers were sent throughout the South to interview former slaves, most of whom had been children before the Civil War. When the project was complete, Arkansas residents had contributed more oral slave histories (approximately 780) than any other state, although Arkansas' slave population was less than those of neighboring Deep South states. The city served to compile a valuable storehouse of oral
slave narrative material.
World War II and the Cold War (1941–1991) visitors waiting in line two hours before the exhibition opened, January 1948
World War II brought profound changes to Pine Bluff and its agriculture, timber and railroad-oriented economy. The Army built Grider Field Airport which housed the Pine Bluff School of Aviation and furnished flight training for air cadets for the
Army Air Corps. At one time 275 aircraft were being used to train 758 pilots. Approximately 9,000 pilots had been trained by the time the school closed in October 1944. The Army broke ground for the
Pine Bluff Arsenal on December 2, 1941, on bought north of the city. The arsenal and Grider Field changed Pine Bluff to a more diversified economy with a mixture of industry and agriculture. The addition of small companies to the industrial base helped the economy remain steady in the late 1940s. Defense spending in association with the
Korean War was a stabilizing factor after 1950. In 1957, Richard Anderson announced the construction of a
kraft paper mill north of the city. International Paper Co. shortly afterward bought a plant site five miles east of Pine Bluff. Residential developments followed for expected workers. The next year young minister
Martin Luther King Jr. addressed students at the commencement program for Arkansas AM&N College (now the
University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff). The decade of the 1960s brought heightened activism in the civil rights movement: through boycotts and demonstrations, African Americans demanded an end to segregated public facilities and jobs. Whites responded with violence, attacking demonstrators, and bombing a black church in Pine Bluff in 1963. Some civil rights demonstrators were shot. Local leaders worked tirelessly, at times enlisting the support of national figures such as
Dick Gregory and
Stokely Carmichael, to help bring about change over the period. Voter registration drives that enabled increased black political participation, selective buying campaigns, student protests, and a desire among white local business leaders to avoid damaging negative media portrayals in the national media led to reforms in public accommodations. During the 1960s and 1970s, major construction projects in the region included private and public sponsors: Jefferson Hospital (now Jefferson Regional Medical Center), the dams of the
McClellan-Kerr Navigation System on the Arkansas River (which was diverted from the city to create Lake Langhofer), a Federal building, the Pine Bluff Convention Center complex including The Royal Arkansas Hotel & Suites, Pine Bluff Regional Park, two industrial parks and several large churches. The 1980s and 1990s brought a number of significant construction projects. Benny Scallion Park was created, named for the alderman who brought a
Japanese garden to the Pine Bluff Civic Center. The city has not maintained the garden, but a small plaque remains. In the late 1980s, The Pines, the first large, enclosed shopping center, was constructed on the east side of the city. The mall attracted increased shopping traffic from southeast Arkansas.
Contemporary (1991–present) The most important construction project of the 1990s was completion of a southern bypass, designated part of
Interstate 530. In addition, a highway and bridge across Lock and Dam #4 were completed, providing another link between farm areas in northeastern Jefferson County and the transportation system radiating from Pine Bluff. Through a private matching grant, a multimillion-dollar Arts and Science Center for Southeast Arkansas was completed downtown in 1994. In 2000, construction was completed on the Donald W. Reynolds Community Services Center. Carl Redus became the first African American mayor in the city's history in 2005. The
University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff recently opened a $3 million business incubator in
downtown Pine Bluff. Also, a new $2 million
farmers market pavilion was opened in 2010 on Lake Pine Bluff in downtown Pine Bluff. Shirley Washington was elected as the first female African American mayor. She was elected in 2016. Beginning around 2020, Utah based entrepreneur John Fenley, owner of the music streaming service
Murfie, began buying properties in Pine Bluff for redevelopment. ==Geography==