La Petite Roche, Arkansas
Names usually mean something, and I really enjoy learning the origin of city and town names and places. There is a reason that someone decided to name a town Hell, Michigan, Muleshoe, Texas, or Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. Now, having lived in Fort Smith, Arkansas for 35 years I’ve had plenty of chuckles with town names - like Bugtussle, Chicken Bristle, Toad Suck, Booger Holler and El Dorado (El Door-AY-doe in Arkansas), just to name a few. But there is one city that I never took the time to research until our last visit to the state capitol - Little Rock.
Now it makes sense to me to name a town after a rock, especially a big rock. There’s a good chance that a big rock is going to be there for many years; probably centuries. But a little rock? They’re all over the place.
Named by Jean-Baptiste Benard de la Harpe, a French explorer who first followed the Red River into present-day Oklahoma, he explored the Arkansas River in 1722 and came across two distinct rock formations - a small one on the south side of the river and a large one further upstream on the north side. He called the small formation, “Le Petit Rocher” (The Little Rock) and the large formation, “Le Rocher Francois” (The French Rock). They probably stood out because the river landscape downstream of “Le Petit Rocher” on the Arkansas and Mississippi Rivers to the Gulf of Mexico is mainly flat and river silt.
Junction Bridge. Credit: littlerock.com
Through time, the name was somewhat revised to the feminine version, La Petite Roche, and the group of little rocks met their fate.
Nothing stops the railroad. In 1884 the Choctaw and Memphis Railroad built the Junction Bridge over the Arkansas River, using the bedrock as the foundation for the south end of the bridge. Part of the rock was salvaged, though, in 1932 and displayed at City Hall until 2009 when La Petite Roche Plaza was established at the Riverfront Park. The railroad abandoned the bridge in 1985.
The Little Rock was returned home, adjacent to the Junction Bridge which is now used for pedestrians, and quietly reminds tourists and residents alike of how the city got its name. If you’re visiting the Clinton Presidential Library, Riverfront Park, the Riverfront Market District, the Maritime Museum, U.S.S. Razorback, or the Discovery Center, then don’t miss La Petite Roche as well - a little-known part of the history of Little Rock.