Urbanette, Arkansas

I've always been fascinated by little towns that flourished back in the old days but that have virtually disappeared or have become little more than wide places in the road in modern times, and the Ozarks seems to have at least its share of them. One that I was not really aware of until recently is Urbanette, located in Carroll County, Arkansas, about five miles northeast of Berryville on Highway 21.

The reason I was not previously aware of it is because I've never been there, or at least I don't think I have. Highway 21 north of Berryville is one of those roads that a person would almost never have cause to traverse unless you lived in the area or had some specific site you wanted to visit. And there aren't many sites in the area that would attract the average traveler (maybe Cosmic Caverns, which is about three miles northeast of Urbanette or four miles southwest of Oak Grove on Highway 21 and which I've also never been to).

Anyway, Urbanette was founded in 1902 by a man named Urban and a man named Bennett, and the town was named Urbanette as portmanteau of the two men's names. Urbanette came into being more or less as a railroad town, because Urban and Bennett built a store, a hotel, a livery, and a restaurant at the location to service workers on the railroad, which had been laid across Carroll County the previous year. Stock pens were built near the train depot, and Urbanette soon became an important shipping center for cattle.

The Urbanette Post Office opened in 1902, and a school was established in the community in 1907. The school consolidated with Berryville in 1948, and the town lost its post office in 1971. Today, not much remains of the once-booming little town of Urbanette but a few residences and a couple of businesses.