One of the factors that plagued east-west transportation in the Missouri Bootheel was blockage by swamps running mostly north-south. Travelers faced impassible and wide rivers, sloughs, and swamps to journey from the Mississippi inland. Alternative routes involved journeying west of Cape Girardeau to access Crowley’s Ridge, then heading south, or going from the St. Francis River mouth in Arkansas north.
A group of citizens developed an idea to solve this difficulty in the mid-1850s. The obvious solution was a plank, or pole, road. The idea was an old one—segments of plank roads dating to the 4th Century AD exist in boggy areas of northern Germany. Missouri developed a mania for plank roads beginning in 1849, and 49 eventually received charters from the General Assembly.
A group of investors from Dunklin and New Madrid counties organized the Dunklin and Pemiscot Plank Road Company, incorporated under an 1855 act of the Legislature. The route ran from the extinct village of Weaverville, near the current location of Portageville, with a connecting road leading to New Madrid, to Beech, the original name for Clarkton. New Madrid County granted 100,000 acres of swampland to assist. Contractors placed sawmills along the route to cut planks, and the road was mostly a series of bridges. One teamster counted 146 bridges along the route. The finished road completed around 1860 was 10-12 feet wide, and periodic turnouts or switches allowed passing.
The finished road was a toll road. Prices ranged from 10 cents for walkers to $2 for wagons headed west. Doctors and mail traveled free. Many travelers from Tennessee and Kentucky used the route to travel to Arkansas.
Many locals called it the “Blanton Road” or “Blanton Plank Road” because Alexander Blanton was one of the organizers of the company, lived near the Clarkton end, and supervised the work. Traversing the route required a toll, and the venture was a success until the outbreak of the Civil War. A grateful citizenry in Beech renamed the town Clarkton, to honor Henry E. Clark, one of the road’s contractors.
The Civil War began when the plank road was in its heyday. Initially, the “Swamp Fox,” Confederate Brigadier-General Jeff Thompson, used the road as an escape route to avoid being cut off at either end by federal forces. When the Confederates evacuated New Madrid in early 1862, federal forces used it as a route to pursue Thompson’s forces. Rebel forces attempted to burn the road or tear out the bridges for the remainder of the war. Small units of guerrillas tore up the road at stream crossings and federals then attempted repairs so they could use the road as a route for scouting missions.
The aftermath of the war left the plank road in poor shape. Repeated efforts to destroy bridges and burned parts of the road required hasty repairs with poles, and it was very rough travel. One witty traveler at this time dubbed it, “The Devil’s Washboard.” Accordingly, promoters began proposing to rebuild the road. In 1875, Oscar Kochtitzky, the registrar of the land office, George B. Clark, state auditor, and A. M. Shead, who was the agent of the Glasgow Ship Building Company, obtained the charter and franchise of the Blanton Road Company and confirmation of the swamp land grant. It was their intention to rebuild this plank road.
Reconstruction never happened, however, because the backers chose instead to promote the Little River Valley and Arkansas Railroad. The railroad built a line on the old plank roadbed from New Madrid to Malden, bypassing Clarkton entirely.
