Why the Unusual Name?

The City of Bald Knob got its unusual name from a very large rock known as the Bald Knob. This rock was nearly an acre in size and was first used by Native Americans as a camping ground during their hunting trips up and down the White River Valley. Surrounded by a flat rock shelf, it was visible for quite a distance. It remained a landmark until officials became interested in quarrying the Bald Knob rock for railroad bed ballast in the construction of the Missouri Pacific Railroad in 1872. Work in the quarry began in 1877, and, by 1880, fifty-six of the town’s 221 people worked there. More than half of the quarry workers were foreign born, most from Ireland. The importance of rock quarrying continued as the Bald Knob rock furnished ballast for Jay Gould’s Bald Knob Memphis Railroad, built in 1886–1888 to make an east-west connection for the St. Louis, Iron Mountain, and Southern. It later sometimes served as a gathering place for marauding outlaws, while cattlemen utilized it to gather their herds for salting, branding and selling after the rock was quarried. By 1900, the quarry had wound down, but it was reopened briefly in the 1920s to furnish rock for buildings at Southwestern College (now Rhodes College) in Memphis, Tennessee. The area, sparsely settled before the war, was initially named Shady Grove after a church and schoolhouse in what is now the northwest part of town.