How Bauxite Built a Town
By Cody Berry
We at the Gann Museum are pleased to announce that the museum has reopened after a very cold winter. Our new exhibit “How Bauxite Built A Town: 1896-1984″ pays tribute to the people who labored in and around the bauxite mines of Saline County during that time. The town of Bauxite holds a unique place in the history of our area. Most of it was built by what became the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) and its rival, the Reynolds Metals Company. This new exhibit features what our ancestors built during Bauxite’s golden years.
Selected artifacts and photographs show how the ore was mined and processed, and the town it built. The rock we call bauxite took its name from the French town of Les Baux where it was first discovered in 1821.1 In 1891, State Geologist John C. Branner was the first to identify bauxite when he noted it in a sample brought to him by Ed Wiegel of Little Rock in 1887. The material was used to surface the road from Sweet Home to Little Rock. Active development began in 1895 with the purchase of land and mineral rights on large areas, and in 1896, the first 20 tons of ore were shipped from here. In 1898 about 633 long tons of ore were mined to make aluminum. What became Alcoa first got involved in 1899.2
The town of Bauxite grew up around the mines. Alcoa and Reynolds weren’t the only companies who were involved in the area either. There were several smaller operations like the Norton Company, General Abrasive Company, Dulin Bauxite Company, and the Dixie Bauxite Company.3 However, our exhibit is more about the mining process and the town itself. The town of Bauxite was home to Saline County’s first hospital, and it also had several churches, a school district, a community hall, segregated “camps”, as they were known then, and a movie theater. Our new exhibit will run through the summer.
Citations:
1 Arkansas Geological Survey, History of Bauxite In Arkansas, Revised 2007, p. 2, chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.geology.arkansas.gov/docs/pdf/education/Bauxite.pdf, Date Accessed 3/27/2025.
2 Arkansas Geological Survey, History of Bauxite In Arkansas, Revised 2007, p. 2-3, chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.geology.arkansas.gov/docs/pdf/education/Bauxite.pdf, Date Accessed 3/27/2025.
3 Arkansas Geological Survey, History of Bauxite In Arkansas, Revised 2007, p. 3, chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.geology.arkansas.gov/docs/pdf/education/Bauxite.pdf, Date Accessed 3/27/2025.