History of Nevada County

History of Nevada County

Prescott, the county seat of Nevada County, 96 miles southwest of Little Rock, was laid out and settled as a town in 1873. A charter was granted the town on October 6, 1874, by H.W. Fraizer, president, and Jackson Tyson, a member of the Nevada County Board of Supervisors, on petition of P.C. Hamilton and 37 other property owners, on the claim that there were 50 qualified voters in the community. In 1876, the first city officers were elected.


The Cairo and Fulton Railroad, now a part of the Union Pacific line, was built across the north end of Nevada County in the summer of 1873. The townsite was laid out for an eastern county line at Boughton with Emmet on the western line.

Robert Burns, a Little Rock merchant, moved overland with his stock of goods late in the spring of 1873 to Moscow, a village town two miles southwest of what is now Prescott. In August 1873, R.F. Elgin, Dan Cunningham, and Jim Dern, railroad surveyors, and W.H. Prescott, county surveyor, laid our the City of Prescott, with 24 blocks on either side of the railroad right of way.

The survey was completed on a Saturday night. The following morning John Elkanah Whiteside, clerk at the Burns Store in Moscow, located the engineer's stake and was the first man to set foot on the streets of Prescott.

For more information visit the Depot Museum Web Site.The Depot Museum