Hot Spring County has long played an important role in Arkansas’s transportation heritage as a major corridor for river, land, and rail travel. The Ouachita River, the Southwest Trail (Military Road), Highway 67, Interstate 30, and the railroad, all illustrate that significance.

As for rail travel, the Cairo and Fulton Railroad line established Malvern as a railroad station in 1873. Today’s Union Pacific Railroad runs from the Missouri state line to Little Rock and then on to Texarkana. It was originally constructed by the Cairo and Fulton Railroad. Over the course of several decades, the Cairo and Fulton first became a part of the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railroad, then Missouri Pacific, and finally Union Pacific.

The Cairo and Fulton played a major role in Arkansas’s economic development by connecting the state to the rest of the nation. The railroad facilitated shipment of raw materials to other parts of the country, including agricultural and forest products. Trains also transported many people, especially prior to the invention of the automobile. Malvern served as an important stop on the rail line, but another key development also increased Malvern’s significance as a transportation center. Coinciding with the coming of the railroad, the nearby resort city of Hot Springs was enjoying a boom of its own. More and more people wanted to visit the town, creating a demand for easier access to the spa’s facilities located in the midst of the Ouachita Mountains. However, Arkansas’s most popular tourist destination was not yet connected by rail: Hot Springs still awaited the arrival of the railroad. Stagecoaches continued to carry people between the spa city and the closest stop on the rail line—Malvern.

While people were transported from Malvern by stagecoach, a need existed for a way to efficiently deliver supplies and other goods to Hot Springs. One entrepreneur saw an opportunity to start a new business. According to the Encyclopedia of the New West, published in 1881, John B. Roe “hauled the first load of freight from Malvern consigned to a Hot Springs merchant.”

Roe apparently worked very hard at the endeavor, recognizing that it would be short-lived. It would not be long until a railroad line reached the spa. He worked in all kinds of weather, even camping out along the way when necessary in order to make his deliveries. Roe charged from fifty cents to two dollars per hundred pounds, depending on road conditions. Merchants quickly hired him to act as their agent in order to receive their freight in Malvern and carry it to Hot Springs. In this way, Roe enjoyed quite a lucrative business up until 1875 when the narrow-gauge Diamond Jo railroad company connected Malvern and Hot Springs.

Roe then established the “Roe Transfer Company” which received goods at the railroad depot in Hot Springs and transported them to local merchants. Always the entrepreneur, among his other business dealings, after a major fire in 1878, Roe brought another innovation to the area: safe deposit boxes. Based on a then-new feature of the banking business, he established “The Hot Springs Safe Deposit Company.”