Paragould, Arkansas: Two Railroad Bosses, One Name

Paragould, Arkansas, is named for two railroad presidents at once, with Jay Gould’s name stuck on in place of the last syllable of Paramore’s. The town grew up where their two railroads crossed.

Where the tracks crossed

A Goodspeed history of northeast Arkansas, published in 1889 when the town was about seven years old, explains it. Paragould sat at the crossing of the St. Louis, Arkansas & Texas and the St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern railroads. It was laid out in April 1882 by the Southwestern Improvement Company and two couples, Willis Pruet and his wife and J. A. Lambert and his wife. A 1922 state history edited by Dallas T. Herndon adds that it was incorporated as a town on March 3, 1883, the same date the U.S. Geological Survey’s place-names database gives, and that it became the county seat in 1884.

Goodspeed’s very next sentence gives the name: “It was named after President Paramore of the former and President Gould of the latter of these routes, the name Gould being substituted for the last syllable of Paramore, making it Paragould.” So Paramore was the Texas line’s man, and Gould ran the Iron Mountain.

Jay Gould and a man with two sets of initials

Gould is the easy half. Herndon spells him out as Jay Gould, and so does the federal place-names record, which calls the name “a compound of the names of two railroad men, W. J. Paramore and Jay Gould.”

Paramore is trickier. You’ll find him as “W. J. Paramore” in the federal record and as “J. W. Paramore” in Herndon. Herndon also puts him at the head of a different railroad, “the road running to Helena (then a narrow gauge),” which in the Goodspeed account is the Iron Mountain’s Helena branch, the Gould side. The sources agree he was a railroad president named Paramore. They don’t agree on his initials or on which line he ran.

“You’ll like Paragould”

By the time Herndon’s book came out in 1922, the Chamber of Commerce had picked a slogan: “You’ll like Paragould.” If you say the name out loud, you can still hear both men in it.

Sources & further reading

• Goodspeed, Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Northeast Arkansas (1889), Greene County, p. 119. The crossing of the two railroads, the April 1882 layout and the clearest account of the name: President Paramore of the St. Louis, Arkansas & Texas and President Gould of the Iron Mountain.
• Dallas T. Herndon, ed., Centennial History of Arkansas, vol. 1 (1922), pp. 881–882. “J. W. Paramore” and Jay Gould, the 1883 incorporation, the 1884 county seat and the “You’ll like Paragould” slogan.
• GNIS feature 77948 (U.S. Geological Survey). The federal record: incorporated March 3, 1883, and “a compound of the names of two railroad men, W. J. Paramore and Jay Gould.”