Diaz (Jackson County, AR)

In middle of this little community the Diaz City Hall stands along with the Fire Department and Police Department near each other that are reminisce of the old thriving town of Diaz, AR. Diaz has an interesting history even though they are considered a part of Newport, AR in the twenty-first century they still maintain a police department. Diaz was first founded as a small farming community before it became an actual settlement of Jackson County, AR. After the railroad and depot was built in Diaz that was when he community was first established as a part of Jackson County. Once more and more people come to settle near the depot businesses began to pop up creating a thriving town of people. Eventually the town would even have its own newspaper for a short time. Diaz after some time be overshadow by Newport Jackson County's big city and county seat and the community would begin to decline. Very few things remain from the old town Diaz, but to residents its still their home.

Diaz was created in the late nineteenth because of the railroad industry, and is a small community that exits north of Newport. The area that became Diaz was first cleared to be farmland called Shiloh at this time. Two men are known in Jackson County history that were first settlers on the land named Elijah Blansett and George Sink who arrived shortly before the Civil War. Not long after Blansett and Sink’s arrival several families began to appear such as those associated with William F. Cox. James L. Blansett ordained through the Arkansas Baptist State Convention built a Baptist church and ministered there in 1873. This same Baptist church would use as one the three schoolhouses in School District Number 7 in Jackson County, and in 1879 James Robinson sold an acre of land on this school district in which African Americans built a school for their children.

In 1882 Caroline Cox after her husband William died in 1879, sold fifteen acres of their land to the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railway so a railway could be established in the area. Once the station was established in Jackson County it was named after one of its residents Joseph Dyas, the first conductor on the railroad. The reason why they changed the spelling of his last name was never recorded in history. Robert West who owned land near the station, would transfer his store to Diaz from Jacksonport, and built the first cotton gin in 1891. Even a congregation of Christian Church a forerunner to the United Church of Christ started in 1880s, and continued to call the area Shiloh instead of Dyas or Diaz. The official land survey and mapping of Diaz was established in 1901.

It was recorded that the area included 300 residents, several mercantile and grocery store establishments, a railroad depot, two churches, and a livery stable. Wilmans Mercantile Company was established in 1906 on the site of the old cotton gin that West had built. Two post offices existed in Diaz the first being opened in 1916 and discontinued in 1925 but in 1927 it was reestablished. Two different newspapers were established: one being the Times, published in 1918, and the Rural News Dispatch established in 1919 and changed its name to the Weekly Enterprise in 1920. The African Methodist Episcopal (AME) and Presbyterian church that were built around this same era were destroyed by a tornado in 1929. Diaz like all of Jackson County’s railroad towns would prosper during the early years of the twentieth century but declined during the Great Depression years.

Diaz would be fully incorporated into Jackson County as its own town in 1956, electing its first mayor Sarah Emma West Hurley. Hurley born in 1878 was known as the ‘oldest woman mayor in Arkansas’ serving until she died in 1963. Diaz had hit a decline between 1960 and 1970, but had reversed the decline between the 1970 and 1980 by annexing additional land, boosting their population beyond the 1,000 residents that were living in area at that time. During this same decade in 1974 a municipal building was dedicated to the town.

Even though Diaz was its own community like Possum Grape and Grand Glaise it was overshadowed by Newport since American had entered World War II. Starting in 1942, the U.S. Army would choose a section of land in Jackson for to be training air field naming it for Newport not Diaz, the 1990s seen a two-year college built on part of the old airfield calling it Arkansas State University-Newport, many of the businesses and restaurants along Highway 367 established Newport address instead of Diaz, and finally Diaz was included into the Newport School District. The remaining landmark of old Diaz is the Shiloh Cemetery located near the train tracks that still run through Diaz and Newport. The 2010 population census recorded that a total of 1,318 residents had resided in Diaz including in the numbers 839 whites, 406 African American, and 48 Hispanics.

Teske, Steve. Diaz (Jackson County). Encyclopedia of Arkansas, September 1, 2022. https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/diaz-jackson-county-904/ (accessed April 27, 2023).

City of Diaz. City of Diaz, Facebook. March 2nd, 2012. Accessed May 1st, 2023. https://www.facebook.com/182879968465631/photos/pb.100066456924005.-2207520000./248587551894872/?type=3.