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Years ago, when I commuted to college from Sherwood (Pulaski County) to Conway (Faulkner County), I would often times take Highway 365 which took me through the town of Mayflower. Being a history buff, I always wondered about the town’s unusual name and if it had a connection to the pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620.
The beginning of what today is Mayflower can be traced back to the white settlers, known then as Tories, who moved west to flee the Revolutionary War. Such Tory families as the Flannagins and Massengills arrived in the Mayflower area about 1778, and settled near the mouth of Palarm Creek.
So, how did Mayflower get its name? Well, in 1871, the railroad used the settlement as a telegraph station from the construction superintendent’s car. According to legend, the superintendent used “Mayflower” as his telegraph call sign, thus the name became associated with the then-unnamed area. Why the name of Mayflower was used is not known.
Like much of Arkansas, the land in and around Mayflower was mostly forested and logged until the end of the twentieth century. Several plantations were also built in the area to farm cotton. Cotton grew well there due to the area’s fertile soil.
The first post office in Mayflower opened on November 9, 1880. Worley E. Vanlandingham as served as the office’s first postmaster. The town of Mayflower was officially incorporated on March 6, 1928. Dr. J.R. Kitley was elected as its first mayor.
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, a canning kitchen was set up in Mayflower to help farmers preserve food grown on their farms. Mrs. Gena Hathaway was the kitchen’s operator. A magnolia tree, which is approximately 100-years-old, stands at the corner of Center and Miller streets where the canning kitchen once stood.
One of the most popular draws to Mayflower is Lake Conway. At 6,700-acres, Lake Conway is the largest lake created by a state agency and the first to be created by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission (AG&FC). Lake Conway was created in 1948 by damning Palarm Creek. The reservoir has been a habitat to several major sportfish such as bass, bluegill, crappie, and both blue and flathead catfish. The AG&FC began draining Lake Conway in Nov. 2023 for silt remediation and modification of its aging spillway gates. The lake is currently on track to be empty for approximately five years.
On March 29, 2013, a massive oil spill took place near Mayflower when an Exxon/Mobil pipeline carrying heavy crude oil burst near the town causing thousands of barrels of oil to spill. This incident resulted in the evacuation of 22 homes and substantial damage to the area’s ecosystem.
Another catastrophic event happened in Mayflower on April 27, 2014, as the town was hit by an EF4 tornado around 8 p.m. The tornado stayed on the ground for over an hour and traveled along a 40-mile path. Sixteen Arkansans lost their lives due to the tornado, while 193 others were seriously injured. The fatalities made this the deadliest severe weather event in Arkansas history since the F4 tornado that killed 35 in May 1968.
The Mayflower tornado was part of a widespread and deadly tornado outbreak, which terrorized the central and southern portions of the United States in April 2014. The massive severe weather event was responsible for producing several multiple long-track tornadoes. Seven of these tornadoes were deadly, causing known 36 fatalities and billions of dollars in damage to property.
On May 13, 2014, then-president Barack Obama toured nearby Vilonia to survey the damage caused by the tornado and visited with the town’s residents (including a good friend whose house was destroyed by the tornado and was given a challenge coin by the president). Obama later flew over Mayflower for a look at the destruction from the sky.
As of the 2020 census, Mayflower has 1,984 residents, none of whom identify as pilgrims.
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