'Scuse me for horning in 'Dora' at the turn of 1900 would have been reached by a different rail line than Alma, probably transfer at Van Buren. My 1910 map of Arkansas shows Dora just northwest of Van Buren.... Of course the two are not so far apart that travel by horseback or buggy or stage line would not have been possible...the roads were mostly pretty minimal, and many places we think of as 'towns' would really have been just walk-in Post-Office General Stores, possibly accompanied by other stores, railway or stage stops--the railroads in those times still made a lot of local stops, and those old folks used them for travel where we would just jump in the car--The physical framework of those times was so different from ours...I am told that the nearest RR scheduled stop is now at Tulsa, out of state and over the horizon. Both Dora and Alma appear on current road maps.This is county-government territory, of course, so you can't really think 'town'....Also, no daily delivery of mail--they would walk in to the PO, maybe some distance away, and maybe not every week. Also, maybe no 'address' as we think of it now. And the 'Frisco' line was a kind of octopus corporation that kept taking over more and more separate local RR's, so you have to keep close track of which RR and at what time....Steamboat traffic on the river was still alive, and there were probably a lot of small local one-man ferry operations that you wouldn't be able to find on any map...now or then Duncan the Librarian _WallDuncan@AOL.COM_ (mailto:WallDuncan@AOL.COM) Yarmouth Port, MA