About Leslie . . .

Leslie is located in the southern part of Searcy County. The road leading north from town goes toward Shiloh, Happy Hollow, Baker, and Marshall. To the left of that road is where the big stave mills and timber industries of yesteryear operated, when Leslie was reputed to have "around" 10,000 population. Nowadays, the town appears almost dormant by comparison, but it is only preparing to catch its second wind! French explorers visited these hills in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, finding prosperous Indian encampments here along the Cove Creek and up Dancing Rabbit Creek (now Begleys Creek) leading up into the hills around the upper perimeter of the town. Herbert Hoover surveyed land here and G. W. Smith, an early Leslie merchant, worked under Hoover. The Indians had free rights until after the Louisiana purchase in 1803, which brought the area under U.S. sovereignty.

In 1819 Arkansas was separated from Missouri, but still included in what is now Oklahoma. The two states were separated and Arkansas admitted to the Union in 1836, just two years before Sam Leslie's arrival. The Indians were peaceful and cooperative in Wiley's Cove. There were two Indian chiefs in Samuel Leslie's time: one called Wiley and the other was Al. The Leslie area was called Wiley's Cove after Chief Wiley, and Al's Cove was in the Rumley area. Samuel built a small house on land in which he lived temporarily while the Indians moved aside, and then he built a two story southern type home with a separate kitchen and slave quarters. This house was located where the Legion Hut now stands; the well at the north corner of the hut was the original well for the Samuel Leslie homestead. He also owned a store and trading post nearby. It is said he gave away some of the land to encourage other settlers to come into the community. The name Wiley's Cove was changed to Leslie by the Postal Department on November 9, 1887. Andrew Jackson Leslie requested the name to be changed in honor of his father, Samuel Leslie.

- Reprinted from