Maumelle Land Development Company
The Maumelle Land Development Company established the settlement that became Maumelle, Arkansas, in 1974. Maumelle is one of only thirteen 1960s-1970s era federal "New Towns." Growth and demographics in the city were to be carefully monitored and maintained in order to create a self-sustaining planned community "to live, work, and play." In the 1970s the tagline associated with Maumelle was "New Home Town Coming True." The first resident to the new city arrived in 1974 and settled in a home in what is now the Club Manor Subdivision.
History of the Maumelle Land Development Company
Maumelle is sited on nearly six thousand acres of farmland formerly used as an ammunition dump. The land was purchased in 1941 by the federal government for use as an ammunition depot known as the Maumelle Ordnance Works. The facility was sold in 1959 to Perry Equipment Company. In December 1961 the land and buildings were acquired by the City of North Little Rock which hoped to erect an industrial park.
In 1967 the land, still awaiting redevelopment, was sold to Arkansas insurance executive Jess P. Odom who formed the Maumelle Land Development Company with the help of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. Odom hired Dowell Naylor Jr. as chairman and chief executive director of the company. The city name is a corruption of the original French appellation given to nearby cone-shaped Pinnacle Mountain: Mamelle (woman's breast).
References
- Letha Mills and H. K. Stewart, Greater Little Rock: A Contemporary Portrait (Chatsworth, CA: Windsor Publications, 1990).
- "Obituary," Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, November 24, 2002.
