The boundaries of the Quapaw Indian Nation [†] were defined by treaty of August 24, 1818, by which the Quapaws relinquished all claim to all other lands. The western boundary was established as a line running from a point on Saline River to the landmark on the Arkansas River known as the Little Rock. This boundary was known as the Quapaw Line.
With the Quapaw claim extinguished, the land west of the Quapaw Line became a part of the public lands and eligible for white settlement, and land speculators moved quickly to take advantage of it. Aspiring to establish a centrally located town that could become the capital of the new Territory of Arkansas, a group of speculators from Missouri late in 1819 began laying out a town adjacent to the Little Rock, naming the town for the landmark. A rival set of speculators soon appeared, and successfully contested in the courts the right of the Missourians to possession of the land, whereupon the Missourians enlisted the help of their neighbors to move or destroy the few c rude buildings they had erected.
Meanwhile, the new town had been selected as the seat of government of Arkansas Territory. The legislature met there for the first time in October of 1821. A compromise was effected by which the rival claimants became joint owners of the land claims covering the townsite. Actual title remained in the United States, however, and the claims on which the town was founded were later ruled invalid.
Subsequent acts of Congress pertaining to preemption claims based on actual settlement further confused the situation. A patent was finally issued to Roswell Beebe in 1839, and Beebe in turn straightened out most of the tangled titles by conveying lots to people whose rights to them were locally well established. A few would not settle for this, since the preemption laws made them eligible for an entire quarter section, and some of the title disputes were not resolved until long after the original claimants were dead. The Quapaw Line was the boundary between Original City of Little Rock and the Quapaw Nation until 1824, when the Quapaws ceded to the United States all their remaining lands in Arkansas. Thereafter it served as the boundary between Original City and later additions to the east. " West of the Quapaw Line" and "East of the Quapaw Line" are frequently found in old deeds as part of the legal descriptions, although the name of the subdivision would have been more specific.
Thus the Quapaw Line continued to have meaning in the real estate history of Little Rock long after it lost its initial significance. For this reason, the historic preservation and restoration district created in 1961 was named the Quapaw Quarter, at the suggestion of Jim Hatcher, an architect who acted as a consultant to the original committee.
Little Rock's first brickyard was started in the spring of 1821 , but the majority of the buildings erected in the first decade were built of logs. A newcomer in the spring of 1827 said there were about 60 buildings, of which six were brick, eight were frame, and the rest were log cabins. All but one of the brick buildings were business buildings, but a second brick residence was built about that time. Some of the frame build ings probably were log cabins that had been weatherboarded, giving them the appearance of frame. The Jesse Hinderliter house, now part of the Arkansas Territorial Restoration, is the only surviving example.
By 1860, the population had inched up to 3,727. Then came the turmoil of the Civil War and an influx of new people at the end, so that the population more than tripled by 1870, when the census enumerator listed 12,375 people. In 1868, the City Council designated 22 blocks and several fractional blocks as a "fire district," in which all buildings subsequently erected were required to be constructed of brick, stone, or other non-combustible materials. The law was well enforced, though though an occasion waiver was granted. The fire lines included all the business district and other blocks where buildings were close together.
No restrictions were placed on buildings outside the fire limits, but this emphasis on safety undoubtedly influenced many people to bui ld their homes of brick instead of frame. At last Little Rock had lost the appearance of a frontier village. The town crept steadily southward and westward, filling in the blank spots in the plat with a mixture of modest cottages and imposing Victorian structures, many of them elaborately embellished with gingerbread. Houses of the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century abound in Little Rock, and many are in fair to excellent states of preservation. As the residential districts continued the westward move, the opening of Pulaski Heights in 1907 marked the beginning of the decline of the Quapaw Quarter area as the most desirable residential property.
The restoration movement of recent years has brought a revival of interest in the older parts of the city. Creation of the Quapaw Quarter in 1961 gave impetus to this movement, and many people are now involved as participants in the restoration of Little Rock's historic buildings.
† Adapted from: Margaret Ross, The Building of the Quapaw Quarter. in Quapaw Quarter: Guide to Little Rocks 19th Century Neighbborhoods,. rstudies.contentdm.oclc.org, accessed June 2026.
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