Central Delta Depot Museum

The museum is an initiative of the Central Delta Historical Society, organized in the 1990s, and it preserves the story of a town the railroad literally created. Brinkley grew from a construction camp nicknamed "Lick Skillet" on the Little Rock and Memphis line — workers cooked supper over open fires until the last skillet was licked — and was laid out in the winter of 1869 on railroad land, incorporating on August 6, 1872 with 50 qualified voters. The town honors Robert Campbell Brinkley, the Memphis banker who led the Little Rock and Memphis Railroad Company after its 1852 land grant. More lines followed: the Cotton Plant Railroad originated here in 1879, the Texas and St. Louis Railway came through in 1883, and the Brinkley, Helena and Indian Bay Railway connected around 1889, later becoming the Arkansas Midland and then part of the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern in 1910 — a junction-town inheritance the depot museum now interprets.