Celebrate Berryville: Map

Last month, we closed for a day for staff training. And you may wonder what we do for staff trainings.

Part of our last training day was devoted to a session on providing reader’s advisory services, which I conducted, and most of the rest of the day was blocked off for us to attend the 2025 Rural Library Network eSummit.

I signed up for an eSummit session called “Plotting Possibilities: Visualizing Rural Library Partnerships.” It talked about how libraries can incorporate creating maps into their programming and services, and it was very interesting. I immediately started wondering about how to apply mapping to our Celebrate Berryville project.

It took me about 6 weeks of planning, researching, and mapping, but we are very pleased to now unveil our Celebrate Berryville map, which features locations highlighted throughout the program. Our hope is it will be an ongoing project and that we can add additional locations that come to our attention in the future.

I enjoyed the map research considerably, but one of my main roadblocks was that, though there is lots of great information from the local paper at the time (and from other sources), the paper rarely included business locations in its advertising. As a time traveler nearly 100 years from the future, I knew I needed something geographically based to help me pinpoint locations.

Part of my research included trying to find these tricky locations on Sanborn Fire Insurance maps, specifically the 1926-1937 one for Berryville. I always think of Berryville in terms of east to west regarding business location, which makes sense because many of our local businesses are spread out along Highway 62.

It was interesting, then, to see maps from the 1920s and 1930s before Highway 62 became the main thoroughfare that it is now. Instead, businesses in Berryville then were much more likely to be located north to south. There was a strong concentration of businesses along the square, which is to be expected, but there also were a lot of significant businesses north of the square close to what was then the town’s train depot, which is near where Tyson’s is now. They ranged from a wholesale grocery business, which would almost by necessity have to be close to the trains, to a cannery, which would also benefit from being so close to a major mode of transportation.

The subject of local canneries intrigued me ever since we highlighted them last spring. They were a major facet of Berryville and Carroll County’s economy in the 1920s and 1930s, but I never could find a unanimous answer to where the major cannery was in town. Some additional research in professional cannery journals from the time period and the Sanborn map finally answered my question (I think).

In 1928, multiple cannery operations and facilities unified under the name the Berryville Canning Company. The article announcing the merger names a plant in Berryville on Freeman and also notes other plants in Kingston, Marble, Metalton, and Cabanal as being part of the deal. On the Sanborn map for both 1926 and 1937, I found Berryville Canning Company’s plant on Freeman located across from the Tyson’s plant (which didn’t exist then) where the Berryville Pawn Shop is today.

The Sanborn maps also helped me locate the original IOOF and Masonic lodge location. Most sources I found referred to them on the square, but as earlier Sanborn maps show, they were actually in the school building next to the square, very close to the current library actually.

A final mystery remains, though, and I would love to know if anyone can shed some light on this. Many sources talk about the original Berryville Hospital being east of the square on Branch and Madison, and sources are divided on whether it opened in the early 1930s or the early 1940s.

And I did locate that on the 1937 Sanborn map, but it rather curiously says the building was “not in use” and instead notes a Carroll County Infirmary on what was then the edge of city limits near what we know now as Bobo Avenue. The Infirmary is listed (with no hospital at all on Branch and Madison) on the 1926 map as well.

It makes me wonder if both dates given the hospital are correct in that it was opened in the early 1930s but went unused for some time before reopening in that location in the early 1940s, but it still doesn’t shine any light on the history of the infirmary. Nevertheless, I have duly marked its approximate location on the map.

In any event, enough of my rambling! Let’s look at the map!

You can use the filters on the side to look at all the layers at once or to select the one you want to see. There is a layer for every Celebrate Berryville prompt that could be mapped.

What’s your favorite pin on the map? What locations would you like to have added? Do you know anything about the Carroll County Infirmary? Tell us in the comments!

“Cannery Merger in Arkansas.” The Canner. 68, no. 1 (December 22, 1928): 18. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Canner_and_Dried_Fruit_Packer/5jHh5QhpISUC.

Sanborn Map Company. Berryville, Carroll, Arkansas, August 1904. New York: Sanborn Map Company, 1904. “Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps.” ProQuest Digital Sanborn Maps, 1867-1970. (accessed January 8, 2026).

Sanborn Map Company. Berryville, Carroll, Arkansas, January 1926. New York: Sanborn Map Company, 1926. “Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps.” ProQuest Digital Sanborn Maps, 1867-1970. (accessed January 12, 2026).

Sanborn Map Company. Berryville, Carroll, Arkansas, January 1926-June 1937. New York: Sanborn Map Company, 1937. “Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps.” ProQuest Digital Sanborn Maps, 1867-1970. (accessed January 12, 2026).

Sanborn Map Company. Berryville, Carroll, Arkansas, May 1897. New York: Sanborn-Perris Map Company Limited, 1897. “Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps.” ProQuest Digital Sanborn Maps, 1867-1970. (accessed January 8, 2026).