Lawrence Arthur Wisenbaker deeded right-of-way to the Georgia Southern & Florida Railroad in the 1880s, insuring the success of the community, which was known as Twin Lakes until 1890. In the early 20th century, the Palmer Brothers’ Turpentine Still and Ewell Brown’s Lake Park Manufacturing Company, a cotton gin, were two of the largest businesses. Lake Park’s history is largely tied to agriculture and cotton has made a comeback, but the big crop here is carrots. Along with nearby Echols County, Lake Park is the “Carrot Capital of the South”.
Joiner Smith shared this great memory of the old water tower and Newington: I grew up at Longwood Plantation about 5 miles from Newington. Graduated from Screven County High School in 1964. My mother taught grammar school in Newington. School has since burned. When I was in high school, Cairo Pickle Company would open a cucumber plant during the summer adjacent to this water tank for local farmers to sell their cucumbers About 8 of us boys worked there. The big deal was who could throw a cucumber over the water tank. I could. Newington used to have a theater, pharmacy/drug store, several service stations, grocery stores, doctor office, cafe, hardware store, ice house, wooden water tower for filling up the train, greyhound bus stop, barber shop and the Big Ape beer store just outside of town – time moves on.
The building pictured above was still operating as a country store when I made the photograph. It’s probably one of the oldest stores in the area. Dianne Morgan Thompson shared some great memories of Arabi: I grew up and lived in Arabi all my life until I married and moved away. There are some fond memories packed away in that hometown. I wished you would contact some of the kids from the older merchants that were booming in 1959 and 1960’s. One of the favorite hang outs was the McKinney’s Drug Store. There was an old gas station which was the main place for gas on the left side of the road just as you came into Arabi from the North and an old grocery store on the left just as you enter from the South. Both were on the curves as you entered this once quiet little town. Long been torn down as many places are that would have been a landmark, like the Bedgood house. T. Graham Brown, aka Tony Brown, lived there as a child across from the Methodist Church and we were family friends for as long as I can remember. There was a train wreck there in early 1960’s that Tony, Ronnie Morgan (my brother) and I stole washing powders from and got in big trouble. As I grew up my sister, Elaine and I had the first convertible in town and every teenager that was friends and not wanted to cruise around town with us. My daddy bought it when we were 13 and 14 years old so we couldn’t go far but we felt like a pair of queens. The Arabi Baptist Church was on front street until late 1960′ and then move in the old Arabi High School building which it remains today. I was the first person to marry in this new Church in 1968. Yes, all of the young’uns are gone or moved away that have the best memories of the town of Arabi.
The building on the left was a post office. I’m not sure about the other one. Bradley Waters notes that his father was postmaster here from the 1950s until he retired in 1985.
