Ten Mile House (Stagecoach House)

The Federal-style Ten Mile House is a largely intact rural residence with accompanying nineteenth-century outbuilding. John McHenry reportedly had the residence constructed on land his father Archibald McHenry purchased in 1822 after moving from Tennessee. The property was situated on what was then the Southwest Trail. A log house was erected prior to the construction of the present house. An advertisement for boarding horses at McHenry’s farm, “10 miles south of Little Rock,” in the March 1822 Arkansas Gazette stated that the family had taken up residence at the location by that year. The precise construction date of the Ten Mile House has not been determined. While family descendants prefer a date of 1836, Margaret Smith Ross (in a 1955 McHenry family history) suggested a date as early as 1825. Varied accounts state that the building was utilized as a stop on the stagecoach route along the Southwest Trail. During the federal occupation of Little Rock in 1863, the house was used as a military outpost by Union troops. The one-and-a-half-story brick house has largely retained its historic exterior appearance, with its paired chimneys rising from parapet walls at each end of the house, a central entrance with sidelights and a transom, and rectangular windows. The property includes the original smokehouse and well house and a kitchen building, which was appended to the main house in the 1970s. Stonemasons Robert Brownlee and Sam McMorrin, who were employed in the construction of the Old State House (PU8) in Little Rock, built the kitchen and cellar for John McHenry in the mid-1840s.