Conway, Arkansas: Toad Suck

The center of Conway's downtown is called "Toad Suck Square." A giant Toad Suck emblem is permanently painted in the intersection of Oak Street and Front Street. The emblem is ceremonially retouched (blocking the busy intersection) just before the annual "Toad Suck Daze" festival that is held the first weekend in May every year. An oversized yellow and green street sign labels this as "Toad Suck Square." This is also where the mayor's office is located.

A Toad Store is located on Oak Street one block West of Toad Suck Square.

Yes, that story about rivermen sucking on bottles and swelling up like toads is the story that keeps getting reprinted in the Arkansas history books and keeps getting repeated. The story first appeared in a "history" written by a guy named Alsopp, who had some pretty soft standards, scholastically speaking. In the absence of evidence, he would simply report whatever bogus story he had on hand.

Here's what I do know about the origins of the name Toad Suck: Today there is a park by the Arkansas river named "Toad Suck Park." At this point there was once a ferryboat called the "Toad Suck Ferry" which would carry a couple of cars across the river on each trip. The ferry was named for a public house, a shack of sorts which might have served as a saloon, hotel, storage shed or any number of purposes. The structure was called "Toad Suck," and one or another structure was in that spot at least back into the nineteenth century.

That's it. That's all we really know. The story about the rivermen swelling up like toads is 100% invention. As long as you're going to invent something, we should at least base it on evidence that we do have. Here's my favorite explanation. The shack, being located at a ferry point, where the road met the river, was propitiously located to serve as a storage depot for crops and local products as they awaited barges for transport. This area has long produced sugar cane, sorghum, molasses and the like; and since many place names around here are anglicanize corruptions of French words (Aux Arcs became Ozarks, for example), I suggest that Toad Suck is an English corruption of the French "Taudis Sucre," meaning "sugar shack."]

There is a place near Conway named Toad Suck. It used to be served by a ferry obviously named "The Toad Suck Ferry". Toad Suck apparently was named because of some drinking rivermen who were sucking booze from bottles until they were as swollen as toads.