Nestled in a valley amid the peaks of the Ozark Mountains in northern Crawford County, the town of Chester was once a thriving timber community in the late 19th century, with a prominent stop on the Frisco Railroad. A post office, shops, churches, a school and a hotel were built along the line in the span of just a few years. When the rail line was extended to Fort Smith, business shifted to the larger city to the south and Chester’s population declined. Between 1908 and 1957, the town was also beset by a series of disasters. Two fires and two floods destroyed nearly the entire town.
Of Chester’s original buildings, only one structure remains—a hotel and mercantile built in 1887 by Jacob Yoes, a U.S. Marshal who served under Bass Reeves. It is this building that Mayor Lacey Hendrix hopes will be the anchor of her beloved community’s resurgence.
When Hendrix and her husband Lance were first married, they spent time exploring and living abroad in Egypt, western Asia and England before settling stateside in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. The pull of her hometown was strong, however, and the couple moved back to Chester. They decided to invest in their community and bought the Yoes building, which was in severe disrepair after sitting on the market for several years. “It was rough, y’all,” Hendrix says. “It was horror-story rough.”
They bought the building in late 2019, just before the pandemic hit, and spent the next 18 months working with mostly local contractors to restore the building. It is now open once again and home to the Beard and Lady Inn and a mercantile selling apothecary-style personal care products and crafts made by local artisans.
Hendrix’s investment in her hometown didn’t go unnoticed, and friends and family urged her to run for public office. Reluctant at first, she decided that serving as mayor could help build upon what she and Lance had started and make Chester a destination. She won a tight election in 2022 and is now in her first term as mayor. She has enjoyed working with the council and community stakeholders to create a vision of what Chester can become, she says. “There’s a good community here. Everybody’s been so kind. Just being able to sit down at a table with people is pretty awesome. Not everybody gets that experience.”
