The city of Belmont was created to provide entertainment for the WWI soldiers and visiting family and friends to Camp Pike. It was located in modern-day North Little Rock, Arkansas. During WWI, the military department invested heavily in soldier’s education, health, and entertainment. Belmont supplied a source for controlled fun, right outside the front gate. An essential part of the landscape was the luxurious Hotel Belmont, established in the newly built Saint Joseph's Orphanage.

 

   It was important to ease the minds of mothers and wives back home that the young men they sent to war would be returned with "no scars except those won in honorable conflict."(President Woodrow Wilson 1918) Some social reformers latched onto the concerns and capitalized on it as entrepreneurs. The land was selected, leased, and businesses opened to bring the best to troops and their visiting families.   

 

   Between 1918-1922 North Little Rock experienced an intentional rapid development of this area. The Hotel and the surrounding city are an important understudied part of the local economy and its history. The people behind it invested their time, capital, and hopes into it, only to watch it fade within a short period of time. What happened to the people and their businesses? How is it so easy to forget something in such a short period of time?

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   To understand the world that created Belmont, we need to look at: