Lost Forty Brewing and the Forest That Shaped Its Name

(Lost Forty)

The inspiration for the name of Little Rock’s Lost Forty Brewing is a 40-acre patch of forest in Calhoun County.

The Lost 40 of forestry fame is a tract of mature forest owned by PotlatchDeltic Corp. It’s known for its large trees, some more than 200 years old, according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas.

The acreage is protected by a 40-year cooperative management agreement between PotlatchDeltic and the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission signed in 1996.

John Beachboard, a Lost Forty Brewing co-owner, said that his grandfather lived in Warren and worked in a Potlatch lumber mill. Granddad told a 6- or 7-year-old John that the lumberjacks would “go out to cut the Lost 40 and they would miss it or not find it, and for one reason or another, it became code for ‘We’re going to screw off and drink beer.’”

The Encyclopedia of Arkansas says there are several stories behind the Lost 40 tract name. One of them “holds that the foresters who worked for the various companies that owned it in the mid-twentieth century recognized the increasing rarity of such mature trees and, when they were sent out to mark the trees to be cut, would claim that they could not find or access the tract.

Regardless, the tract has escaped logging and supports a diverse forest with large examples of many tree species.”