The JLC&E Railroad was chartered in 1897 by businessmen from Jonesboro, Arkansas in neighboring Craighead County to take advantage of the virgin timber of the "sunken lands" of the north eastern part of the state.

[3] The following year, the railroad came under the ownership of prominent Mississippi County plantation owner Robert E. Lee Wilson.

[1] It is a modest single-story wood-frame structure with a gable roof, standing at the northwest corner of South Dewey and Baltimore Streets.

Exhibits include artifacts from local military veterans, and the depot office and waiting room are set up to recreate the heyday of Manila of the 1920s.

This article about a property in Mississippi County, Arkansas on the National Register of Historic Places is a stub.