Visitors Guide to Poinsett County, Arkansas
Lake Poinsett State Park
Harrisburg, Arkansas
Poinsett County is located in northeast Arkansas. Crowley’s Ridge, a highland geologic anomaly that begins in southeast Missouri and ends in south central Arkansas, runs through the center of the county. On the eastern side of the ridge is the rich, alluvial land of the cotton producing Delta region, while on the western side is prairie land that is used mostly for the cultivation of rice.
When European settlers began arriving in the early 19th century there were a few Native American communities, mostly settlements of Cherokee. The first permanent European settlers in Poinsett County were Charles and Rebekah Shaver who arrived in 1824 and bought a fur trapper’s small cabin on Sugar Creek (now called Bay Village) and settled on the land with their family and several slaves. Poinsett County was established on February 27, 1838. It was named for Joel Roberts Poinsett, a statesman, scientist, and botanist. Poinsett was the secretary of war in President Van Buren’s administration. He was also a horticulturist of note and is remembered foremost for his introduction of a new flower, the poinsettia, into the United States.
Although there were a few communities of widely scattered settlers, there were no towns in the region when Poinsett County was created. William Harris was named the first county judge and the first terms of the county court and other county business was conducted at his home until a permanent seat could be selected. A site for the new county seat was selected about four miles north of Judge Harris’s home. It was named Bolivar after General Simon Bolivar, a South American revolutionary hero. The first term of court was held in the new courthouse in September 1839. Bolivar was a typical frontier town with a smattering of general stores, blacksmith shops, hotels, law and doctors’ offices, and saloons. Goods often had to be shipped from New Orleans, Louisiana, up the Mississippi River to Memphis, Tennessee. They were then taken by riverboat up the St. Francis River to Wittsburg and then by wagon up Crowley’s Ridge to Bolivar. Wittsburg, located in what is now Cross County was where the St. Francis River met Crowley’s Ridge, providing a natural place to establish a river port. Wittsburg eventually became an important trading port for all of eastern Arkansas that bordered the ridge, though now it no longer exists.
In the 1850s there had been agitation for moving the seat of the county government to the center of the county and the decision to move the seat came after a hotly contested election. In 1856, the county seat was moved to a new city named Harrisburg, named after Benjamin Harris, who was the son of the first county judge and who gave the land on which the new courthouse was built. Poinsett County was much larger than it is today. The county’s size has been reduced twice since its creation. In 1858, Craighead County was created, taking much of the north part of the county and in 1862 the Confederate legislature created Cross County which took much of the southern portion. Some land was added, however, to the county to the east.
Poinsett County was sparsely populated and few of the settlers in the region brought slaves. This may be one of the reasons that the Poinsett County delegation voted not to secede from the Union at the start of the Civil War. Like much of Arkansas, the Civil War devastated what little commerce there was in Poinsett County. The population also dropped over 50 percent from 1860 to 1870. The politicians that took over the county government after the Civil War almost bankrupted the county.
The coming of the railroads in the early 1880s drastically affected the economy of Poinsett County. The growth of the county had been stalled by the inability to get products to market. The Texas and St. Louis Railway Company completed track through Weiner and the St. Louis and Iron Mountain Railway ran through the center of the county in 1882, with the Kansas City, Ft. Scott, and Gulf Railroad opening service in east Poinsett County the following year. Cities along the tracks grew rapidly and and the harvest of the vast timberland began in earnest. The railroads connected the wilderness of Poinsett County to the large industrial centers. The trains took thousands of furs out of the county, shipped cattle to market in St. Louis, Missouri, and carried cotton and lumber to the mills. Despite this uplift, the county mostly consisted of poor sharecroppers and tenant farmers.
Southern Tenant Farmers Museum
Tyronza, Arkansas
Poinsett County was hit harder during the Flood of 1927 than any other county in Arkansas. Though residents were able to relocate their livestock to the high ground of Crowley’s Ridge, over 200,000 acres were under water at the worst phase of the flooding, and thousands of sharecroppers and their families were rendered homeless. Many historians believe that this flood and its impact played a role in the creation of the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union, one of the few interracial unions in its day. The Union was founded in Tyronza to advocate for the rights of sharecroppers and tenant farmers to earn a reasonable living. In 2006 Arkansas State University opened a museum in Tyronza dedicated to explaining to the public this unique organization.
During World War Poinsett County was home to two prisoner of war camps that housed Germans that were captured in North Africa. The prisoners assisted in manual labor and were especially helpful to the farmers, who had first call on their services because of the national need for food and fiber -rice and cotton -during the war. The prisoners were returned to their homeland after the war. There are no memorials of this time in the area.
Like much of eastern Arkansas, the population of rural Poinsett County began to shrink with the mechanization of agriculture. Many sharecropper homes were destroyed and the land planted to crops. Modern-day Poinsett County is mainly rural, with farming being the principal industry. It is one of the highest producers of rice in the nation and also grows much cotton and soybeans. A number of structures in Poinsett County are on the National Register of Historic Places, including the county courthouse and the office building of the Modern News newspaper in Harrisburg, the old Singer Community Building in Trumann, the Bacon Hotel in Whitehall, and the Marked Tree Lock and Siphons.
