Visitors Guide to Wilson, Arkansas
Hampson Archeological Museum State Park
Wilson is located in southeastern Mississippi County. The town was founded in 1886 by Robert E. Lee Wilson. Wilson was a Mississippi County native who was a self made man who by the age of eighteen had traded his cleared farm for more than 2,000 acres of timber and had gone into the logging business. Wilson founded the community to house the workers of his nearby logging and sawmill operations. Unlike most timber men, Wilson held on to his cleared land and began farming operations. Constructed as a model town, its residents enjoyed a higher standard of living than most in the Delta region.
When Wilson’s son and bride returned from their wedding trip to England, they set out to build a large home in the Tudor style. By the time it was finished in 1925, all the buildings in Wilson were built in the in the English Revival or Tudor style of architecture. Existing buildings were retrofitted with brick facades to match the new buildings. One of the first beautification projects was to line all the streets with cottonwood trees to provide shade.
Lee Wilson & Company operated the town of Wilson as a wholly owned subsidiary until after World War II. All of Its residents were all company employees and paid no taxes for the maintenance of the town. By 1945, the town was operating at a considerable loss, and the company decided to sell the homes to their owners and incorporate the town. With the increased mechanization in agriculture, fewer laborers were needed to successfully operate the Wilson farming operation and the population declined. Today, most of the town’s residents commute to the larger communities in the region to work.
Wilson is home to Hampson Archeological Museum State Park. The park is located on five acres on the north side of the town, on land donated by R. E. Lee Wilson III. In 2007, the Wilson family donated additional land to enable the construction of a new state-of-the-art facility to house the collection of thousands of artifacts taken from the nearby Nodena Site that was excavated by archeologist Dr. James K. Hampson.
