CHRISTMAS/TAYLOR- Ashley CO., AR

Ashley County is located in southeast Arkansas and is part of both the Mississippi Alluvial and West Gulf Coastal plains. Soil in the eastern Delta region of the county is conducive to the cultivation of the great cash crops of the state: cotton, rice, and soybeans. The western part of the county, being mainly upland forests, developed into the city of Crossett in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, becoming home to one of the largest industrial enterprises in Arkansas: the Crossett Lumber Company, later to become Georgia-Pacific Corporation (GP). At its peak, GP owned some 800,000 acres in southeast Arkansas and northeast Louisiana, and Crossett billed itself as “The Forestry Capital of the South.”

Ashley County—formed out of Chicot, Drew, and Union counties—was established on November 30, 1848, as Arkansas’s fifty-third county and is the sixth-largest county in the state in terms of area. It was named for Chester Ashley, the third Arkansan elected to the U.S. Senate and a prominent figure in territorial and antebellum Arkansas. Its eastern boundary is Chicot County, while the Ouachita River lies to the west. To the north is Drew County, and to the south is north Louisiana’s Morehouse Parish. Ashley County is bisected by the Bayou Bartholomew. Important roads serving Ashley County today are U.S. Highway 425 from north to south and U.S. Highway 82 from east to west.

Louisiana Purchase through Early Statehood
When U.S. surveyor Nicholas Right or entered the Arkansas Territory in 1826, he found settlers who had come to a land that they found to be abundantly fertile and in which game and fish were plentiful. The area abounded with timber, especially hardwood. As the hardwood was cleared for cultivation, pine took over.

On December 14, 1854, Hamburg was incorporated and designated the county seat of Ashley County. It is not known why the name Hamburg was chosen, but it is speculated that the town was named after Hamburg, Germany, because it had many German residents. The town became a merchant center for the prosperous planters operating in the fertile Delta region. Other thriving, agriculture-based communities in the county were Montrose, Parkdale, Portland, and Wilmot. Many other towns, such as the Berea community, formed along the county’s waterways, but the advent of railroads led to their demise. Fountain Hill, located in the upland forest area north of Hamburg, is one of the oldest communities in this county.

By 1855, many farms were producing cotton, corn, wheat, potatoes, and livestock. Timber was rafted down the Saline River to other settlements. Both rafting and timber were very profitable, though rafting stopped when railroads arrived.

Civil War through Reconstruction
Ashley County experienced solid growth in the years leading up to the Civil War. From a population of 2,058 in 1850, the county had grown to 8,590 in 1860. The Civil War interrupted this growth, so that by 1870, the population had dropped to 8,042.

Residents of Ashley County served as members of the armies of the Confederacy in proportion to their numbers. Thirteen became Confederate navy captains, such as Robert J. Winters, who piloted a supply craft serving Confederate soldiers along the Saline and Ouachita rivers. Another 781 enlisted and were organized into companies of sixty-four to 116 men. Although there were no major battles in the county, there are accounts of several minor skirmishes, one of which occurred near the Saline River landing at Longview.

Congress’s 1867 passage of “An Act for the More Efficient Government of the Rebel States” divided the South into five districts and implemented martial law in 1868. Only by taking an oath of allegiance to the United States and ratifying the Fourteenth Amendment were Southern states exempt from this rule. But this development set off violence in Ashley County in opposition to congressional Reconstruction, and federal laws were broken to prevent African Americans from gaining equality.

When the Fourteenth Amendment was passed in 1868, Arkansas refused to ratify it, an action that was supported by Ashley County’s representative to the state legislature. Later that year, a state convention was called to formulate a new constitution. Ashley County’s two delegates, Colonel William S. Norman and a Mr. Moore, were not seated at the convention until it was in its sixteenth day because of questions concerning the validity of their election. At the conclusion of this convention, which resulted in a proposed constitution conforming to Reconstruction laws, Norman was one of sixteen delegates who demurred from signing the new document.

Post Reconstruction through the Gilded Age
The 1890s saw the beginning of what was to become one of Arkansas’s most important economic developments: the wood products industry. The western portion of the county was of the upland forest variety, and when three investors from Davenport, Iowa, acquired land to support a sawmill, they also made the decision to start a new town. Crossett was located about fifteen miles west of Hamburg. The town was settled in 1899 but was not incorporated until 1903.

Early Twentieth Century
After the Civil War, the county enjoyed prosperity until the Depression. In the early years, the railroads that had developed in the late 1890s helped support the economy but were later supplanted by the growth in highway transportation. The communities in the eastern part of the county were supported by farming, while Crossett continued its growth as a manufacturing center. Crossett’s population grew from 2,038 in 1910 to 4,891 in 1940.

Ashley County was within the flood zone of the Flood of 1927. The greatest effect of the flood was felt in the low-lying Delta region of the county, while the upland wood-product-manufacturing area experienced only minor disruption of activity.

Ashley County was home to an important federal experiment in the public health sector during this era. In 1916, a mosquito-eradication project was funded, which reduced the incidence of malaria by some eighty percent using a system of drainage and poisoning. This system became known as the “Crossett Project” and was used as an example in other parts of the country.

World War II through Modern Era
The county’s population began to decline after World War II as agricultural workers were replaced by machines and other workers left for better paying jobs. GP bought the Crossett Lumber Company in 1962 and began distancing itself from the communities and small businesses it helped spawn, although it continues to be the county’s biggest employer. Other large employers are the Bemis Company in Crossett and the Barnes companies in Hamburg.

Forest products account for fifty-seven percent of the value of all shipments from the county and are responsible for twenty-six percent of the employment. Forest acreage and growing stock have declined in the past few years, especially in the bottomlands.

About 300 farms in the county produce cotton, rice, soybeans, wheat, and grain sorghum. Tomato, cucumber, and bell pepper producers contribute to the economy, as do a few cattle ranchers. A few rice farmers have turned their fields into catfish farms, though not on a large scale. Ashley County ranks forty-second in the state in farm income.