Biohazard and Crime Scene Remediation in Alma, AR

Alma is a city in Crawford County, Arkansas, located in the Arkansas River Valley along the border between the flat river valley and the Boston Mountains foothills of the Ozarks.

The settlement was originally known as Gum Town for its abundance of gum trees before being renamed Alma and incorporated on January 7, 1874.

The land under Alma was purchased from the federal government by Armstead Smoot on August 3, 1836, less than two months after Arkansas became a state, and was sold to Colonel Mathias Locke in 1872.

The 2020 census counted 5,825 people and 2,222 households in Alma, making it Crawford County's second-largest city and the sixth-largest in the Fort Smith metropolitan area.

Alma calls itself the "Spinach Capital of the World," a title it adopted around 1987 because the local Allen Canning Company canned more than half of all the spinach canned in the United States — about 60 million pounds a year.

A bronze statue of Popeye the Sailor Man, erected in 2007 atop a fountain in Popeye Park, honors Alma's connection to Popeye-brand canned spinach.

Alma's water tower is painted to resemble a giant can of spinach, a landmark visible to motorists on Interstate 40.

The annual Spinach Festival, first held in 1986, takes place at Alma's City Park and Community Center on the third weekend of April and features a spinach-eating contest and a spinach drop from a fire department ladder truck.

On June 23, 1933, outlaws Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow and their gang killed Alma's town marshal, Henry D. Humphrey, after robbing a grocery store in nearby Fayetteville.

Interstates 40 and 49 intersect near Alma, and U.S. Routes 64 and 71 also pass through the city, making highway traffic a major source of local commerce.