Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Caddo Gap, AR

Caddo Gap is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Montgomery County, Arkansas, set in the Ouachita Mountains of the state's west-central hills.

The community lies on the Caddo River between Glenwood and Norman, at the natural gap, or narrows, where the river cuts through the mountains.

Caddo Gap was first listed as a census-designated place in the 2020 census, when the Census Bureau counted just 39 residents.

The gap and the river are named for the Caddo Indians, whose towns once spread across what is now southwestern Arkansas, northeastern Texas, and northwestern Louisiana.

At the gap, the Caddo River has carved a narrow, boulder-strewn gorge through Arkansas novaculite, and the float trip from Caddo Gap down to Glenwood is the most popular section of this renowned canoeing stream.

Naturally occurring thermal springs rise from the riverbed near the gap, waters that drew the Caddo and other Native peoples to the spot for religious and medicinal purposes for centuries.

By local tradition commemorated on markers in the community, Hernando de Soto's expedition clashed here in 1541 with the Tula Indians, whom the Spanish described as the best fighting men they had encountered in North America.

A state historical marker erected by the Arkansas History Commission in 1976 preserves the De Soto story, although modern scholars reconstructing the expedition's route place the Tula encounter farther northwest, near present-day Fort Smith.

The village was settled before 1850 near the narrows, and a pioneer road through the gap, with a toll bridge over the river, connected Fort Smith with Old Washington.

The present community dates to the Gurdon and Fort Smith Railroad, whose arrival in 1907 prompted a new town to be built on what had been the Jim Vaught plantation.