Biohazard Cleanup Near Downtown Cale Cale, AR

Cale is a tiny incorporated town on Highway 200 near the center of Nevada County, built on a ridge between Little Caney Creek and Big Caney Creek.

The community began around 1901 as a lumber settlement, when the Westmoreland family built a sawmill on the ridge capable of cutting 10,000 feet of lumber a day and opened a general store.

Cale's post office was also established in 1901; the names Zion and Honeyville were considered for it, and the Encyclopedia of Arkansas notes that no reliable source survives explaining the origin of the name Cale.

By 1906 residents of Cale and the surrounding area owned and operated their own telephone company, the Prescott and Cale Telephone Company.

Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church anchored the community, and Cale's taxpayers well funded Nevada County School District No. 21.

As the timber was cleared, Cale's rich soil was planted in cotton, corn, and fruit, and farmers later shifted toward livestock and poultry production.

Although the community dates to 1901, Cale did not incorporate as a town until July 22, 1971, unusually late for an Arkansas settlement of its age.

Just north of town sits Barham Lake, a reservoir of two lakes separated by a road, with a park on the south shore of one of them.

Cale's local school eventually consolidated into the Nevada School District based at Rosston.

The 2020 census counted 73 residents in Cale; although a larger population was reported in 1980, recent decades' counts have held between seventy and eighty people, including 75 people in 30 households in 2000.