Biohazard and Crime Scene Remediation in Cherry Valley, AR

Cherry Valley is a second-class city in northern Cross County, Arkansas, sitting at the western edge of Crowley's Ridge where Arkansas Highways 1 and 42 intersect.

The city takes its name from a grove of cherry trees that grew near Cooper's Creek at its junction with the Harrisburg Road.

The original settlement formed around the Civil War era — Cross County historian Richard L. Hartness put its founding at perhaps 1867 — and a post office opened at the farm of G. W. Stacy in 1870.

When the Helena and Iron Mountain Railroad was completed on the lowland west of Crowley's Ridge in 1882, Stacy built a hotel beside the tracks and the town shifted to the railroad, shipping raw and finished timber and then farming the cleared land.

By 1889, Cherry Valley had a school, two churches, two general stores, a stave mill, a cotton gin, and two sawmills, and the city formally incorporated on August 6, 1910.

The Cherry Valley Mounds near town have given their name to the Cherry Valley Phase (1100–1400), an archaeological culture identified from a possible ceremonial site distinct from neighboring northeastern Arkansas groups.

The 2020 census counted 575 residents in Cherry Valley, down from 651 in 2010 and a peak of 729 in 1980, within an area of about 0.77 square miles.

Agriculture still anchors the Cherry Valley economy — rice and soybeans dominate the lowlands while cattle are raised on Crowley's Ridge — and the largest employer, ECS House Industries, makes customized farming equipment.

The Bank of Cherry Valley, originally founded in 1907, provided banking services to local farmers for generations before being purchased by the First National Bank in the early 1990s.

Cherry Valley students attend the Cross County School District, formed by the merger of the Cherry Valley, Hickory Ridge, and Vanndale districts, and the district's Cross County High School stands near the city.