Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Chester, AR

Chester is a small town in northern Crawford County, Arkansas, surrounded by the higher peaks of the Ozark Mountains and the Ozark National Forest.

Chester was incorporated on February 11, 1889, and the 2020 census counted 144 residents in the town's roughly half a square mile.

Chester began as a timber town on the St. Louis–San Francisco Railway (the Frisco), whose line reached the site in 1882; a post office opened at the depot in 1883.

According to local history recorded by the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, the community was named by a railroad engineer known only as Mr. Hepburn.

The Frisco built a roundhouse and turntable at Chester in 1887, and James Wright platted nine blocks for the growing village that same year.

Chester's boom faded around 1900 when the Frisco line was completed to Fort Smith and the railroad's operations moved to the larger city.

Chester was repeatedly struck by disaster: fire destroyed nearly the entire town in 1908, a second fire in 1936 burned twelve buildings including the Methodist church, and floods hit in 1934 and again in May 1957 when a levee on Howard's Fork gave way.

Chester has three buildings on the National Register of Historic Places: the Masonic lodge and community building built in 1942, the old schoolhouse built in 1895, and the Jacob Yoes store.

The Jacob Yoes store, built of hand-kilned brick by hotelier Jacob Yoes and his sons, is the only structure in Chester to have survived both fires and both floods.

Chester's school was consolidated into the Mountainburg school system in 1946.