Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Clarkedale, AR

Clarkedale is a small town in Crittenden County in the Arkansas Delta, and although it stayed unincorporated until the twenty-first century, it is one of the oldest settlements in the county.

The first county seat of Crittenden County, a settlement called Greenock, was located within the current boundaries of Clarkedale before the seat moved to Marion in 1836; only a cemetery remains of Greenock.

The 2020 census counted just 336 residents in Clarkedale, down from 371 in 2010, spread across about 11.44 square miles.

After the railroad came through in the early 1880s, Cleveland B. Clarke opened a store and became postmaster, and the settlement and its post office were first called Clarkton before the name changed to Clarkedale in 1910.

Clarkedale's plantation-era economy relied on tenant farmers, many of them African American, who worked the land with more than 200 mules and were paid in plantation scrip known locally as brozine, accepted only at the plantation store.

Desegregation and school consolidation eventually closed all of Clarkedale's own schools, and local children have since attended school in nearby Marion.

Clarkedale was incorporated as a town in 2001, a step taken so the community could qualify for state and federal money for road and water improvements.

The town sits near Interstate 55 north of West Memphis and close to the small community of Jericho, and a new post office building was dedicated in Clarkedale in 1989.