24/7 Biohazard and Crime Scene Cleanup in Clarksville, AR

Clarksville is a city in Johnson County and the county seat, nestled on Spadra Creek north of the Arkansas River between the river and the foothills of the Ozark Mountains, where Interstate 40 and U.S. Highway 64 intersect within the city limits.

Clarksville became the Johnson County seat in 1837, succeeding Spadra, and it was incorporated on December 21, 1848.

Clarksville's roots reach back to a federal Indian trading factory established under Matthew Lyon at Spadra in 1818, after Cherokee settlers had come to live along the Arkansas River by 1800.

The railroad reached Johnson County in 1873, shifting commerce away from the old Arkansas River towns of Spadra, Pittsburg Landing, and Morrison Bluff and toward Clarksville.

Clarksville is home to the University of the Ozarks, a private liberal arts university affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) whose 30-acre campus sits atop College Hill on the city's north edge and enrolls roughly 900 students from some 25 countries.

The university traces its roots to the Cane Hill School founded in 1834, making it the oldest university in Arkansas; after Cane Hill College closed, Arkansas Cumberland College opened in Clarksville on September 8, 1891, was renamed the College of the Ozarks in 1920, and became the University of the Ozarks in 1987.

The university was a pioneer in Arkansas higher education: it was the first institution of higher education in the state to admit women, in 1875, housed the state's first pharmacy school in 1946, and in 1959 became the first predominantly white university in Arkansas to graduate an African American student.

The 2020 census counted 9,381 people in Clarksville, up from 9,178 in 2010, and American Community Survey estimates put the city at roughly 3,700 households.

Clarksville is home to the Johnson County Peach Festival, held since 1938, a nearly week-long summer celebration featuring a parade, a terrapin derby, a greased pig chase, frog-jumping and peach-eating contests, and the crowning of Queen Elberta.

Johnson County was once one of the centers of Arkansas's peach industry, with more than 100 peach orchards in the county at its height, and the county also has a long coal-mining heritage.