Biohazard Cleanup Near South Cotter Cotter, AR

Cotter is a small city on the White River in Baxter County, in the Ozarks of north-central Arkansas.

Cotter is well known as a destination for trout fishing on the White River, and the city bills itself as 'Trout Capital, U.S.A.' — the motto also appears on its city seal.

The city got its start in late 1902 as a railroad boomtown of the White River Railway, a division of the Missouri Pacific Railroad, when the Red Bud Realty Company, organized by railway attorney Walker V. Powell and local citizens, leased land for the line.

Cotter's post office was established on January 26, 1903, and its first newspaper, the Cotter Courier, began publication that December.

Cotter was incorporated on July 13, 1904, at a time when many of its townspeople were still living in a tent city near the river.

The division headquarters of the White River Railway was established in Cotter in 1905, and early businesses included hotels, drugstores, a lumber company, and a button factory that used mussel shells harvested from the White River.

In August 1906, after public notice was served ordering all African Americans to leave, Cotter became a 'sundown town' from which its small Black population was expelled, a chapter documented by historians of Baxter County.

The Cotter Bridge, dedicated on November 11, 1930, stretches about 1,850 feet across the White River and at the time was the largest Marsh rainbow-arch bridge in the United States; it now carries U.S. Highway 62.

President Harry Truman traveled by train to Cotter in connection with the July 2, 1952, dedication of Bull Shoals Dam and Lake.

The last passenger train pulled out of Cotter on March 21, 1960, closing the railroad era that had created the city.