Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Dover, AR

Dover is a small city in Pope County, Arkansas, about eight miles north of Russellville, and it is part of the Russellville Micropolitan Statistical Area.

Dover served as the county seat of Pope County from 1841 until voters moved the seat to Russellville in an election held on March 19, 1887.

Accounts differ on Dover's name: some say British aristocrats named it in the 1830s for Dover, Kent, England, while others credit Stephen Rye with naming it in 1832 for Dover, Tennessee.

Dover was incorporated on June 14, 1870.

The 2020 census counted 1,337 residents in Dover, across about 2.83 square miles.

During the Civil War, Pope County's records were removed from the Dover courthouse in April 1862 and hidden in a cave five miles north of town, where they stayed until July 1865; bushwhackers burned the town itself in April 1865.

Dover was a major site of the Pope County Militia War, the violent post-Reconstruction feud between county officials and local opponents that brought federal troops to be stationed at Dover in the late 1860s and flared again in 1872.

The Dover to Clarksville Road, a heavily used route of the 1830s, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.

Dover's decline began when the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad bypassed the town in 1872, and it lost the county seat to Russellville fifteen years later.

The Methodist Church of North Arkansas built a school in 1868 on what is now the site of Dover High School, and Dover's first graduating class finished in 1923.