Biohazard and Crime Scene Remediation in Edgemont, AR

Edgemont is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in northern Cleburne County, Arkansas, sitting on the north shore of Greers Ferry Lake along Arkansas Highway 16, about 2 miles northwest of the city of Greers Ferry.

The community began as the Kinderhook settlement, slightly east of the present site, where the first settlers arrived in the 1840s and 1850s and farmed the flat, fertile Little Red River bottomland, growing large amounts of cotton while hill farmers found corn the only crop that grew consistently in the rocky soil.

Edgemont's post office was established on September 19, 1908 — the first post office in the area, serving many surrounding communities — and that date is also the first recorded use of the name Edgemont in place of Kinderhook; the community still has a post office with ZIP code 72044.

In the early 1900s Edgemont had three churches, a Masonic lodge, and a school that offered a high school diploma, and local citizens tired of fording the Little Red River built a 500-foot swinging bridge across it.

The Edgemont Bank was incorporated on October 8, 1908, with $10,000 in capital stock, though its last record with the State Bank Department dates to 1913.

Served by the Missouri and North Arkansas Railroad, Edgemont prospered from 1908 into the early 1940s with three sawmills, a cotton gin, several restaurants, a drugstore, and the Globe Cooperage and Lumber Company.

When the railroad tracks went out of commission in the 1940s, Edgemont fell into a sharp decline in both industry and population.

In the 1950s the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers told residents that once Greers Ferry Dam was completed their town would lie under sixty to eighty feet of water, so the whole community moved about one mile north, and the remains of old Edgemont still rest beneath Greers Ferry Lake.

Because it sits on the lake shore between the resort towns of Fairfield Bay and Greers Ferry, modern Edgemont's businesses cater mainly to the vacationers and retirees who frequent the Greers Ferry Lake area.

Edgemont was first listed as a census-designated place in the 2020 census, which counted just 56 residents.