24/7 Trauma and Biohazard Cleanup in Egypt, AR

Egypt is a small incorporated town in western Craighead County, Arkansas, about sixteen miles west of Jonesboro on State Highway 91 near the Cache River.

Egypt is a town — not a census-designated place — and it was not incorporated until May 24, 1984, long after its founding era.

Early settlers, including W. R. and Lucinda Cureton and C. T. Downs, were in the area by 1850, drawn in part by Logan's Ferry across the Cache River.

A real town began to develop around 1898, when New York businessmen Will Smith and Van Lane arrived with interests in the area's abundant timber.

Local tradition says the name Egypt came from a trader who compared the area's abundant corn harvests to the plenty of ancient Egypt described in the biblical book of Genesis, and the surrounding township was named Promised Land Township in 1902.

The Sedgwick Tie and Timber Company built a narrow-gauge railroad connecting Egypt's timberlands to the Kansas City, Fort Scott and Memphis Railroad, making timber the town's major export.

Egypt's first post office was established on December 19, 1889, just across the Lawrence County line, and it moved back and forth between Lawrence and Craighead counties before settling in Craighead County in 1900; the post office is the only business that survives in town today.

A school was operating in Egypt by 1890, and at its peak enrollment the Egypt school is said to have had approximately 600 students, but in the late 1960s Egypt's schools were consolidated into the Westside Consolidated School District and the last Egypt class graduated in 1968.

By the 1930s Egypt had several stores, a cotton gin, a school, and churches, and in the 1950s it added a hotel, grocery stores and cafes, and two cotton gins.

The 2010 census counted 112 people in 42 households in Egypt, and the population was 113 in the 2020 census across the town's 0.34 square miles.