Biohazard and Crime Scene Remediation in England, AR

England is a city in southeastern Lonoke County, Arkansas — and despite its name, it is not named for the country of England.

The town was named for John Calhoun England, a landowner and lawyer for the Cotton Belt Railroad who bought the original townsite tracts and had them surveyed into lots when the railroad arrived in 1888.

The Postmaster General at first refused to accept the name England for the post office because of a rule against naming a post office after a foreign country, before finally allowing it; the office had opened in 1880 under the name Groveland.

England was incorporated on March 1, 1897.

The 2020 census counted 2,477 residents in England, in 1,061 households; it is the fourth-largest city in Lonoke County, part of the Little Rock metropolitan area, and a bedroom community for both Little Rock and Pine Bluff.

England's population peaked at 4,423 in the cotton-boom census of 1920 and has fallen since as farming mechanized.

The soil around England, in the Arkansas River floodplain at the edge of the Grand Prairie, is classified among the most productive in the country, supporting cotton, rice, soybeans, and corn.

In 1902, farmer William H. Fuller moved to the England area and began experimenting with rice seed he had brought from Louisiana, experiments that helped launch the Grand Prairie rice industry; a rice mill followed in 1913.

In the winter of 1930–31, drought and hunger drove hundreds of tenant farmers into England to demand Red Cross food relief in what became known as the England Food Riot, an event that sparked national debate about relief policy and drew humorist Will Rogers to the area to raise money for the farmers.

England's schools desegregated in the 1970–71 school year, and a 1990 racial conflict at England High School drew national attention before Governor Bill Clinton helped local parents form a biracial committee to resolve it — an episode later cited as proof of his peacemaking skills during his 1992 presidential campaign.