Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Fordyce, AR

Fordyce is a city in southeast Dallas County in south-central Arkansas, set at the intersection of U.S. Highway 167 and Arkansas Highway 79 in the state's pine timber country.

Fordyce was established in 1882 and named for Colonel Samuel Wesley Fordyce, the railroad builder who personally scouted the route of the Texas and St. Louis Railway — later the Cotton Belt — on horseback between Cairo, Illinois, and Texarkana.

Fordyce was incorporated on April 8, 1884, growing up around the railroad with ten stores, two liveries, a hotel, and a depot in its earliest years.

Fordyce became the Dallas County seat in 1908, taking the honor from Princeton because, unlike the older town, Fordyce sat on both the Cotton Belt and Rock Island railroads.

The 2020 census counted 3,396 people in Fordyce living in 1,398 households and 808 families.

Fordyce has been shrinking since its peak of 5,175 residents in 1980, falling from 4,799 in 2000 and 4,300 in 2010 to 3,396 in 2020.

Timber has always been Fordyce's main industry: the Fordyce Lumber Company, established in 1889, employed a quarter of the town's working population by 1932 before Georgia-Pacific bought it in 1963.

In 1964 Georgia-Pacific opened the world's first southern pine plywood plant in Fordyce.

Fordyce's most famous son is football coach Paul 'Bear' Bryant, who moved to town in 1924 at age eleven, learned the game at Redbug Field — now listed on the Arkansas Register of Historic Places — and helped the Fordyce Redbugs win the 1930 state championship.

Fordyce and Dallas County claim the highest number of inductees into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame of any county in the state.