Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Fourche, AR

Fourche is a small incorporated town in northeastern Perry County, Arkansas, located on the banks of the Fourche La Fave River, for which it is named.

The name Fourche is pronounced to rhyme with “bush,” and “fourche” is the French word for “fork” — the river was given its name by French settler Peter La Fave, who explored it.

Fourche was incorporated on December 2, 1906, at the height of the Perry County timber boom.

Fourche's first white settlers, who arrived after the Civil War, were German, including Gottlob Faisst, who owned a tomato cannery he named the Central Arkansas Food Products Company.

Faisst's most important business was the Bryant Lumber Company, established in 1900; his family also ran a wine saloon, skating rink, and pool hall in one building that served as a community center for the German settlers.

Competition between the Bryant Lumber Company and the rival Fourche River Lumber Company erupted into lawsuits and alleged dynamite attacks on railroad bridges in 1904 and 1905, before the better-financed Fourche River company won in court.

In its lumber-era prime, Fourche had a train depot, a bank, a cotton gin, and a stock yard, the Fourche Inn hotel was a local fixture, and the Finkbeiner Meat Packing Company was founded in the town.

Fourche's post office was established in 1908, moved to Bigelow in 1912, reinstated in Fourche in 1916, and finally closed in 1933.

In 1913, the Bryant Lumber Company was tried on peonage-related charges involving Hungarian immigrant laborers recruited from New York City, and a jury acquitted the company after eight hours of deliberation.

Both of Fourche's early churches — one Baptist and one Methodist, attended by Black lumber workers and their families — had closed by the mid-1950s as the timber industry declined.