Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Friendship, AR

Friendship is a town in Hot Spring County, Arkansas, lying along U.S. Highway 67 about a quarter of a mile south of Interstate 30.

The Friendship community was established in the early 1850s by settlers from nearby Hot Springs, Tennessee, and Virginia, and G. M. Russell is credited with suggesting the name Friendship to reflect the close relationships among the settlers.

During the Civil War, a salt spring along the river near Friendship supported an important salt-making operation, with local women mining and hauling salt on horseback while most men were away serving in the Confederate army.

The Friendship Post Office opened on October 25, 1886, after residents petitioned for one that July, and mail originally arrived from Arkadelphia by way of the Ouachita River.

Friendship was incorporated as a town on July 11, 1938.

In the 1930s, resident Gus McDonald donated land for a two-cell jail built of native stone in 1937 and for the town hall, which was built on Church Street in 1960.

Friendship had its own high school until 1950, when it merged with Donaldson High School to form Ouachita High School in 1951 — built halfway between the two towns in a community named Midway because of the merger.

The 2000 census counted 206 people in 79 households in Friendship, and the population was 176 in 2010 and 158 in the 2020 census.

Friendship's town council voted unanimously on June 4, 2012, to disband its police department because of the cost of maintaining and staffing it as the population declined.

The town covers just 0.71 square miles, and its residents are served by the Ouachita School District.