Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in Gilmore, AR

Gilmore is a city in Crittenden County in eastern Arkansas, situated along U.S. Highway 63 and Interstate 555 about two miles south of the Poinsett-Mississippi county line.

Gilmore is named for Virginia-born John Gilmore, who moved to the area with his family by way of Missouri in the late 1850s and became one of the largest cattlemen in Crittenden County, owning over 800 head of cattle and 2,500 acres at his death in 1883.

Levi Barton Boon, a Union army veteran who settled in Gilmore in 1883, served as its first postmaster and owned a farm, store, livery stable, and the first cotton gin in town.

An established community arose around Gilmore Station when the Springfield and Memphis Railroad built its line through the area in 1883.

The Chapman & Dewey Lumber Company cleared most of the forested acreage around Gilmore, operating a company boarding house, grist mill, and wood veneer mill, and drawing virgin timber from Marlin Swamp west of town.

Once the timber was cleared, farming took preeminence in Gilmore starting around 1910, and the community has remained agricultural ever since.

Gilmore was formally incorporated on November 23, 1955.

The 2020 census counted 176 people in Gilmore, down from 188 in 2010 and a peak of 503 in 1980, across a large, rural city area of 13.52 square miles in the Mississippi Alluvial Plain.

Gilmore lies within the Northern Backswamps ecoregion, and the Wapanocca National Wildlife Refuge, preserving year-round flooded bald cypress forest, lies southeast of the city.

Gilmore is in the Marion School District today; its former Turrell School District consolidated with the Marion district on July 1, 2010, closing Turrell High School.