Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Services in Guion, AR

Guion is a town on the east bank of the White River in southern Izard County, home to some of the area's first settlers and once a center of area trade.

Guion was established as a river landing originally called Wild Haws Landing, named for a type of bush that grew in abundance, and by 1877 it was one of about fourteen such landings between Calico Rock and Batesville; Don Wilson and his three sons had settled near Rocky Bayou around 1810.

Real growth came when a line of the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railroad was completed in 1902; the settlement, then known as Louis, was renamed Guion on April 24, 1903, believed to honor railroad official J. H. Guion.

Guion was incorporated as a town on July 19, 1907, and around 1912 it became the first town in Izard County to have running water, from a system with a gasoline-powered pump.

On April 10, 1929, a deadly tornado destroyed all but four of Guion's buildings, killing three people and injuring forty, and many survivors lived for a time in a tent city and in local sand caves.

Guion is home to the state's largest underground industrial sand mines — a mining venture in continuous operation since the early twentieth century that by 2010 was the only active underground sand-mining operation in Arkansas.

In 1962 area citizens financed the purchase of a steel ferry for crossing the White River at Guion, and when the state took control of the ferry in 1970 it had been the last privately owned ferry across a major Arkansas river.

Electricity came to Guion in 1942 when it was introduced by the Silica Products Company, and Guion's school, in operation since the early twentieth century, consolidated with Mount Pleasant in 1968.

At its business peak Guion had one of the county's largest stave mills, a hickory mill, a marble quarry, and a golf club factory.

The 2020 census counted 68 people in Guion, down from 86 in 2010 and 296 in 1910, and the 2000 census counted 90 people in 37 households.