24/7 Trauma and Biohazard Cleanup in Hatfield, AR

Hatfield is a town on U.S. Highway 71 in western Polk County, in the Ouachita Mountains country of western Arkansas.

White settlers from Georgia, Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri, and Kentucky began arriving in the vicinity of Hatfield in the 1840s, and Thomas Adams, Edward Read, and Berry Ward each received federal land patents in the area in 1855.

Although the community originated before the Civil War and was briefly called Morley, its survival is credited to the railroad — now the Kansas City Southern — built through the area at the end of the nineteenth century.

Local tradition long held that Hatfield was named in memory of a railroad construction worker killed in an explosion while the railroad was being built, though the Encyclopedia of Arkansas notes that this story has been proven false.

Hatfield was incorporated on March 18, 1901.

In January 1938, a fire destroyed most of the businesses on Hatfield's Main Street, including a barbershop, a doctor's office, the post office, a variety store, a drugstore, and the Masonic lodge.

Hatfield's school district was consolidated into the Mena school district in 2004, and Mena operated an elementary school in Hatfield for a time after a 2009 tornado damaged Mena's middle school.

Hatfield's population peaked at 437 in the 1940 census and has stayed in the 300–400 range ever since; the 2020 census counted 345 residents in 1.33 square miles, down from 413 in 2010, and the 2000 census recorded 163 households in the town.