Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Hunter, AR

Hunter is an incorporated town in southeastern Woodruff County, Arkansas, covering just 0.62 square miles in the flat farmland of the Arkansas Delta.

The town is named for Edward Shannon Hunt, a Union Civil War veteran from Ohio who settled the area in the 1870s after admiring its abundant game and fishing streams during his wartime service.

Hunt's wife, Elizabeth Ann, served as midwife and doctor to the early settlers and ran a wayside inn on the Military Road, and the settlement was first known as Hunt's Station before becoming Hunter.

The Southwestern Improvement Association platted Hunter in 1883, and the railroad right-of-way deeded through town has been used since 1885 by the St. Louis Southwestern Railroad, the Cotton Belt line.

Hunter was incorporated in 1906 and grew into a busy trading and shipping center, though its sawmill economy declined once the surrounding timber was cut.

Shannon Hunt's sons ran one of the area's earliest telephone exchanges, the Wilson and Hunt Brothers Telephone Company, which by 1910 extended service to Wheatley and Cotton Plant.

The Hunt brothers planted rice in 1919, and rice — along with soybeans — remains a mainstay crop around Hunter today.

Hunter's population peaked at 508 in the 1910 census and has fallen for a century; the 2020 census counted 103 residents, and the 2000 census recorded 152 people in 58 households.

After Hunter's schoolhouse burned in 1953, local students began attending schools in nearby Brinkley, in Monroe County.

Hunter is the birthplace of Gilbert G. Collier, who received the Medal of Honor for his actions in the Korean War.