Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Services in Lafe, AR

Lafe is a small town in northern Greene County, Arkansas, situated on Crowley's Ridge in the valley of Big Creek.

Lafe was founded by German-American settlers, and the community has remained centered around its Lutheran church since the nineteenth century.

The first settler in the area was Herman Toelkin, a German immigrant who arrived in 1886 from New Haven, Missouri, cut railroad ties to save enough money to buy forty acres, and then advertised in a Minneapolis German newspaper for other German Lutherans to come and settle.

The settlement was first known as Newberry, after a local sawmill operator, and then as Loulyma, a post office name combined from the applicant's three daughters — Louise, Lilly, and Mary.

In 1902 the town took its present name, Lafe, in honor of postmaster Lafayette Mueller, and the post office name was officially changed on May 21, 1902.

St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church, established in 1891, absorbed Lafe's other Lutheran congregation in 1911, and the Lutheran church and school continued to use German rather than English until 1934.

A new public school built in Lafe in 1938 combined the rural districts of Upper Lafe, Providence, Scatter Creek, Hooker, Union Hill, and Meadow Grove, and in 1984 the Lafe school was annexed into the Marmaduke School District.

Rather than allow their community to vanish, Lafe's residents sought incorporation as a town, which they accomplished on May 21, 1974.

The 2020 census counted 418 residents in Lafe, down from a peak of 458 in 2010; the town was first counted in 1980 with 215 residents, and at the 2000 census its 385 residents lived in 137 households.