24/7 Biohazard and Crime Scene Cleanup in Lexa, AR

Lexa is a town in northern Phillips County in the Arkansas Delta, about halfway between Helena-West Helena and Marianna.

The town was incorporated on April 15, 1925.

The 2020 census counted 207 people in Lexa, down from 286 in 2010; in 2000 the town had 331 people living in 132 households.

Lexa began as a railroad community: Nathaniel Lee Graves gave a right-of-way to the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railroad in 1880 and established a post office on his land that same year named Lexington, which was shortened to Lexa in 1885.

The town is surrounded by rich Delta farmland regularly renewed by soil from the overflow of the Mississippi River, where plantations stood before the Civil War.

The Missouri Pacific Railroad built service shops beside the Lexa depot in 1908, and by 1911 the booming town had five general stores, three hotels, a restaurant, a drugstore, boarding houses, and more than 100 private residences.

When train engines grew more efficient, the Lexa depot was closed and dismantled in 1921 and the railroad shops were moved to Helena by 1925; residents incorporated the town in 1925 in an effort to preserve its life.

During the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, the American Red Cross assisted 5,230 refugees at Lexa — more than fifteen times the town's own population.

Lexa is the starting point of the Delta Heritage Trail State Park, a hiking and cycling trail built on the abandoned railroad line that runs south toward Cypress Bend in Desha County.

The Richardson-Turner House in Lexa is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, as is the Henry and Cornelia Ford Farm nearby.