Biohazard and Pathogen Disinfection in Mammoth Spring, AR

Mammoth Spring is a city in Fulton County in far northern Arkansas, sitting at the head of the Spring River right on the Arkansas-Missouri state line, only about 500 feet south of Missouri.

The city takes its name from Mammoth Spring, the largest spring in Arkansas and one of the largest natural springs in the world, which was designated a National Natural Landmark in June 1972.

The spring pours out an average of about 9.78 million gallons of water per hour at a constant 58 degrees Fahrenheit, rising from an opening more than 80 feet below the surface of its ten-acre pool.

Rainfall that sinks into the ground in southern Missouri travels underground past Missouri's Grand Gulf and reemerges at Mammoth Spring, whose outflow forms Spring Lake and becomes the Spring River, one of Arkansas's best-known trout-fishing streams.

The original village stood on the Missouri side of the line at a spot remembered as Old Town, but the community shifted into Arkansas after the Frisco Railroad arrived in 1883 and built its station and depot between the spring and the river.

Mammoth Spring was incorporated on June 15, 1889.

In its resort heyday the town's Nettleton Hotel, built by Memphis millionaire Napoleon Hill and operated from 1899 until it burned in 1932, was said to rival the grand hotels of Eureka Springs.

An 1887 limestone dam built by the Mammoth Spring Improvement and Water Power Company harnessed the spring to power flour and cotton mills, and in 1927 Mammoth Spring became the first town in the region to have electricity, generated by its dams.

Mammoth Spring State Park, a 62.5-acre park established in 1957 around the spring, preserves the restored 1886 Frisco railroad depot as a museum and hosts an Arkansas Welcome Center just off U.S. Highway 63.

The Mammoth Spring National Fish Hatchery, established in 1903 beside the spring, was one of the earliest federal fish hatcheries in the United States.