24/7 Trauma and Biohazard Cleanup in Marked Tree, AR

Marked Tree is a city in Poinsett County in northeastern Arkansas, and it is possibly the only town in the world with that name.

The city took its name from a tree on the bank of the St. Francis River, blazed to mark a short portage where Native Americans could walk about 120 yards overland to the Little River instead of paddling 12 miles upstream; the marked tree stood until 1890.

Marked Tree sits between the St. Francis River and the Little River, which at points run only about a quarter of a mile apart yet flow in opposite directions.

Marked Tree was incorporated on July 8, 1897.

The 2020 census counted 2,286 residents in Marked Tree, across about 5.77 square miles; the city is included in the Jonesboro metropolitan statistical area.

Just outside the city, the Marked Tree Lock and Siphons — built in 1939 by the Memphis District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for flood control on the St. Francis River — are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Levee breaks flooded Marked Tree repeatedly in the early twentieth century, and during the great Flood of 1927 much of the town sat underwater for much of the spring and early summer.

During World War II, Marked Tree housed a German prisoner-of-war camp, one of two in Poinsett County.

The Marked Tree Delta Area Museum, opened in 1993 behind a late-1800s general store facade, displays exhibits ranging from 13th-century Native American pottery to a replica small-town hospital.

The nearby St. Francis Sunken Lands Wildlife Management Area occupies wetlands created when the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811–1812 caused a large tract along the St. Francis River to sink below the surrounding surface.