Biohazard and Pathogen Disinfection in Marmaduke, AR

Marmaduke is a city in northeastern Greene County in northeast Arkansas, located about twelve miles northeast of Paragould, the county seat, in the northern Arkansas Delta just east of Crowley's Ridge.

One widely held theory is that Marmaduke was named for Confederate General John Sappington Marmaduke, who was said to have camped with his soldiers near the site of the present town during the Civil War and later became governor of Missouri.

The village was first laid out in 1882 by the railroad company along the Cotton Belt route, and by 1889 Goodspeed's history described a town of about 200 people with stores, a cotton gin and press, a church, a schoolhouse, and a sawmill.

Marmaduke was incorporated on August 2, 1909, and by 1914 the booming lumber, cotton, and railroad town had two drugstores, three banks, three restaurants, two barber shops, a hotel, and two dime stores.

The 2020 census counted 1,212 people in Marmaduke, up from 1,111 in 2010, and the city covers about 1.3 square miles of land along U.S. Route 49.

On April 2, 2006, a tornado with estimated winds of 113 to 157 miles per hour swept through Marmaduke, destroying approximately 300 homes, heavily damaging the school complex, and leading to a federal disaster declaration, though no one was killed.

An earlier tornado during the outbreak of March 1, 1997, passed through the center of Marmaduke and killed one person, making tornadoes a defining hazard in the town's modern history.

Today Marmaduke is home to manufacturers including ARI, which builds railway tank cars and employs roughly 100 to 150 people, and Anchor, a plastics maker employing about 100, while surrounding land is farmed for soybeans, rice, corn, and cotton.

Students in Marmaduke attend the Marmaduke School District, whose teams are the Greyhounds, and the district rebuilt after the 2006 tornado with a new safe room for storm protection.