Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Services in McRae, AR

McRae is a small incorporated city in southern White County, Arkansas, about nine miles southwest of Searcy, the county seat.

The community traces its origins to the Cairo and Fulton Railroad, built through White County in 1872, but McRae did not take shape as a defined community until its first post office opened in 1889.

McRae was named in honor of Dandridge McRae, a Searcy attorney who had served as a Confederate brigadier general.

The town's own rail depot, built in 1897, spurred its growth in timber and strawberries, and McRae formally incorporated on May 27, 1914.

Strawberries came to define McRae's culture and prosperity: berries were shipped out by refrigerated rail car from 1915 to 1950, and McRae vied with Judsonia and Bald Knob for the title of "Strawberry Capital."

The McRae Strawberry Association, organized in 1912, and the Honest Pack Association, organized in 1917, coordinated local pickers and loaded berries onto refrigerated cars bound for urban markets.

The historic McRae Jail, built in 1934, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and the city's police department once housed its prisoners in the WPA-era jail.

The 2020 census counted 616 residents in McRae, down from 682 in 2010; in the 2000 census, the city had 661 people living in 280 households.

Farming remains McRae's primary business today, though rice and soybeans have replaced strawberries as the main cash crops and only a few berries are still grown.

Local folklore tells of the "McRae Ghost," the apparition of a bearded old man said to have haunted a road near the town's veneering mill for several weeks in 1916.