Biohazard and Crime Scene Remediation in Morrison Bluff, AR

Morrison Bluff is a small incorporated town in northern Logan County, Arkansas, sitting on the south bank of the Arkansas River across about 1.34 square miles.

According to local lore, the bluff takes its name from a settler named Morrison who arrived by keel boat around 1800, though no evidence of a settlement that early survives.

Steamboats began landing at the bluff in 1835, when landowner Lorenzo Clark built a large brick house and a store near the landing and tried, unsuccessfully, to have Morrison Bluff made the seat of Johnson County; Clark went on to sign Arkansas's first state constitution in 1836.

Morrison Bluff was once a significant stopping point for keelboats and steamboats, but the main channel of the Arkansas River shifted away by the Civil War era and the landing lost its importance.

A post office was established at Morrison Bluff in 1872, and German workers recruited to build the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad in 1873 settled in the community.

Benedictine monks from nearby Subiaco Abbey built the Church of Saints Peter and Paul in Morrison Bluff in 1881, and the Catholic parish — with a new church building opened in 1918 — remains the town's anchor institution.

The town incorporated on January 16, 1912, in an effort to preserve its identity as businesses drifted to the new coal town of Scranton, but residents let the incorporation lapse before 1920; the town's forty-nine citizens had renewed its incorporation by 1970.

State Highway 109 crosses the Arkansas River at Morrison Bluff on a 1.6-mile-long bridge completed in 1980, and the town's north side borders an arm of Lake Dardanelle, the river's big impoundment.

Tyson Foods built a $22 million poultry processing plant near Morrison Bluff in 1986, providing jobs across the surrounding area even as the town itself stayed tiny.

The 2020 census counted 78 residents in Morrison Bluff, up from 64 in 2010, and the 2000 census recorded 74 people in 29 households.