Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Mount Pleasant, AR

Mount Pleasant is a town in southeastern Izard County, Arkansas, stretched along State Highway 69 between Batesville and Melbourne.

The town was founded shortly after the Civil War under the name Barren Fork in what was then Independence County, but an 1873 change in the county line shifted it into Izard County.

Its first post office, approved on May 25, 1876, operated out of Milton L. Shaver's general store under the name Barren Fork.

In 1878 the community opened the two-story Mount Pleasant Academy, a school so well regarded that farmhouses across the area were used to board its students.

The town shed its old name on October 29, 1914, after M. E. Moore — embarrassed by college classmates joking about her 'barren' hometown — circulated a petition; the new name, Mount Pleasant, honored the old academy.

Locals long knew the town by the nickname 'Drytown,' partly because most wells around town dried up in summer and drinking water had to be hauled from a spring on Barren Fork Creek.

In 1928 the Presbyterian National Women's Board of Missions built and equipped the first hospital in Izard County at Mount Pleasant; it served the region until 1941.

Mount Pleasant also built the first indoor basketball gymnasium in Izard County in 1931, a joint project of the Presbyterian Church and local residents.

The town was not incorporated until November 1, 1963, and its first mayor, Everett Roberts, persuaded landowners along Highway 69 to join the city so they could qualify for a water system — leaving the small town stretched along more than four miles of highway frontage.

The Mount Pleasant School District, whose Bluebirds won several state basketball titles, was annexed into the Melbourne School District on July 1, 2004; Mount Pleasant Elementary, twice named a National Blue Ribbon School, operated until 2016.