Biohazard and Pathogen Disinfection in Norman, AR

Norman is a town in southern Montgomery County, on the Caddo River at the edge of the Ouachita National Forest.

The town was founded in 1907 as Womble, when Walter Womble staked out a new townsite in a cornfield just north of the railhead of the Gurdon and Fort Smith Railroad, and it took the Womble name from its founding family.

Womble was incorporated on February 14, 1910, and grew into the largest town in Montgomery County as businesses relocated there from Black Springs in 1909, drawn by its railroad depot.

Residents voted to rename the town Norman — the change took effect in 1925 — in part to leave behind years of bickering, including three failed attempts (beginning in 1915) to move the county seat from Mount Ida to Womble.

In 1914 Norman became home to the Ouachita National Forest's Womble Ranger Station, and it had the county's first accredited high school and first football team.

The Presbyterian Church's Caddo Valley Academy, a 'mountain mission' school begun at Womble in 1920 under Dr. John T. Barr, left the two-story 1924 Old Norman High School building, now on the National Register of Historic Places and maintained by the Norman Historic Preservation Program.

Norman's early economy rested on lumber mills along the railroad, but by the 1930s most of the prime timber had been cut and the mills moved on; the town lost its railroad connection in 1982.

The 2020 census counted 303 people in Norman, down from 378 in 2010 and a peak of 552 in 1910; the 2000 census recorded 423 residents in 190 households.

Norman's schools consolidated with those of Caddo Gap in 1971 to form the Caddo Hills School District.

A Caddo Native American burial ground at the southern end of town was discovered by city officials and protected with a wooden fence under Mayor Duane Cox.