24/7 Biohazard and Crime Scene Cleanup in Osceola, AR

Osceola is a city on the Mississippi River in northeastern Mississippi County, Arkansas, about fifty miles upriver from Memphis, Tennessee, and one of the county's two seats, a role it has shared with Blytheville since 1901.

The settlement began in 1830 when William Bard Edrington and John Price Edrington acquired land along the river, and it was established as Plum Point in 1837, a river landing that sold timber to fuel passing steamboats.

In 1853, with about 250 residents and a half dozen businesses, the town was incorporated under its present name honoring Chief Osceola of the Seminole, although the local story that he visited the area in 1832 has no historical evidence behind it.

Civil War fighting reached Osceola in May 1862, when Confederate and Union fleets clashed in the Battle of Plum Point Bend on the Mississippi River near the town.

The 1912 Mississippi County Courthouse, a Neoclassical landmark with a solid copper dome, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and still anchors the town square.

The Osceola Times, first published in 1870, is the oldest weekly newspaper in eastern Arkansas and still publishes from its 1901 building downtown.

The great Mississippi River floods of 1927 and 1937 devastated Osceola and drove hundreds of residents from their homes, and no main levee breach has occurred there since 1937 thanks to work by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the St. Francis Levee District.

American Greetings built a large manufacturing facility in Osceola in 1961 that remains the city's number-one employer, and the Plum Point Energy Station began producing electricity in September 2010.

Osceola is famous for its role in the development of blues music, and Main Street Osceola sponsors the Osceola Heritage Music Festival each May.

The Port of Osceola at Sans Souci still regularly loads barges with soybeans and rice on the Mississippi River.