Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Oxford, AR

Oxford is a small city in Izard County, Arkansas - not to be confused with Oxford, Mississippi, or Oxford, England - located on Highway 9 about halfway between Melbourne and Salem.

Although an active settlement since the middle of the nineteenth century, Oxford was not incorporated until November 16, 1945, when residents voted to make it a second-class city.

The settlement was first known as Crooms Mill, after early settler Wiley Croom, who built and operated the region's first cotton mill and first grist mill and later added the last cotton gin to operate in Izard County, which survived until about 1963.

When a post office was established in 1878 it took the name Crooms Mill; postmaster Emory Pearson renamed it Oxford in 1882 after his hometown of Oxford, Mississippi.

A minor Civil War skirmish was fought near the Croom farm in December 1863, and Wiley Croom himself served in the Confederate army and spent two years as a prisoner of war.

The Bank of Oxford opened in 1919 and served the town until it closed in 1931 during the Great Depression.

Oxford's population peaked at 670 in the 2010 census before easing to 573 in the 2020 census, when the city had 265 households.

The city covers about 6.5 square miles at an elevation of 784 feet in the Ozark foothills of north-central Arkansas.

Oxford's own school district was consolidated into the Izard County Consolidated School District in 1985, and Oxford children are now bused to schools in Violet Hill and Brockwell.

Oxford's most famous native is Adlai Stevenson Croom, son of settler Wiley Croom, a preacher who helped organize Arkansas Christian College in 1922 and became the first vice president of Harding College, now Harding University.