24/7 Trauma and Biohazard Cleanup in Palestine, AR

Palestine is a small town in St. Francis County in eastern Arkansas, set along Interstate 40 and Highway 70 with the L'Anguille River along its east side.

One of the oldest towns in St. Francis County, Palestine was also the site of the county's first school.

The town got its name in 1870, when its first post office opened; one tradition says the name honors a sawmill worker named Palestine who was fatally injured there, while another says the first postmaster chose the name from the Bible.

Palestine incorporated on April 23, 1889, and grew as a Rock Island Railroad town whose Main Street stores faced the tracks.

Cotton ginning anchored early Palestine: the Burns Bros. Gin began operating on Wood Street in 1896 and reportedly was still running in the 1960s.

In 1913, Palestine formed the Palestine Special School District — the first consolidated school district in Arkansas — merging its school with those of Sloniker's Mill and Moon Lake under a state law written with the help of Palestine's own principal and sponsored by a local state representative.

Two of St. Francis County's oldest active congregations are in Palestine: the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, established in 1884, and the El Cannon Missionary Baptist Church, established in 1899, which also served as a school for Black children until 1917.

Palestine's schools remained segregated until 1972; in the 1980s, the Palestine Red Devils and the Wheatley Pirates merged their districts to form the Palestine-Wheatley School District and its combined Patriots teams, with the elementary and high schools in Palestine and the middle school in Wheatley.

Palestine remains a farming town whose residents grow cotton, rice, and soybeans and raise livestock on the flat fields around it.

The town's population peaked at 976 in 1980 and had fallen to 506 by the 2020 census; the 2000 census counted 299 households in the town.