Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Patmos, AR

Patmos is a tiny incorporated town in southern Hempstead County, Arkansas, standing on State Highway 355 about twelve miles south of Hope, the county seat.

Residents named the town for the island of Patmos in the Aegean Sea near Greece, the setting of the opening chapters of the biblical book of Revelation, after considering and rejecting the names Luzon and Dura.

Patmos owes its existence to the Louisiana and Arkansas Railway, which in 1902 built a twenty-three-mile extension from Stamps to Hope and placed one of its two refueling depots at the site that became the town.

A post office opened at the Patmos depot in 1903, and the town was incorporated on September 27, 1906.

Mount Nebo Baptist Church, founded in the area in 1866 shortly after the Civil War, predates the town itself by four decades.

Arkansas historian James Harris (J. H.) Atkinson taught classes at the Patmos school in 1908 and 1909 before completing his college education.

The Patmos School District survived until 1979, when it merged into the Hope School District, and Patmos students now attend Hope schools, including Hope High School.

Patmos's post office closed in 1976, and the Louisiana and Arkansas Railway — by then folded into Kansas City Southern — was dissolved in 1992, when the rails between Stamps and Hope were removed.

The U.S. Census did not record Patmos's population until 1970, when it counted 77 residents; the 2020 census counted 57 people in the town's 0.11 square miles.

At the 2000 census, Patmos had 61 residents living in 21 households.