Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Patterson, AR

Patterson is a city in southwestern Woodruff County that began in the 1880s where the Batesville and Brinkley Railroad tracks crossed the Missouri Pacific line.

The crossing was first named Martin's Junction for Rufus Martin, the railroad construction engineer on the project, and sawmills along the Cache River floated logs to the junction for shipping.

The railroad later renamed the place Jelks in honor of a local family, and a third railroad, the McCrory, Beedeville and Southern, arrived in 1909 but went bankrupt by 1914.

The town took its present name in 1919 for Marshall Patterson, a former Woodruff County sheriff who had famously apprehended a pair of train robbers in 1893 and received a lifetime Missouri Pacific pass as a reward.

Marshall Patterson owned most of the land around the town, ran a telephone business linking Augusta, Cotton Plant, and DeView, and held nearly every county office before serving in the Arkansas legislature.

Not wanting his five children to travel to McCrory for school, Patterson built a school in town where his wife became the first teacher; the school consolidated with McCrory in the 1950s.

Patterson was once an important shipping point for the Woodruff County lumber industry, but its economy today relies on agricultural services and its two large granaries.

The 2020 census counted 310 people, 207 households, and 120 families in Patterson, down sharply from 452 people in 2010.

Patterson's population peaked at 567 in the 1980 census, and some longtime residents still call the town Jelks, the name the railroad kept using for years after the official change.

A new Patterson city hall was built after a 2003 tornado destroyed the old one, and John Davis Manor, a housing complex for low-income senior citizens, opened in the city in 2000.