Crime Scene & Biohazard Cleanup Near West Plainview Plainview, AR

Plainview is a small city in Yell County in west-central Arkansas, set in the forested hills near the Petit Jean River and counted as part of the Russellville micropolitan area.

Plainview began in the early twentieth century as a lumber town, reportedly named by W. W. Gardener and built around a sawmill of the Fort Smith Lumber Company; before the name Plainview was adopted, the local post office was called Balloon.

The city was incorporated on August 28, 1907, the same year the post office's name was changed from Balloon to Plainview.

At its timber-boom height Plainview counted 853 people in the 1910 census and nearly 1,000 by 1920, but its population has declined with the lumber industry, and the 2020 census counted just 467 residents.

At the 2000 census, Plainview had 755 people living in 287 households.

The completion of the Ward's Crossing Bridge across the Fourche La Fave River in 1905 improved transportation to the new town, and construction of the Nimrod Dam on the same river provided jobs for Plainview workers in the early 1940s.

Since the decline of the timber industry, Plainview has struggled with a shrinking economy and with industrial pollution left over from its lumber era.

Plainview students attend the Two Rivers School District; Plainview-Rover High School closed in 2010 when Two Rivers High School opened, and Plainview Elementary School closed in 2012 when Two Rivers Elementary opened.

Plainview covers about 1.46 square miles of land, all of it in the hills of Yell County, a county unusual for having two county seats, Danville and Dardanelle.

Because Plainview has no police department of its own, the city contracts with the Yell County Sheriff's Office for law enforcement services.