Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Rondo, AR

Rondo is a small incorporated town in Lee County in the Arkansas Delta, laid out where the tracks of the Missouri and North Arkansas Railroad crossed those of the Missouri Pacific Railroad.

The townsite was part of Phillips County until Lee County was created in 1873, and the surrounding land was long devoted to cotton farming and timber.

There is no known record of how Rondo got its name, and this Lee County town is a different place from the settlement also named Rondo in Miller County, across the state.

Rondo received its post office in 1909 and was incorporated on June 19, 1918.

In its early years Rondo had a bank, a general store, a physician, a funeral parlor, and a theater that showed silent movies accompanied by piano music.

The town even had its own Nehi soda bottling plant, and a hand-operated pump in the middle of Main Street provided water for horses and mules.

A new school building was erected in Rondo in 1913, after which the old schoolhouse was used to educate the town's African-American children.

Rondo's population peaked at 379 in the 1970 census before rail service ended with the collapse of the local timber industry and the town began a long decline.

Rondo's post office closed in 1959, and its schools were later consolidated into the Lee County School District, with students bused to Marianna.

The 2020 census counted 163 residents in Rondo, down from 198 in 2010 and 237 in 2000.