Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Subiaco, AR

Subiaco is a town in Logan County, Arkansas, straddling Highway 22 midway between Fort Smith and Russellville, just south of the Arkansas River.

The town takes its name from Subiaco Abbey, which Pope Leo XIII named in 1891 after Subiaco, Italy — the town where St. Benedict founded his first monastery.

The Benedictine presence began in 1878, when monks from St. Meinrad Archabbey in Indiana, led by Abbot Martin Marty, accepted a railroad land grant of 640 acres for a monastery and 100 acres for a convent to serve German Catholic settlers; the settlement began as St. Benedict's Colony and was founded as a priory in 1878.

The town itself was born with the railroad: when the line reached the abbey in June 1909, Subiaco Abbey donated 80 acres for a townsite and depot, and the new depot was named Subiaco.

Subiaco received its own post office in 1910 and was incorporated on June 3, 1912.

The 2020 census counted 401 people in Subiaco, down from 572 in 2010 and a peak of 744 in 1980; the town covers about 1.89 square miles.

Subiaco Academy, the abbey's all-boys college-preparatory boarding school for grades 7–12, is the only Catholic boarding school in Arkansas, drawing students from across the state, other states, and foreign countries.

Fire has twice devastated the abbey: its first wooden monastery burned in December 1901, just as a new stone monastery was being built, and a 1927 fire largely destroyed the abbey's interior, with full recovery delayed until after World War II.

The abbey's present St. Benedict Church had its cornerstone laid in 1953 and was completed and consecrated in 1959, and its Coury House retreat center opened in 1963.

The railroad through Subiaco ceased operation in 1949, but the town endures, serving area residents as well as the steady stream of visitors, students, and retreat guests drawn by the abbey and academy.