Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Thornton, AR

Thornton is an incorporated city in northern Calhoun County in south Arkansas, part of the Camden micropolitan area, with U.S. Route 79 running through it alongside the old Cotton Belt tracks.

The townsite developed in 1883 on the St. Louis and Southwestern Railway - the Cotton Belt - a few miles southwest of Fordyce, and it was named for J. R. Thornton, a prominent attorney from Camden.

Thornton was incorporated on December 13, 1890, and grew so fast on timber money that for a time it was the largest city in Calhoun County.

The Stout Lumber Company owned about 70,000 acres of pine forest around Thornton and built employee housing, the O'Roarke Hotel, and its own eighteen-mile shortline, the Thornton and Alexandria Railway, to haul logs to the mill.

Stout Lumber was unusual for its era in employing Mexican workers alongside white and African American workers at its Thornton operations.

At its peak Thornton had three general stores, three drugstores, a butcher, and a co-operative store called Temperance Hall, and it was a gathering place for local hunters.

Thornton's population peaked at 1,312 in the 1920 census, during the height of the Stout Lumber era.

A fire on Christmas Day 1925 destroyed the Stout sawmill and offices; when the company chose not to rebuild, the town collapsed, and in 1930 its remaining citizens voted to surrender the city charter, leaving Thornton unincorporated for two decades.

Residents voted to reincorporate in 1951, and by 1958 Thornton had a water and sewer system, street lights, and a fire truck for its volunteer fire company.

The 2020 census counted 339 people in Thornton, down from 407 in 2010; in 2000 the city had 517 residents living in 206 households.