Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Tillar, AR

Tillar is a small second-class city in southeast Arkansas that stands mostly in Drew County, although its southeast corner lies in Desha County.

The community grew up in the 1870s along the Little Rock, Mississippi River, and Texas Railroad where it crossed the Grand Prairie near Bayou Bartholomew.

Tillar is named for J. T. W. Tillar, a former Confederate major who sat on the railroad's board of directors and provided the land for the depot and the surrounding settlement.

The townsite was laid out in 1879, and its first house was completed in May of that year; in its early years Tillar shipped large quantities of cotton, cotton seed, and cypress timber.

Evidence of the area's prehistoric residents was found in an Indigenous mound near Tillar excavated by Edward Palmer in 1882.

Tillar was incorporated on September 11, 1907.

The town's population peaked at 350 in the 1920 census.

Tillar began to decline around the time it incorporated, after railroad shops were built in nearby McGehee in 1908 and eliminated most railroad jobs in town; by 1977 its Main Street was being described as like a ghost town.

The Frank Tillar Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in Tillar is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The 2000 census counted 240 people living in 99 households in Tillar.