Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Services in West Point, AR

West Point is an incorporated town in central White County, about five miles southeast of Searcy, on the Little Red River.

The foundation for West Point was laid in 1850 when businessman J. M. West divided and sold lots along a high western bank of the Little Red River and named it West Point, and the town was incorporated on February 21, 1859.

West Point was the farthest point upriver on the Little Red that was accessible to steamboats year-round, so most White County commerce — cotton and other goods bound for St. Louis, Memphis, and New Orleans — was facilitated through West Point, which had 350 residents by 1860 not counting enslaved people.

West Point thrived as a bustling river port but was battered by the Civil War, including a fierce engagement on August 14, 1863, between a Union flotilla and Confederate cavalry on the Little Red River at West Point.

The arrival of local railroads in the 1870s overshadowed trade via steamboats and diminished West Point's importance as the commercial hub of White County, and the last steamboat left the West Point landing in 1923.

Georgetown's school district was consolidated with West Point in 1953, and West Point in turn was consolidated with Searcy eleven years later; local students now attend elementary school in Kensett and high school in Searcy.

West Point is the birthplace of Robert L. Rogers, who served as attorney general of Arkansas.

The earliest evidence of human habitation around West Point is a burial mound constructed sometime after AD 1300, and the area was an Osage hunting ground from the mid-seventeenth century until white settlers began arriving in White County in 1789.

The 2020 census counted 170 people in West Point, down from 185 in 2010, and the 2000 census counted 164 people in 65 households.