Biohazard and Crime Scene Remediation in Woodson, AR

Woodson is an unincorporated census-designated place (CDP) in southern Pulaski County, north of Hensley and east of Interstate 530, within the Little Rock–North Little Rock–Conway metropolitan area.

The 2020 census counted 346 people and 141 households in the Woodson CDP, down from 403 residents in 2010 and 445 in 2000.

The community is named for Ed Wood Sr., a prominent African American plantation owner, trader, and businessman who migrated from Alabama around 1880 and built the Wood Plantation, and the area was earlier known as Wood Hollow in his honor.

Gatherings of Prince Hall Freemasons at the Wood Plantation made Woodson a cradle of Black civic life in Arkansas — men associated with Wood through those meetings went on to help found the Mosaic Templars of America, the famed Black fraternal organization.

Woodson was incorporated as a town on January 17, 1882, as a timber town and a stop on the Little Rock, Mississippi River and Texas Railroad, but the incorporation lapsed into neglect — no elections were held and no taxes collected for decades — and the charter was formally dissolved in the 1960s, which is why the community is unincorporated today.

African Americans made up about two-thirds of Woodson's population in the 2020 census, and Woodson is one of six historic African American communities along Arkansas Highway 365 in Pulaski County documented by the Project 365 heritage effort.

Woodson lies within the Pulaski County Special School District, and its students are zoned to Daisy Bates Elementary School, Fuller Middle School, and Wilbur D. Mills University Studies High School.

The CDP covers about 4.4 square miles, including Woodson Lake and the Wood Hollow area beside the old Wood Plantation lands.