10 SMALLEST Towns in ARKANSAS

foreign [Music] [Music] we're starting our tour of the smallest towns in Arkansas here in tinsman Arkansas interesting little town to get started with basically grew up around the railroad and in the late 1800s and in the early 1900s it was incorporated post office all that and grew to a town of uh over 200 near 250 people and it's a place with a lot of tall trees that you'll notice as you're driving around town so there was a sawmill here and and then the railroad closed eventually and with that you know that was the kind of Death Note for growth and uh and it was declining already and it's continued to decline to the population of 50 today and going around it's an interesting town to explore it's gorgeous around here the tall trees kind of around the roads kind of driving back through some of the back roads of the downtown area you have tall trees you have a you see a few houses where people are living and then you see a lot of abandoned houses and places um right here kind of in the middle of the Town there's there's some houses and there's a fire department nice water tower you don't see many water towers and towns this small kind of interesting drive around and definitely some probably places where people want to live and not be bothered so I drove around a little bit so you don't have to where the railroad is you can see you know the growth of nature around it pretty interesting uh to see that so I'll give you a little bird's eye view with the Drone and and also show you some of the other places here around tinsman [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] we to care is a town that is solely here because of the uh the wine industry here in Arkansas and uh is it was named this because in 1880 a Johann weedicare moved here from Switzerland with his wife and started a started growing wine started growing grapes to produce wine for the local coal miners in this area and it became very popular and then he passed the business kind of down through his family and eventually in the 1970s they decided to incorporate the town um help with taxes and things like that and they had unanimous consent from all the people that lived here and basically the only thing that's here is the things that are about the winery and then there's an RV park as well driving around is is interesting um I actually did go down some back roads too so you kind of see where some people live but there's some really cool buildings here in the village so not a typical town but one of the smallest in Arkansas [Music] [Music] thank you foreign [Music] [Music] church just outside ozone Arkansas it's just down the road just a bit there's a Saint Paul and a Saint Peter Church that are about a mile or so from ozone different directions and the reason I'm standing here is because there were a lot of early churches in this area this was a pretty old settlement Arkansas had statehood in 1836 and post office was established near here in 1852 it was a small town and a railroad came through and then the timber industry was was huge in this area and ozon didn't grow like some of the other towns in this area it kind of remained fairly small but there is a Ozone Lumber company that I'm assuming got their name from this town and um it's about a third of the size of its peak so 150 or so was the highest population in uh census surveys since they started doing those and now we're we're about a third of that what's left is a couple old buildings there you know there's the railroad right there so you can kind of see where town used to be and uh the post office there's a fire department and just kind of a variety of houses along a pretty busy road but it's definitely very green a lot of trees beautiful area of Arkansas [Music] [Music] foreign Springs was a Lumber Town actually it was a really a successful one uh back as early as the 1880s that's kind of how this area got settled and there were multiple Sawmills that were built throughout about the first 40 Years of its existence and looked like it was going to be kind of full steam ahead with the growth of the town and then after uh the world wars things started to get smaller and the Mills started Closing one at a time and the population just dwindled and dwindled down to what it is today almost half of what it was 10 years ago what's left is there's a post office a couple of older buildings a city hall kind of fire department that's all one kind of a little area right there in the middle of town um but there's looks like a fairly active community of people around moving around not a ton of abandoned places just a small community left [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] is very unique even though it has 46 people that makes it unique but one of the things that makes it more unique is that blue eye is half in Arkansas and half in Missouri but I am walking down State Line Road right now so behind me as you can see is Missouri on my left Arkansas on my right so blue eye is is like I said very unique in it it's it's in two different states and so I think it has two different towns it has two different populations you know in this list these towns are all small this one's bigger because there's like 200 people total um but technically the Arkansas side is is only 46. so that's why it's on this list here and you know the Missouri side has been kind of the older side of uh blue eye and the bigger side it was started in 1870 the Arkansas side even though it wasn't Incorporated until 1932 um it did have a school before that and it had this Square they you know the square of the town is in Arkansas most of anything that is um I guess you could say is a business is on the Missouri side of blue eye you know the the population is 46 it's actually gotten bigger in the last couple since this surveys it's the biggest it's been since 1970 so I wonder if people from Missouri blue eye move over to Arkansas blue eye I don't know [Music] foreign [Music] Corinth is different than all the other towns on this list for a couple reasons so it was started in the 1960s as an official town because the people that lived here didn't want to have their uh you know deal with the taxes of encroaching towns from nearby there's actually two towns that kind of sandwich Corinth you have uh Danville and you have Belleville and as they were getting bigger it was encroaching upon the people that lived here and so in the 1960s they decided to uh incorporate as a town to avoid those taxes and it's been a small town community if you call it that uh because as you drive around I could hardly find anything this old church behind me is the only old thing that I could find I read that there was maybe a school here a long time ago it would have been a rural school because they put schools every few miles around but I don't see any sign of that and and all I do is all I've found is as I drive around the the dirt and gravel roads is fine houses and most of them are you know Farms or they're nice houses a couple of abandoned houses but I don't see any kind of like a city hall or Administrative Building is I'm assuming maybe it's on one of the um Farmer's property there's you know it's it's interesting when you find these kind of places I've been to places like kind of like this in Texas and Missouri where the people kind of incorporate their own lands for different reasons whether it be taxes or liquor license laws there's an Ascension Church that's in town near kind of the main road that you would get off to come into Corinth oh [Music] foreign Arkansas is a bit of a fascinating little town only 32 people but there is some history here I'm currently sitting in the Birdsong Park there's actually two parks in Birdsong that's got to be like most Parks per capita there's a fun park and then there's the senior citizen Park and I'm in the senior citizen Park obviously because I'm a pro rapidly approaching status but this was all swampland at one time and you know the Mississippi River is not far from here there's a lot of a lot of water and that's why it was swamp land and it was finally you know uh made you know good for farming and they had a lot of sharecroppers in this area and then in uh you know 1935 this place gained National recognition and it was due to the plight of the sharecroppers in this area this is a 100 percent African-American Community 32 out of 32. um the when it was incorporated in 1984 it was bigger it was around 100 and then has gotten smaller and smaller definitely not a place where you're going to find a lot of young people so I imagine this will continue to dwindle this town um but when you get here and you check things out there's some things to see there's some older buildings there's you know a little tiny downtown area where there's a city hall there's a volunteer fire department there's a church and up and like I said there's a couple of parks for everyone's enjoyment so you can bring your kids they look like they just had a reunion of some sort not too long ago I found some old uh you know things showing pictures in the fun park beautiful area and very quiet appropriately named Birdsong because that's about all you can hear is the wind and the songs of The Birds [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] McNabb was started kind of the first people that settled here um that that you know owned Some Farms were people that there was a road that went to Fulton which was a you know a couple miles from here and some people kind of made a path up to here and ended up settling some of this land but not until the railroad came through around the turn of the 20th century uh did really a town start here so there was a farmer with last name McNabb in the in the railroad Depot was put basically on his farm and that's how the town of McNabb was named uh once that happened a post office was was put here in the early 1900s and a town built up and um you know there was there were stores and businesses and a normal small town and the population was pretty solid until um you know the the usefulness of the railroad was not needed anymore and and when that happened uh you know people started moving away and the town has gotten smaller and smaller um the population has kind of gone up and down in recent census survey so it's on here in 2020 wouldn't have been probably in 2010 maybe was previous to that so kind of an interesting fluctuation there's not a whole lot left I'm in the city park and there's a couple little buildings there's a there's a town hall and a community center um there's you can go down by the railroad and there's another building or two down there other than that just a community of houses um not a lot of old abandoned stuff from the early days of the of the town [Music] we're getting down there pretty small with the population 26 here at Gilbert although 26 people it's definitely not an abandoned place but uh Gilbert started as a railroad town and um it was not an easy place to get the railroad through because it's hilly and um you know definitely hard to lay tracks to get through here but they did and it uh started to grow Town started growing they had some Sawmills they had the railroad they had some at a hotel they had you know kind of everything a normal town has and the population was over a hundred not huge but for a couple decades and then the logging industry stopped and the railroad was stopped coming through here ended up pulling up the tracks and so it started to diminish and it's been pretty small for a long time since you know maybe 70 80 years ago it's been pretty small and but it is right here by the Buffalo River so it's kind of a hub for recreational activities so you see a lot of people around here um so it has has newer buildings has a few older buildings [Music] foreign [Music] what's wrong in 2020 Jerome was a town now it's not and I'm using the census figures from 2020 every 10 years is when the United States redoes the official census and so the city council Jerome decided uh to gotten small enough and they decided to dissolve the town and now it's not officially a town but since I'm going by the 2020 census it's still on this list but obviously the next time I would do something like this or a you know current list of Incorporated towns that wouldn't be on it hard to figure out which way to do it because the you know they come out with estimated census tallies every year and that's just what it is is estimated Jerome has had a very interesting history for a number of reasons if we go back to the beginning there was a sawmill and a railroad here and the railroad is actually still here there's a sawmill and it brought in a lot of jobs and the population swelled and the first official population was almost 400 people that lived here but then when you look at the figures it drops off dramatically and in like 1927 The Sawmill burned and they went out of business and so um you know this became almost a ghost town and the land was sold to the government and they ended up moving some uh kind of out of work um you know farming families here to help shelter them I guess at that time during the Great Depression but then World War II came along and you see behind me we are at the Jerome relocation Center Monument and this is just actually down the road not far from the actual town of Jerome this was in Jerome was one of the I think about 10 places in the United States where Japanese Americans were relocated during World War II during the kind of Hysteria that was happening at that time in 8 000 Japanese Americans were sheltered here and it's called you know a Japanese internment camp and that was right here in Jerome Arkansas that was from 1942 to 1944 and after they were released they did house some German prisoner of Wars as well here but then the you know the population has just kind of been small there are some things to see though there's a there is a uh business work in there by the railroad and on the other side of the railroad there's some old buildings there's a school there's church so we'll show you around give you an idea of what the town of Jerome looks like today well actually what the town of Jerome was now the unincorporated community of Jerome [Music] thank you [Music] thank you welcome to the smallest town in Arkansas Victoria with population of 20. and you know this is kind of a unique story in a lot of ways the way this place this area got organized was that there was a guy named Robert Wilson and he had this kind of idea to buy up a bunch of land that wasn't being used was kind of like swampland and um he bought up tens of thousands of Acres and he created little towns Victoria one of them in this County and as as you know like big giant plantations and Victoria was actually a sister and then he had a daughter who he also named Victoria and and she married a guy with last name of Wesson w-e-s-s-o-n and I'm standing here or sitting here in front of this Western Farms building which is actually the post office I'm assuming it's like a city hall as well looking inside um and if Wesson sounds familiar it's because he was an heir to the firearm dealer Smith and Wesson so I just got kicked out of Victoria I was sitting there in front of the administrative building and lady came up and said this was privately owned and um not allowed to be here although I mean I can be on the road he can drive through but I'm not allowed to I guess get out and explore so I'll stay on the road and take some some pictures and videos but getting back to finishing the story about Victoria so Smith and Wesson you know the air Wesson married the daughter of Robert Wilson and and so that's then they started Wesson farms and this is what was you know what this is here now they decide to incorporate the town decided to incorporate in 1966 and had a couple hundred people and has dwindled quite a bit uh down to 20 obviously so almost a ghost town but a very unique ghost town there are a lot of houses that are nice obviously this is you know privately owned so these places are going to be nice this isn't a regular town that has has gotten small into nothing so yeah let me show you a little bit of what I can uh of Victoria before I get kicked out again [Music] thank you [Music] so that's the list what did you think of the 10 smallest towns of Arkansas what was your favorite was it one of the old towns that has kind of crumbled or is it something like Victoria here at the end that that barely didn't want me to be around um I don't know I I thought it was interesting as I do more of these states you know you just learn more and more about history of why these towns are the size they are maybe on purpose or uh you know definitely not on purpose for some of the people who had dreams of bigger things so but Arkansas is a very interesting state have really enjoyed exploring Arkansas around Corinth Alabama Alabama I'm in Arkansas I need to get that guy [Music] thank you foreign [Music] little little thunder in McNabb we'll wait that out [Music] the long one that's what she said

Channel: Travel with a Wiseguy

Views: 166,389

Keywords: Arkansas, small towns, top-10 smallest towns, smallest towns Arkansas, Arkansas ghost towns, ghost towns, Victoria, Jerome, Gilbert, McNab, Birdsong, Corinth, Blue Eye, Whelen Springs, Ozan, Wiederkehr Village, Tinsman, Victoria Arkansas, Jerome relocation camp, Japanese relocation camp, Jerome Arkansas, Gilbert Arkansas, McNab Arkansas, Birdsong Arkansas, Corinth Arkansas, Blye Eye Arkansas, Blue Eye Missouri, Whelen Springs Arkansas, Ozan Lumber, Tinsman Arkansas, Wiederkher wine

Id: jNfnC-xuYhg

Length: 34min 46sec (2086 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 02 2023