My wife and I finish lunch at What's Cookin' on Adams Street in downtown Camden and then decide to walk around the historic neighborhood. Melissa sticks her head into Artesana Soaps. She immediately falls in love with the place.
Cecilia Davoren and daughter-in-law Elizabeth "Liz" Davoren turned a hobby into a business that now has customers across the country thanks to Internet sales. Cecilia became interested in making soap after discovering handmade soaps at a fall festival. When she began donating her soaps for fundraising events, demand increased. Artesana was launched in August 2015.
Cecilia was raised at Acapulco, Mexico. She and her husband have five children.
"What I love the most is doing the research of all-natural ingredients, their properties and the way I can introduce them into our products," she says. "It has been so interesting for me that it led me to the path of aromatherapy certification, which has proven to be useful for the creation of our products. Liz and I love making products that are not only nurturing for your skin but also soothing to your mind."
Liz, who grew up in Palmdale, Calif., moved to Camden in 2002 and met her husband Nick here. After a decade as a stay-at-home mom, she went into business with her mother-in-law. In September 2017, they moved the business into its current downtown location. In addition to bar soaps, they offer lotions, body butters, bath salts, liquid soap, foaming soap, puppy soap, shaving soap, bath bombs, bubbles and more.
Next door is a new coffee shop known as A Cup of Joe that offers breakfast, lunch and even live music on certain evenings. I notice the sidewalks and streets being worked on, the murals and other indications that downtown Camden is coming back to life after decades of decline. Camden saw its population drop from 15,356 in the 1980 census to 10,612 in the 2020 census.
A boom in the area's defense industry--a sector that employs almost 3,000 people and is looking to hire hundreds more as the war in Ukraine depletes weapon inventories--has added life to the economy. That development was outlined last month for a national audience in a Politico story headlined "The Struggling Arkansas Town That Helped Stop Russia in Its Tracks."
"The crossroads of Ouachita and Calhoun counties, dotted with small towns and hamlets connected by narrow ribbons of highway that wind through thick pine forests, is not widely recognized outside the region as a major hub of defense production," Bryan Bender wrote. "Camden, for all its importance to weapons manufacturing, doesn't even have a cool nickname like Huntsville, Ala.--known as Rocket City."
Erik Perrin, director of operations at General Dynamics Ordnance & Tactical Systems, said: "I tell people, 'When you think you're lost, you're almost here.'"
"It was in adjacent East Camden, at the height of World War II, that the Navy constructed Shumaker Naval Ammunition Depot to assemble and store torpedoes, bombs and other explosives," Bender wrote. "Now the 18,500 acres that make up the Highland Industrial Park provide unique incentives to leading weapons producers. Manufacturing and warehousing facilities--including scores of storehouses that date back nearly 80 years--dot the vast landscape of winding roads, woods, marshes and railroad tracks."
James Lee Silliman, executive director of the Ouachita Partnership for Economic Development, told Politico: "We've lost population like a lot of small towns have. That's the case of all of south Arkansas. We're trying to make the community more attractive and a good place to live."
Bender noted that Silliman's office features large photographs of the International Paper Co. mill that operated for more than 70 years before shutting down in 2000.
"It was a huge loss," Silliman said. "We've had some struggles over the past 22 years. I would hate to think what our area would be like without the aerospace and defense industry. Lockheed and Aerojet, with their recent investments and expansions, have added employment. They've kept the light on."
The beneficiaries of those additional jobs have been small businesses in Camden such as Artesana. Camden also has a number of good, independently owned restaurants. In addition to What's Cookin', there's the White House Cafe (the oldest continuously operating restaurant in the state), Woods Place for catfish, Postmasters Grill for fine dining, Allen's Restaurant, Catherine's Bistro and the Sandbar.
Downtown Camden is also the home of a craft brewery, Native Dog Brewing. The husband-and-wife team of Bobby and Lauren Glaze, pharmacists by trade, share a passion for craft beer and dogs. In their final year of pharmacy school, they went to South Dakota for an internship with the Indian Health Service. During their lunch breaks, a dog would wander around the clinic. On July 12, 2013, they adopted the dog.
The "native dog" went with them to Kentucky for Lauren's pharmacy residency and finally settled in Bobby's hometown of Camden.
"We wanted to bring a sense of community and a place where everyone could come and spend time, whether it be with their kids, family, friends or pets," Lauren told an interviewer. "Camden was a craft beer desert."
Native Dog has a back patio that overlooks the Ouachita River. The interior covers 2,400 square feet, and the patio is 800 square feet. With everything now from a craft brewery to an upscale coffee shop to a soap shop, it's evident that downtown Camden is back. And with the defense industry boom, this new era could last for years.
Senior Editor Rex Nelson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He's also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.