Some of the richest farmland in America surrounds Eudora, the Chicot County town that was the subject of last Sunday's column. That column focused on the crime problems that likely will speed up population losses that have beset Eudora for the past 40 years. Dozens of small towns across the Arkansas Delta find themselves in the same boat.
Like Eudora, those Delta communities grew because the land around them was good for growing cotton, which was Arkansas' leading cash crop for decades. And, like Eudora, they declined as farming became highly mechanized. No longer were there thousands of sharecroppers and tenant farmers living in the surrounding countryside; people who would come to town to shop and take care of business.
School districts closed across the Delta and were consolidated with those in larger towns. Those who could afford to leave did so. Only the poor were left behind. That vicious cycle repeats itself throughout the region.
"The rich land on which Eudora was established was only sparsely settled when Arkansas became a state in 1836," Steve Teske writes for the Central Arkansas Library System's Encyclopedia of Arkansas. "A Presbyterian church was built on the ridge that's now Eudora in the 1840s, and a Masonic lodge opened in 1848. E.C. James owned 700 acres of Chicot County land, including the ridge. He named his homestead Eudora Plantation for his daughter, Frances Eudora James, who died at age 4 in 1858.
"The same name was given to the post office on the ridge, which opened Dec. 4, 1856, and closed in 1867. It opened again in 1871, closed a second time in 1876 and reopened in 1888. The site also was used for the landing of a ferry that crossed Bayou Macon beginning in 1856. The location was just a few miles from a Mississippi River port at Grand Lake."
Black slaves outnumbered whites in this part of Arkansas. Slave labor was used to build levees that protected the Eudora Plantation from flooding. A church for slaves was established in 1860 at what's now Eudora.
"In the years leading up to the Civil War, Chicot County was widely considered to be the wealthiest county in the state and one of the wealthiest in the country," writes historian David Sesser. "This was due in part to the amount of cotton production as well as the number of slaves there. In 1850, 145 white families owned 3,984 slaves. During the next decade, the enslaved population almost doubled with 7,512 slaves recorded in 1860. There were only 1,722 white citizens at the time."
Only Phillips County had more slaves than Chicot County at the start of the Civil War. In 1860, Chicot County produced 40,948 bales of cotton. The landing on the Mississippi River at Grand Lake increased in importance. Boats brought freight and mail and left with cotton and furs. What later was known as Carriola Landing was among the largest ports in Arkansas until the early 1900s.
"The end of slavery had a major impact on cotton plantations in the region," Teske writes. "In 1866, Ferdinand Weiss arrived from Germany and, with his brother Herman, opened a store called H. Weiss & Co. Competing stores opened in 1868 and 1870. The Bayou Macon ferry was replaced by a wooden bridge in 1886. By 1895, four white families lived on the ridge as well as several black families.
"A medical doctor named Samuel Augustus Scott built a house around 1883. He served families in southern Chicot County and also in much of northeast Louisiana. The Iron Mountain Railway began a line to connect Memphis with Helena and Louisiana. The tracks were completed through the Eudora area by the end of 1902. The arrival of the railroad prompted E.R. Armstrong to survey a community on the ridge in April 1902."
Armstrong named the city Carmel, but the railroad stop and post office both used Eudora. A school for white children was built in 1900, and a Baptist church for white families followed three years later. The Bank of Eudora opened in 1904. There was telephone service by 1906 and electric service by 1914.
Eudora's population grew from 606 in 1910 to 1,197 in 1920 and 2,020 in 1930. Population peaked at 3,840 in 1980 and was down to 1,728 by the 2020 census.
The ridge rises almost 25 feet above the surrounding flatlands, which saved Eudora from the Great Flood of 1927.
"The flood devastated most of Chicot County," Teske writes. "Eudora's elevation above the river plain preserved the city and made it a natural site for a Red Cross camp, which served 3,000 refugees at its peak. ... Depression-era government projects in Eudora included highway construction by the Works Progress Administration and a city hall built in 1936 by the Public Works Administration. The American Legion Post 127 building was erected with assistance from the Civil Works Administration."
Race relations remained strained in Eudora throughout the civil rights era. White residents began to move away.
"Like many Delta communities, Eudora attempted a so-called school choice program that voluntarily continued segregation policies," Teske writes. "As recently as 2003, courts were addressing the fact that white students from Eudora were enrolling in the mostly white schools of West Carroll Parish in Louisiana rather than attending school in Eudora."
In 1970, Black students boycotted the junior and senior high school to protest the firing of a Black teacher. In 2006, the Eudora School District consolidated with Lakeside School District at Lake Village. More than 90 percent of Eudora residents are now Black.
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.