Ashley County, Arkansas

Ashley County History, Geography, Demographics, Cities and Towns, and Education

County Seat: Hamburg
Year Organized: 1848
Square Miles: 921

Court House:

215 East Jefferson Street
County Courthouse
Hamburg, AR 71646-3007
Phone: (870)853-2000
Fax:

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Meaning of County Name

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

History

The fifth largest county in the state was created on November 30, 1848, from part of Drew County with final boundary adjustments made in 1861. Hamburg is the county seat. The Ashley county courthouse is early contemporary in style and has a unique, round, courtroom where all participants in a trial face one another. The landscape of the county is coastal plain, level to rolling, flat cropland, and pine-forested hills. Two-thirds of Ashley County is hill land, most in pine timber and forest products with the first blocks of forestland being bought up by lumbermen in 1898. The original sawmill was in operation in 1901.

Another quarter of the county's land is devoted to agriculture. The rich sandy loam soil created by the Mississippi and Bayou Bartholomew rivers has been farmed for generations. Although cotton is still king, livestock, poultry and other commercial cash crops are grown. Bayou Bartholomew, the longest bayou in the United States runs through the county. West of the bayou is Overflow National Wildlife Refuge that offers excellent hunting and fishing. Ashley County has an innovative recycling program that has taken 65% of the waste stream out of their landfill. The county owns equipment to press paper and yard waste into small cubes, which are then sold to Georgia-Pacific for use as fuel. Today Georgia-Pacific owns 45% of the land in the county, supporting the manufacturing of hardwood veneer, plywood, paper and chemicals

Neighboring Counties:

North: Drew County
East: Chicot County
South: Morehouse Parish, La.
Southwest: Union Parish, La.
West: Union County
Northwest: Bradley County

Cities and Towns:

Crossett
Fountain Hill
Hamburg (County Seat)
Montrose
Parkdale
Portland
Wilmot

County Resources:

Enter County Resources and Information Here

Ashley County, Arkansas

County Resource Guide

Counties: US Map

The history of our nation can be seen as a prolonged struggle to define the relative roles and powers of our governments: federal, state, and local. And the names we've given our counties, our most locally based jurisdictions, reflects the "characteristic features of our country!"

But age, size and colorful names of our counties isn't the only reason to explore counties' role in American history, or the history of county government itself. In fact, the story of county government reflects the larger meanings of American history.

Today's counties are the most flexible, locally responsive and creative governments in the US. They are the most diverse, varying in size, population, geography, and governmental structure. In their politics and policies, they express a 1990's political slogan "Think globally, act locally."

Penn Foster High School

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