Southeast shining star

I’m eating my cheeseburger at Ray’s, a dining staple in Monticello since the early 1960s, and contemplating the future of southeast Arkansas.

Most counties in this part of the state are bleeding population. From 2012-17, Jefferson County lost 7.4 percent of its population. Chicot County also lost 7.4 percent. There were losses of 6.5 percent in Desha County, 5.7 percent in Ashley County, 5.2 percent in Arkansas County, 4.7 percent in Cleveland County, 3.7 percent in Lincoln County, 3.5 percent in Bradley County and 1.2 percent in Drew County.

If southeast Arkansas has a shining star, it’s Monticello, the Drew County seat.

Monticello has grown from 8,116 residents in 1990 to a current population of about 9,600. There are several reasons for this. One is the presence of the University of Arkansas at Monticello. In the knowledge-based economy of the 21st century, towns with four-year institutions of higher education usually have a leg up on other cities in their region.

Another thing that has helped is that many Delta families have moved to Monticello in recent decades to take advantage of what they perceive to be superior public schools. Monticello also is fortunate to have a solid industrial base and a pair of strong, locally owned banks that take their community service mission seriously.

The fact that part of Drew County is in the Gulf Coastal Plain and part of the county is in the Delta allows Monticello to serve both the forestry industry and row-crop agriculture. UAM’s College of Forestry, Agriculture and Natural Resources has a good reputation.

When I worked for the Delta Regional Authority, we hired a nationally known economic development consultant from Austin, Texas, to design a strategic plan for the area we served. He identified what were known as critical-mass communities. In essence, these were places with a college, a hospital and the ability to draw shoppers from surrounding counties (think Walmart Supercenter).

“When I was young, people drove from Monticello to Warren to do things,” a Warren native told me on my recent visit to Monticello. “Now, it’s just the opposite.”

Warren has seen its population fall from 6,549 in the 1990 census to an estimated 5,600 residents today.

“Located at the intersection of two major roads and served early by railroads, it became an enduring commercial hub,” Rebecca DeArmond-Huskey says of Monticello in an entry for the Central Arkansas Library System’s Encyclopedia of Arkansas. “A diversified infrastructure consisting of commerce, agriculture and the timber industry … sustained the town’s growth. The town also became an important educational and medical center.”

In the late 1830s and early 1840s, the center of activity for the area was a community known as Rough and Ready Hill. The settlement earned its name because of feuds that ended in fights and murders. Drew County was created in November 1846 and named for Gov. Thomas Stevenson Drew, who served from November 1844 until his resignation in January 1849. Drew County was carved out of Bradley and Arkansas counties. Parts of Desha County were added in 1861 and 1873. The boundary with Chicot County wasn’t settled until 1873.

Business and civic leaders decided that a county seat with a better reputation than Rough and Ready Hill was needed. In 1849, Fountain and Polly Austin donated 83 acres for the new town of Monticello. The first courthouse was constructed in 1851 on a square in the middle of town. It was replaced by a larger courthouse in 1857. There was a library and a newspaper by 1857.

Monticello resident Hannah Hyatt began accepting orphans into her home in 1887. In 1894, she donated the house and 80 acres to the Arkansas Baptist State Convention. The Arkansas Baptist Home for Children was born.

A cottonseed oil mill opened in 1890, and Warren Anderson’s Monticello Cotton Mill followed in 1900. These operations were complemented by multiple cotton gins, a fertilizer plant, a canning factory, a stave mill and an ice plant. The Vera Lloyd Presbyterian Home for Children opened in 1924.

The year 1932 saw the construction of a new courthouse. A municipal building went up two years later. That was followed by a municipal swimming pool in 1936. Drew Memorial Hospital was built in 1950, and an expanded hospital was constructed in 1975.

Monticello’s population almost doubled from 2,378 in the 1920 census to 4,501 in the 1950 census. The biggest growth spurt came in the 1970s as Monticello grew from 5,085 residents in the 1970 census to 8,259 people in 1980.

“Local resident John Porter Price established the J.P. Price Lumber Co. in 1965,” DeArmond-Huskey writes. “Akin Industries, manufacturing furniture for health care customers, was established in 1985. The building of a Walmart Supercenter in the 1990s spurred commercial development west of the center of town. Chuck and David Dearman established North Park Village Shopping Center next to Walmart. This commercial strip didn’t cause the original civic center around the old town square to languish.”

MonArk Boat Co. was founded in 1959 by Zach McClendon Sr., Zach McClendon Jr. and Norris Judkins. The company developed recreational and work boat divisions. The recreational division was sold in 1988, and the commercial division was renamed SeaArk Marine.

Since 1909, meanwhile, what’s now UAM has made the city an educational and cultural anchor for this part of the state. While the rest of southeast Arkansas struggles economically, Monticello bucks the trend.