Year Brought Much Progress To Washington County

This has been a year of major progress for three towns in this area.

Lincoln has a new 10,156square- foot library that should be opening soon on the downtown square. And what a library it will be with a large conference room with a 91” LED smart TV, a smaller conference room with a 60” LED smart TV, Wi-Fi throughout the facility, separate children, youth and adult areas, books galore on many shelves and music and movies for checking out. For those doing family tree research — a genealogy area.

There will be 20 new computers, four for card catalogs, two for genealogy and the rest divided among the children, youth and adult areas with each one set up for age appropriate use.

There also will be a coffee and lounge area in the new library with sidewalk tables outdoors if patrons wish to take advantage of nice weather.

It will be a library the residents of Lincoln can be proud of and will surely visit often. This follows a new high school built in Lincoln last year.

This year Farmington and Prairie Grove got into planning new education facilities.

Last year Farmington completed a large sports complex. This year it’s a new basketball arena, fine arts center and additional academic space that is in the works. The project is estimated to cost about $12 million.

The fine arts center will include a 600-seat auditorium with classroom space for the high school band, choir and drama students.

The basketball arena will seat 1,750 people. The two areas will be joined with a common lobby on the front floor. Entry to the campus will be located on North Hunter Street.

Residents in Farmington also will have a new library.

The city purchased an existing facility across from the Post Office at 175 Cimarron Place. Remodeling is currently ongoing with an opening date next year for the much larger facility.

Prairie Grove voters cast ballots this year for a 6-mill property tax increase for the Prairie Grove School District, so that city too will have additional education space in the works with a new primary school campus, a new high school basketball gym and storm shelter for the safety of students and for use by the community after school hours.

Moving on to a celebration — Prairie Grove celebrated is 125th anniversary earlier this year with a free family swim at the aquatic center, food, music and fireworks.

Prairie Grove was incorporated as a city in July 1888. It had been a community village for many years before that date. The original plat in 1888 had six blocks, according to a story in the Enterprise-Leader. By 1980, the city had 1.5 square miles and by 2000, the city had grown to 5 square miles. Today the city reaches 8 square miles.

All three towns have increased in population and size in the past decade and city, school officials and residents in each town have seen a need and responded with more school space and in the case of Lincoln and Farmington, new library space. No doubt each town will continue to see population growth and residents will see and experience even more progress through the years ahead, but this year has seen many new large projects in the works, which will make each town a more desirable place to live.

Kudos to those officials in each city and their residents who have seen a need and moved forward to a better future.