Huttig is a second-class city in Union County. Located two miles north of the Arkansas-Louisiana state line, the city was established as a timber industry company town. Huttig was the childhood home of civil rights activist Daisy Bates and also of musician Floyd Cramer. After the railroad arrived in Union County, the timber industry began to purchase property and hire workers. The Frost-Johnson timber company built a company town, which company president C. D. Johnson named Huttig for his friend, industrialist William Huttig. Anchored by the Union Saw Mill Company, the city quickly became the largest sawmill community in Union County and was the second-largest city in the county until the oil boom of the 1920s. The company built houses …
On May 4, 1907, just a few years after the town of Huttig (Union County) was created, Charles Arthur Berry published the first issue of the Huttig News. Fred Myers Johnson took over in 1921 and continued as editor and publisher until the paper ceased publication in 1955. Before starting the Huttig paper, Berry had begun a newspaper in Felsenthal (Union County), the Felsenthal Press, and issued it from 1904 to 1905. Felsenthal was founded in 1904 and is four miles to the northeast of Huttig. Though the two towns were founded in the same year, Huttig was ultimately more successful. A flood in 1906 contributed to the slow growth of Felsenthal, as it halted plans to build a courthouse …