Huttig (Union County)

Historical Population as per the U.S. Census:

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 for its workers and also provided schools, stores, and a community house, and the community was served by the Huttig News. The city was deliberately segregated, with white and Black neighborhoods of about equal size, each with their own stores, schools, and churches.

In 1910, an African-American man named Sam Powell was lynched near Huttig for alleged robbery and arson.

The lumber company has changed hands several times over the last hundred years. In 1953, when it was part of Olin Industries, the company announced that houses in Huttig would be sold to the company employees who were living in them. The community voted for a special tax to raise $100,000 to build a new elementary school and to remodel both the high school and the “Negro school.” Olin Industries later sold the sawmill and other company property to the Plum Creek Timber Company, which in turn sold the property to International Paper. In 2000, West Fraser Timber Company of Canada acquired the Huttig sawmill, along with several other sawmills in the southern United States.

Huttig schools were desegregated in the 1960s, like other south Arkansas school districts. In 2003, the Arkansas General Assembly required school districts with fewer than 350 students to consolidate. Huttig was forced into consolidation with the neighboring Strong (Union County) school district in 2004. The school board closed the junior high school in Huttig in 2006 and then closed the elementary school in 2008, transporting students to the schools in Strong. The weakness of the housing industry led to layoffs at the sawmill in Huttig in the early twenty-first century.

Huttig has two restaurants and several churches, including Baptist, Missionary Baptist, Assembly of God, Church of God in Christ (COGIC), United Methodist, and African Methodist Episcopal (AME). It is located only a few miles from the Felsenthal National Wildlife Refuge, which was established in 1975. The 2010 census figures report that the population is forty-five percent white and fifty-two percent African American.

In January 2024, West Fraser announced that the company would “indefinitely curtail” the operations its sawmill, citing low lumber commodity prices; about 140 workers were affected by the plan.

For additional information:
Bloomeley, Seth. “Old Divide Tangles Mergers.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, March 21, 2004, pp. 1A, 10A.

Gettinger, Aaron. “Sawmill in Huttig Is Closing Operation.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, January 11, 2024, pp. 1D, 2D. Online at https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2024/jan/11/sawmill-in-huttig-is-closing-operation/ (accessed January 11, 2024).

Green, Juanita Whitaker. “The History of Union County Arkansas.” N.p.: 1954.

Koon, David. “Trouble in Huttig.” Arkansas Times, November 30, 2011, p. 12. Online at https://arktimes.com/news/arkansas-reporter/2011/11/29/trouble-in-huttig (accessed June 4, 2022).

Wheeler, Frances Carroll. “For Sale: Huttig Company Town Since 1904, Gets Lift Through Offer by Olin.” Arkansas Gazette, February 7, 1954, p. 1F.

Steven Teske
CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas