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Entry Category: Businesses - Starting with I

I. F. Anderson Farms

aka: I. F. Anderson Minnow Farms
aka: Anderson Minnow Farm
aka: Anderson’s Minnow Farm
I. F. Anderson’s Farms, Inc., is located just west of Lonoke (Lonoke County). The farm includes about 322 kilometers (200 miles) of levees that impound 3,400 acres of ponds accessed via a “checkerboard” pattern of levee roads. It boasts as the world’s largest minnow (baitfish) farm, providing a bounty of golden shiners (Notemigonus crysoleucus). As the premier fish farm in the nation, it produces over one billion shiners each year. The I. F. (Fay) Anderson family initially dug and stocked its first farm ponds in Lonoke in 1949. James Neal Anderson and his son Jamie Anderson are fourth-generation owners. The 11,000-square-foot hatchery facility is capable of producing over one billion fry per season and can accommodate five million pounds of …

IC Corporation

aka: Ward Transportation Services, Inc.
IC Corporation, formerly Ward Transportation Services, Inc., is a school bus manufacturer that started in Conway (Faulkner County). In 2008, the company had a sixty-two-percent share of the North American school bus market. The company was often technologically innovative and, in 1936, was the first to produce a steel-bodied school bus. IC Corporation also began offering hybrid technology in its buses. IC Corporation was founded in 1933 by blacksmith David H. Ward as Ward Body Works, a company that originally made school bus bodies from wood. The name was later changed to Ward School Bus Manufacturing, Inc., a subsidiary of Ward Industries, Inc., and then to Ward Bus Company. In 1968, the company was handed over to Ward’s son Charles. …

Independence Steam Electric Station

The Independence Steam Electric Station (ISES) is a coal-fired electric-energy-generating plant consisting of two units nameplate-rated at 850 megawatts (MW). Located near Newark (Independence County), the units—constructed by Arkansas Power and Light Company (AP&L, now Entergy Arkansas)—were launched into service in 1983 and 1984 following vigorous litigation before the Arkansas Public Service Commission (APSC) in 1978. The ISES plant burns Powder River Basin low-sulfur coal transported to Arkansas from the Antelope Coal Mine in Wyoming by rail in cars owned by Entergy. ISES—originally proposed by AP&L, Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corporation (AECC), and City Water and Light (CWL) of Jonesboro (Craighead County), and now also co-owned or leased by several other Arkansas municipal utilities—operates in coordination with other generating plants within …

Information Galore

aka: Infogo
Information Galore, Inc., (a.k.a. Infogo) of El Dorado (Union County) was the first commercial Internet service provider (ISP) in Arkansas. Although the company was short-lived, it had a notable impact upon economic and educational initiatives in southern Arkansas, as well as parts of Texas and Louisiana. Infogo was founded by six individuals. John Gray was a world-famous geologist who was appointed to serve on the Arkansas Geological Commission (now Arkansas Geological Survey) several times by Governor Bill Clinton and who did work for the United Nations. Gray, along with Watt McKinney, Leon Wood, William L. (Billy) Cook, and Robert McKinney each invested $5,000. Joe Brazeal was a board member of ARKnet, the state’s educational computer network, and provided technical expertise …