McCrory, Arkansas

The town began to get organized when word spread in 1886 that local land had been donated by one Wade McCrory to the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railway for their projected route from Memphis, Tennessee to Little Rock.^[3] The first train actually arrived the next year, and the town was formally incorporated on January 30, 1890.^[3]

Given that another railway called the Batesville and Brinkley Railroad had in the early 1880’s built two miles west of town, local McCrory businessmen in 1906 tried to leverage their railroad connections by creating a tramway running from McCrory directly to the Batesville & Brinkley, at a point originally known as Martin’s Junction, later Jelks, and finally becoming Patterson in 1919.^[4] On May 21, 1910, the owners decided to form a fully-fledged railroad called the McCrory and Beedeville Southern Railway.^[4] The original plan was to run from McCrory north-northeast to the timber processing town of Beedeville, but this was quickly modified to include an extension west from McCrory to Jelks, replacing the tramway.^[4][5] The line to Jelks was completed around August 1911, along with two miles (to Comers Spur) toward the Beedeville objective.^[4] Financial problems occurred almost immediately, but the line was extended about another 4 miles to around Odessa, Arkansas by November 1912, and about another three-and-a-half miles to a point known as Langley Junction by November 1913.^[4] This gave the railroad a final line of about eleven-and-a-half miles of track from Jelks to Langley Junction, which was still about three-and-a-half miles short of Beedeville.^[4] The railroad went bankrupt and was out of business by 1914, with the rails removed soon after.^[4]

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 2.4 square miles (6.2 km²), all land.

McCrory provides public education from the McCrory School District including the McCrory High School.