Grubbs (Jackson County, AR)

Grubbs in the twenty-first century is a different town from what it was back during its heyday of the railroad industry currently a community based in agricultural such as Riceland Foods. The railroad and lumber industry played a major role in the economy of Grubbs and Jackson County as a whole. The town was founded through one man who wanted to help provide for Jackson County economic expansion. Eventually thanks to this man the community would have its own bank, stores, school, telephone, and political standing. Luck though would not sit well with the Grubbs community they would go through quite a few tragedies that would destroy their economy, but the community is surviving even in the twenty-first century.

Grubbs in the twenty-first century is home to Richland Foods but it once was a center of a thriving community. Grubbs in located in the eastern part of Jackson County, near the Cache River, and was founded as an agricultural center, but would soon develop into a lumber town after the advent of the railroad was added into the area. When a congregation from the Church of Christ established a following in 1877 in eastern Jackson County, the citizens appealed to the county government to construct the Grubbs Township, and county approved it in 1884. Farmer and politician James C. Grubbs helped to name and develop the community, and used his home as the first voting precinct for the township. Eventually a post office would be established in 1888 also using the name Grubbs, a school was built, and a Baptist congregation was organized using the school building for meeting in 1898. In 1905 when a railroad was built into Jackson County by the St. Louis-San Francisco Railway (the ‘Frisco’) it was used to carry cotton and lumber but served a passenger train as well, but because the line was more than a mile from the original settlement of Grubbs the citizens had to establish a new community in 1906 that closer to the railroad.

A large sawmill built by Morse Land and Timber Company supplied several hundreds of jobs for the citizens of Grubbs in the new settlement. By 1908 a telephone service was established in the township, and in 1909 landowners filed an incorporation into Jackson County after the establishment of two banks. The Farmers and Merchants Bank was the first to be established in June of 1909, but failed to be a financial institution, so in July that same year Grubbs was establish the Bank of Grubbs completing construction in 1910, and this bank last twenty years. The first school established in Grubbs in 1912 only taught to eighth grade until in the 1930s when high school classes grade 9-12 was added to the curriculum.

Grubbs by 1912 would have a blacksmith, eight stores, including a confectionery, a hotel, two physicians, and by 1912 a new Church of Christ and Baptist congregation had built new buildings. The telephone system that was established in 1908 would be wiped out by a serve storm in 1917 and was not replaced until the next decade. Grubbs beginning in 1929 would begin to see a downfall in the community with multiply tragedies happening. Beginning with Bank of Grubbs in January 1929 had liquidated their holdings, stating that the bank was no longer able to operate in a small territory and sustain a good profit. Works Progress Administration (WPA) would establish a new school and gymnasium built in 1938, but the gym would burn to the ground in 1947 and the high school burned in 1963, and both were then replaced in late 1963.

Once the industrialization of mechanized farming equipment was brought into Grubbs like the rest of Jackson County began to see a steady decline in their economy and community. Eventually Grubbs would be consolidated in the late twentieth century with Tuckerman making up the new district of Jackson County School District. Grubbs in the twenty-first century only has a small population of 386 according to the 2010 census, and surviving businesses are a barber shop, restaurant, a grocery store, and several agricultural businesses, such as Overfield & Llyod Irrigation and Riceland Foods dryer.

Teske, Steve. Grubbs (Jackson County), Encyclopedia of Arkansas. September 1st, 2022. Accessed April 27th, 2023. https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/grubbs-jackson-county-6125/.

Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, Central Arkansas Library System. Grubbs Gin, Encyclopedia of Arkansas. Accessed May 1st, 2023. https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/media/farmers-gin-13670/.

Lancaster, Guy. Grubbs Cotton Gin, Encyclopedia of Arkansas. Accessed May 1st, 2023. https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/media/grubbs-cotton-gin-11890/.

CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, Central Arkansas Library System. Grubbs Odd Fellows, Encylopedia . Accessed May 1st, 2023. https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/media/grubbs-odd-fellows-17033/.

Hanley, Ray. Arkansas Postcard Past, Arkansas Online. March 26th, 2022. Accessed May 1st, 2023. https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2022/mar/26/arkansas-postcard-past/.