ARKANSAS: The Bleakest Towns I've Ever Visited - The Dying, Forgotten Delta

Comments · 4.2K

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  @50pinkies · 1 year ago

  In the early 2000s Arkansas saw a severe ice storm and power was lost for days.  My very young IBEW son worked the storm to restore power.  He never saw so much poverty and genuine love from strangers.  The farmers live in delapidated mobile homes with a pole and box hookup just outside the door.  The lights went on and local farmers fed the entire crew and treated them like heros.  He'll never forget Arkansas. ❤

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• GL

  @gl6996 · 2 years ago

  I'm from this area, born in Forrest City, graduated from Hughes High and I know this area personally. A lot of my family is still in the Delta scattered out. It's a sad sight. People graduated and never came back because there was nothing invested here in the first place. It will take Almighty God and billions of dollars to build these towns up. I no longer live in the Delta, but my heart is still here ❤

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  @549BR · 3 years ago

  How does a poor city like Hughes have such a large fleet of new police cars;  something is really weird about that situation.

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• TC

  @tcwilli43 · 3 years ago

  I’m from Marianna Arkansas, graduated high school in 2012. I now live in Dallas but have traveled the world through the military, it’s home but, I would not live there ever again.That BBQ spot is Jones BBQ, it has won tons of national awards. Many people in town are related and that little gas station is family owned, they still come out to gas your car for you.

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• TH

  @Theguys1 · 2 years ago

  Wow…their Governor just spent allegedly  $19k on a podium. How can she see this and not weep?

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• JA

  @jaytruelove3226 · 3 years ago (edited)

  The BBQ place you went by at about the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ba3itBPqGo4&amp;t=1080">18:00</a> minute mark is a very famous restaurant. It has won numerous awards for the best BBQ in the state of Arkansas and if I&apos;m not mistaken there was an article in the New York Times about their BBQ.

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• FU

  @fudzzz · 3 years ago

  As a non-American, it&apos;s fascinating to have a ride through these small towns away from the big cities. Sad too, of course, due to the poverty. Thanks for taking us with you.

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• JA

  @jamesburge1983 · 3 years ago

  Please tell me you stopped at Jones BBQ! &nbsp;Probably the best thing you saw all trip.<br><br>From Gastro Obscura:<br><br>JONES BAR-B-Q, A TWO-TABLE EATERY in the town of Marianna, was the first restaurant in Arkansas to ever receive a James Beard Award. The owners, James and Betty Jones, hadn’t even heard of the awards before winning in the 2012 “America’s Classics” category.<br><br>The small diner takes up the ground floor of the couple’s home. The sign out front reads “since 1964,” but the operation dates back to at least 1910. James Jones’s family recipes are the same ones that his grandfather used when he sold barbecued meat out of his home and that his father used when he opened up an earlier iteration of the restaurant, known as “the Hole in the Wall” (so-called because his father served everything through a window).

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• RE

  @realessayog6947 · 3 years ago

  Since I was a teenager I would go on maps and wonder what those towns look like... thank you sir for providing all of this data of every town.

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• JA

  @jane84321 · 3 years ago

  SOME PEOPLE know how to survive without a lot of money and still be happy.

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• DA

  @darrowlinn7407 · 2 years ago

  I remember in the 1960s and 1970s Hughes was a fine place. The town began to go down in 1980 when Blanton Grain Elevator took bankruptcy and cost the farmers a lot of money. Then the Agricultural Crisis of the 80s hit and many farmers and farm businesses went under. The town deteriorated from that point its heartbreaking to see the town now and remember what it used to be.

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• WU

  @Wudchukwilly · 2 years ago

  I was raised in this area and can tell you for a fact that all of these towns up into the late sixties were gem’s especially Forrest city. Most left for the bigger cities.

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