Editing Wilson, Arkansas (section)

==History==
The area was first known as Crowell's Landing, but mostly washed away in the 1880s.  Steamboat agent Dr. J.W. Rhodes purchased 37 acres in 1883 and founded a new landing on the [[Mississippi River]] he named Golden Lake. Soon after he was named postmaster.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Biographical and historical memoirs of northeast Arkansas |publisher=Goodspeed Publishing Co. |year=1889 |location=Chicago, Nashville and St, Louis |pages=549 |lccn=rc01001242}}</ref>

The city of Wilson was started about a mile and half north as a [[company town]] for [[Robert E. Lee Wilson]]'s nearby [[logging]] and sawmill operation founded in 1886. The village prospered when Wilson decided to use the cleared land for [[agriculture]] instead of selling it after logging. In 1900, a major archaeological find occurred near Wilson when [[James K. Hampson]] discovered the [[Island 35 Mastodon]].<ref name="MastWilliams">{{cite journal | title = The Island 35 Mastodon: Its Bearing on the Age of Archaic Cultures in the East | author = Williams, Steven | journal = American Antiquity | date = Apr 1957 | volume = 22 | issue = 4 | pages = 359–372 | publisher= American Antiquity, Vol. 22, No. 4, pp. 359–372 |doi = 10.2307/276134| jstor = 276134 | s2cid = 163904639 }}</ref> All residents of Wilson except the postmaster and railroad employees had access to company doctors for $1.25 annually (${{inflation|US|1.25|1930|r=2}} in {{#expr:{{CURRENTYEAR}}-1}} dollars), a rarity in the poverty-stricken Arkansas delta.<ref name="town">{{cite web | title= Town of Wilson | url= http://libinfo.uark.edu/SpecialCollections/ardiglib/leewilson/town.html |work= Lee Wilson & Company Archives |author = University of Arkansas Libraries Special Collections staff |access-date= January 28, 2012 }}</ref> The company also employed people to work in Wilson's basic service industries, such as [[drycleaning]] and automobile repair, keeping the [[standard of living]] high.<ref>{{cite web | title= Life in Wilson | url= http://libinfo.uark.edu/SpecialCollections/ardiglib/leewilson/life.html |work= Lee Wilson & Company Archives |author = University of Arkansas Libraries Special Collections staff |access-date= January 28, 2012 }}</ref>

In the early 1900's, R.L. Wilson began construction on a railroad to connect the town with Golden Landing and his saw mill operations in the area. This line was bought out by the [[Jonesboro, Lake City and Eastern Railroad]] in 1912.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Jackson |first=Donna |title=Jonesboro, Lake City and Eastern Railroad |url=https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/jonesboro-lake-city-and-eastern-railroad-13507/ |access-date=2025-01-23 |website=Encyclopedia of Arkansas |language=en-US}}</ref>[[File:Wilson AR 06 downtown.jpg|thumb|Downtown Wilson|left]]
After Wilson's son, Wilson Jr., and his wife returned from their [[England]] honeymoon enthralled with the [[Tudor Revival architecture|Tudor]] style in 1925, all subsequent public buildings were built with Tudor architecture, including retrofits to all existing public structures.<ref name="town" /> The town incorporated in 1959, selling the houses to the renters living in them and gaining access to tax income it was previously excluded from as a company entity.<ref>{{cite web | title= Robert E. Lee "Bob" Wilson, III | url= http://libinfo.uark.edu/SpecialCollections/ardiglib/leewilson/bob.html |work= Lee Wilson & Company Archives |author = University of Arkansas Libraries Special Collections staff |access-date= January 28, 2012 }}</ref> As technology advanced on the farm, fewer employees were needed and many moved from Wilson to seek other employment.

On January 27, 1921, the [[lynching of Henry Lowry]] happened near Wilson; some 500 people participated in the burning of a black [[sharecropper]].<ref name="lewis">{{cite journal |title=Mob Justice in the 'American Congo': 'Judge Lynch' in Arkansas during the Decade after World War I |first=Todd E. |last=Lewis |journal=[[The Arkansas Historical Quarterly]] |year=1993 |volume=52 |issue=2 |pages=156–84 |doi=10.2307/40019247 |jstor=40019247 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40019247}}</ref>