Cotton Plant Commercial Historic District

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2008.

From the record

“The Cotton Plant Commercial Historic District encompasses the historic civic and commercial center of the city of Cotton Plant, Arkansas. It includes about two blocks of Main Street, between Elm and Ash on the south side, and between Pine and just short of Vine on the north side.”
Wikipedia article Cotton Plant Commercial Historic District, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 17 National Register listings published here for Woodruff County · listed in 2008 · category: District.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

Address. Main St. roughly between Pine and Ash Sts., Cotton Plant, 72036
When was it listed? September 2008
Category. district
Township. Cotton Plant township
National Register reference number. 08000946 - assigned by the National Park Service when the property was listed.

Fires near this property

2 since 2001

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 2 fires within 5 miles of Cotton Plant Commercial Historic District between 2001 and 2014, burning about 8 acres in total. None started naturally. None was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Debris and open burning	1
Recreation and ceremony	1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
24 April 2014	Recreation and ceremony	8.0 acres	Cache River National Wildlife Refuge	WOODRUFF 935 FIRE
21 March 2001	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Central Arkansas Refuges Complex	TRACT 295

Every fire recorded in Woodruff County

Storms near this property

17 since 1995

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Cotton Plant, the town this property stands in, in 17 storm reports between 1995 and 2025: 9 thunderstorm wind, 7 hail, 1 tornado. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
April 2025	Thunderstorm Wind	Cotton Plant	-	Multiple trees were blown down in the town of Cotton Plant.
January 2020	Thunderstorm Wind	Cotton Plant	-	Trees were blown down.
April 2017	Thunderstorm Wind	Cotton Plant	-	Reports of power lines and trees down in southern Woodruff County south of County Road 306.
July 2008	Thunderstorm Wind	Cotton Plant	-	Trees were down on Arkansas Highway 17.
December 2002	Tornado (F1)	Cotton Plant	-	A weak tornado initially touched down 1.8 miles west-southwest of Cotton Plant, tracked through the city of Cotton Plant, and lifted 3.3 miles northeast of Cotton Plant. The tornado damaged the roof of a cotton gin and a large nearby metal building was destroyed. A number of homes suffered damage, mainly due to shingles being blown off and trees falling onto them. Several mobile homes were damaged, including one that was overturned against a tree. The facade of several downtown buildings were torn off. A number of headstones on graves at a local cemetery were overturned.
March 2002	Thunderstorm Wind	Cotton Plant	-	Several buildings in Cotton Plant sustained roof damage.
July 1997	Thunderstorm Wind	Cotton Plant	-	Thunderstorm winds destroyed a storage building.
July 1995	Thunderstorm Wind	Cotton Plant	-	Some large trees limbs were blown down.
December 2015	Hail	Cotton Plant	-	no account filed
May 2003	Hail	Cotton Plant	-	no account filed
February 2001	Thunderstorm Wind	Cotton Plant	-	no account filed
June 2001	Hail	Cotton Plant	-	no account filed
April 1998	Hail	Cotton Plant	-	no account filed
July 1997	Hail	Cotton Plant	-	no account filed
March 1996	Thunderstorm Wind	Cotton Plant	-	no account filed
April 1996	Hail	Cotton Plant	-	no account filed
July 1995	Hail	Cotton Plant	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Woodruff County

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

Listed places nearby

1 within 8 miles

Other National Register properties close enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties to their map sheets.

Photograph	Property	Distance	Listed
	Cotton Plant Water Tower	0.2 miles	2008

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 08000946 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Woodruff County	All 17 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.