Land Clearing in Leachville, AR

Clearing Ditch Banks and Field Edges Around Leachville

Leachville lies in the St. Francis Lowlands, part of the Mississippi Alluvial Plain. The ground is flat and mostly covered with row crops today. The city's own website describes the town as surrounded by rich farmland. One of the largest cotton gins in Arkansas was built at the north end of town in the early 1990s.

Roughly ninety percent of Mississippi County was once swampland. Early efforts to drain it mostly failed until a district for levees and drainage was set up in 1893. Levees and drainage ditches then opened the land up for cotton and corn, and most waterways here have been channelized. The ditch banks never see a planter, so saplings and vines can get a start there.

For bush hogging, we run the brush cutter on the skid steer along ditch banks, field edges and road frontage. The cutter takes tall grass, weeds and briars down, along with light brush. Saplings too big for the cutter get ground into mulch by the drum mulcher. When a fence row has gone to saplings, pasture and fence line clearing gets it ready for new fence.

How Did Leachville Get Its Start?

A group of land developers started Leachville in 1896. One of them, James Wiseman Honnoll, named the town in honor of another, Joshua Gilbert Leach. The railroad reached town in 1899, and a second rail line followed in 1908. Leachville was not incorporated until February 2, 1916.

The first farm on Buffalo Island was cleared shortly after the Civil War. Many loggers worked the red oak, cypress, gum and walnut here in the 1800s. In Leachville, a local family started a sawmill in 1898. Brush can still take back any corner of that ground left uncut for a few years.

Electricity reached town in 1924, and the first paved roads appeared in 1925. The old railroad depot at 2nd and McNamee was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992. Leachville was once known as "The Cleanest Town on Buffalo Island, Where Agriculture and Industry Meet."

Low Spots, Sand Blows and the Woods Toward Big Lake

The New Madrid earthquakes of 1811 and 1812 changed the landscape of Buffalo Island. The St. Francis Lowlands still hold sand blows and sunken lands from those quakes. Not every wet corner on a lot goes back that far. Even so, a low spot that holds water after a rain changes how and when we clear it.

The Big Lake National Wildlife Refuge lies east of Leachville. It preserves some of the bottomland hardwood forest typical of this region before row farming took over. We work on private ground around the refuge, never inside it. That might be a wooded tract you bought or a lot at the edge of the timber.

When brush and vines crowd a house or barn, brush clearing opens the ground back up around it. The drum mulcher takes saplings and small trees down to the ground and leaves the mulch behind. If there is larger timber in the mix, we look at it on the estimate.

From Monette to Leachville on AR 18

From Monette, we take AR 18 east into Mississippi County. AR 18 runs along the south side of town, where AR 119 starts and heads north to AR 77. AR 77 connects Leachville with Manila, 8 miles to the southeast. Leachville sits about 30 miles east of Jonesboro, and AR 18 continues east toward Blytheville.

Leachville had 2,039 people at the 2020 Census, on 4.4 square miles of land. City Hall sits on Main Street, next to the library and the police station. Leachville and Monette merged their school districts in 1984 to form Buffalo Island Central. The district's elementary school is in Leachville, and its high school is in Monette.

For a new house or shop site in or around Leachville, lot clearing gets the ground ready for the builder. We mulch or haul off the brush and small trees, then rough grade with the skid steer. The foundation is dug by the builder's excavator after we finish. Leveling a yard or spreading fill dirt and topsoil is dirt work.

We grade the base of a gravel driveway first, then spread the gravel and crown it so rain runs off. Connecting a new drive to AR 18, AR 77 or AR 119 may take an ARDOT permit. For a county road, check with the county first, and we can tell you which office to call. Arkansas 811 lists driveway work and ditch work among the jobs that require a call first.