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

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

As a non-American, it'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.

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 ❤

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.

Im from Germany, and what rlly astonishes me is the amount of trash everywhere. In Germany we have many little Villages with only a few hundred people, but there would never be so much trash. Trash increases if the towns get "bigger" in Germany. But most villages are pretty clean.

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.

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.

Please tell me you stopped at Jones BBQ! Probably the best thing you saw all trip. From Gastro Obscura: 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. 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).

Sitting here in over-crowded Britain, it is unbelievable seeing these abandoned buildings and deserted towns. It's a whole other World from here. Your documentaries are fascinating and interesting, but the despair of these towns and areas is palpable. It is fascinating to see places that I will never get to see in real life. Well done, one of the best travel channels on YouTube. Best wishes David in the over-crowded UK.

I’m from the UK, I travelled 2,500 miles across America by car in 2009. The best and most interesting parts for me were discovering and driving through the small towns away from the major cities.

I’m an Arkansas native but live in Dallas. My hometown is Conway, not too far north of Little Rock. I remember going to a small town named Brinkley as a kid with one of my bestfriends whose family is from that area. I had to be around 13yrs old and that was the eye opener for me to what the smaller towns in the state that were impoverished and dying look like. I still had a great time there because there are really nice people there and they still found a way to have a good time without the added conveniences of what you might find in a bigger city but it’s definitely one of the many places in the state that you can tell was thriving and functional at one point in time but slowly lost its momentum to keep up with other towns close by that continued to grow economically.

It would be very interesting if you went inside the local businesses and interviewed the residents of these towns.

My dad lived in that delta area south of W Memphis, back in the 50's, wich would be his later childhood and early teenage years. Towns like Marianna and Marvel, etc. It would be wrong to say that the area was ever wealthy; what it was, however, was bustling and alive. Its impossible for those who have never seen it to picture how life in small-town USA was. There were few if any corporate jobs at all; almost all farms and businesses were small family-owned affairs. The agricultural rhythm of life dominated. Most people in Arkansas raised a fair proportion of their own food. There were probably more people living in farms along those little country roads than in the towns themselves. Much that is now deep woods was farm fields and pasture. It'd be silly to suggest it was idyllic, but from the way people talked about it in later years, it seems to have been a generally happy and stable environment. I saw the last bits of reasonably healthy small-town life in the 70's, in SW Arkansas. It was a good environment to grow up in. The rise of the giant corporations destroyed an entire way of life; and looking at the mental health stats, mass shootings, etc, I'm not inclined to say that giving virtually utter control of our lives to corporations was a good deal. And if you've never thought about it -- giant corporations control your entertainment, your news, your access to food, your jobs, and your access to almost every item that you own or will ever own. Think about it. Not local employers and farmers whom you know, whom you can see and talk to in the street, but gigantic corporations to whom everybody is a mere number to either be milked or else discarded.

I am a retired teacher and I can tell you why some of the schools are now closed. Many of our small towns were consolidated with the larger schools in counties. The small towns lost a lot of their population with these closings.

The BBQ place you went by at about the 18:00 minute mark is a very famous restaurant. It has won numerous awards for the best BBQ in the state of Arkansas and if I'm not mistaken there was an article in the New York Times about their BBQ.

The spread of chain stores like Walmart, Dollar Tree, Krogers, McDonald's, the big pharmacy, gas station, clothing and other huge corporations have had a massive effect on chances of a family opening their own small business and becoming part of the American Dream. When these big corporation's take 70/80/90% of the local business, the self employed store owner cannot compete.

My grandparents were poor Illinois farmers, mainly rented their homes. They always kept pretty flowers, vegetable gardens, fresh paint….They had a goal to feed themselves, they did have a strong community and church. I think lack of community, poor schools, poverty and lack jobs, creates depression and despair. We need to re-invent a Rosevelt CCC from the Depression era, we need to anything to lift kids out of poverty.

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

I'm pretty sure you can find small towns like this in every state in America. There just isn't enough economic activity to allow them to prosper. A lot of them used to be supported by local farmers, but many of the small farms have either failed or been bought up by big-ag. Young people typically move away. No opportunity here. Sad, but true.

I spent two years as a reporter covering four East Arkansas counties for a Memphis newspaper. It actually affected my health at the time, the area was so bleak and the atmosphere palpably mean. There was even a corrupt sheriff straight out of central casting, who later went to prison. I spent as much time as i could at the only Holiday Inn around (in Forrest City) as an escape. I hated that place!