Bauxite, AR

Bauxite is a Saline County city whose name comes straight from the ore that made it. Bauxite was a company town built around mining and aluminum refining: ore was found here in the late nineteenth century, Pittsburgh Reduction and then ALCOA expanded the operation, and the population surged during the World War II production years before the mines declined. The 2020 census counted 629 residents. Arkansas 183 ties the town to Benton and Bryant, and Little Rock is part of the wider Central Arkansas orbit.

That industrial past is still visible at the Bauxite Museum, housed in the Colonial-style 1926 ALCOA community center. The collection's photographs, documents, and mining equipment give the town a place to start when you want the local story, rather than a generic former-company-town label. Present-day routines run through Bauxite Public Schools, which maintains its own district with Bauxite High, Bauxite Middle, and Pine Haven Elementary, plus city services and the road toward the larger Saline County cities. Bauxite is a small residential community, but its map still follows the mine, the company campus, and the school district that grew around them.