Caddo Valley, AR

Caddo Valley had 595 residents in 2020 on the north side of the Caddo River in northeastern Clark County. The town sits about two miles west of the river’s mouth at the Ouachita, four miles north of Arkadelphia, and close to the roads leading into the Ouachita Mountains. DeGray Dam is three miles north, while DeGray Lake Resort State Park lies about five miles away. The river and lake give Caddo Valley a landscape of wooded hills, water, and broad recreational country.

ATTRBrandonrush / CC BY-SA 3.0

DeGray Lake was created in 1972 when the Army Corps of Engineers completed the dam, backing up the Caddo River into a lake with roughly 13,800 acres of water and more than 200 miles of shoreline. The Caddo itself is named for the Caddo people and eventually joins the Ouachita River. Caddo Valley falls within the Arkadelphia School District, with Arkadelphia High School serving local students. The town’s daily life is tied to the county seat nearby, but the river access, dam, lake, and state park give it a much wider regional reach.