East Camden, AR

East Camden is a planned city in Ouachita County, Arkansas, with 798 residents in the 2020 census. It began as Billkitts Rental Housing, a Navy-built community created to house personnel at the Shumaker Naval Ammunition Depot during World War II. The original plan included 260 homes, a swimming pool, and recreation facilities; the depot manufactured, tested, stored, disassembled, and destroyed ammunition and rockets across a huge South Arkansas site. East Camden incorporated in 1965.

When Shumaker closed, the land took on a new industrial life. Brown Engineering purchased much of the former depot, and the East Camden Industrial Park grew from its roads, buildings, and utilities. SAU Tech later occupied part of the former installation, while Highland Industrial Park became the region’s major defense and manufacturing address. East Camden’s daily map still reflects that beginning: residential streets laid out for a wartime workforce sit a few miles from an industrial complex born out of the same federal project. It is a South Arkansas city whose story comes from a planned neighborhood, a former naval depot, and the industries that followed.