A Searcy County town may have been named through a clerical error.
The first white settler in the area around Calf Creek may have been John Campbell, who moved there around 1837. The settlement continued to grow over the years, and in 1885 Calf Creek Masonic Lodge No. 426 was founded. A year later a lodge was built and named Snow Hall in honor of county Sheriff Benjamin Franklin Hall.
When the locals petitioned for a post office in 1888, they requested the name Snow Hall, but postal officials recorded it as Snowball.
The town thrived until a fire destroyed much of the business district in 1945. By the 1970s Snowball’s population had declined from around five hundred to just four families. The back-to-the-land movement brought some young people seeking a simpler lifestyle to the area, but most of them left as the movement lost momentum.
Today most of the businesses are shuttered, but the Masonic hall and Snowball Baptist Church are still active.
You can read the entire Encyclopedia of Arkansas entry at encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/snowball-searcy-county-7541.
