Union County, Arkansas

Anyone arrested in Union County is booked into the Union County Detention Center at 250 American Road in El Dorado, the jail run by the Union County Sheriff's Office. Deputies process people taken into custody across the county, along with anyone brought in by El Dorado police or by state officers working U.S. 167 and U.S. 82. Each arrest opens a public file that pairs an intake photo with the charges being filed and, once a judge rules, the bond owed for release. The Sheriff's Office puts a name-searchable list of current inmates on its website, and dialing the jail at (870) 864-1990 reaches staff who can say whether a person is still locked up.

About Union County

Organized on November 2, 1829, the county was named by petitioners writing in "the spirit of Union and Unity," and it sprawls across more than a thousand square miles of pine flatwoods along the Louisiana line, making it the largest county by area in Arkansas. Timber and cotton ruled its first century until a wildcat well drilled by Dr. Samuel T. Busey blew in just south of El Dorado on January 10, 1921, the first commercial oil strike in the state and the spark for a rush that remade the county. The seat swelled toward thirty thousand residents within a few years, drew dozens of drilling and refining outfits, and gave rise to the Murphy oil fortune; today a restored downtown and a towering steel derrick monument form the Murphy Arts District, while Union and adjoining Columbia County still hold the largest bromine reserves in the United States. Outlying towns such as Smackover, Norphlet, Strong, Junction City, and Huttig grew straight out of that boom. Records from elsewhere in south Arkansas sit close at hand: check Calhoun County directly to the north, nearby Dallas County, or Jefferson County up in the Delta. The rest of our county pages branch off the main Arkansas mugshots page, and the latest Union County booking photos can be sorted by booking date or charge.