Mayor Ernestine McDaniel feared her small town would have water trouble if the covid-19 pandemic kept people at home for an extended time.
She thought the 173 residents of Fifty-Six would be using so much water they would empty their supply.
After a couple months, in spite of the town's effort to conserve, the well did run dry.
"June is when we ran out of water," McDaniel said during a short break in her chaotic day Friday. "I mean, we were [completely] out."
The town, located in Stone County in north Arkansas, has been getting its water from a fire station in neighboring Mountain View, the county seat.
The water is being hauled by soldiers from the 875th Engineer Battalion, 87th Troop Command, according to the Arkansas National Guard.
In all, six soldiers from Camp Robinson have been assigned to the mission, Guard spokesman Bob Oldham said.
"They're hauling water from a volunteer fire department that's 7 miles away from Fifty-Six," he said. "They're hauling 32,000 gallons of water per day."
A similar situation occurred last year in Carthage, a city of 385 people, in south Arkansas.
In July 2019, Carthage's only well in town failed, so residents had to rely on the National Guard to transport water from out of town.
In April, Carthage officials told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that residents had running water again after a new $900,000 well was built. The process took nine months.
McDaniel said a new waterline has been built in Fifty-Six, but it still needs to be placed underground and construction on a new pump station also has to be finished.
She predicted that all of the work would be complete in less than two months.
A contractor was hired for the job and the total cost is being covered by grant money, a loan and state funding, according to the town.
The mayor thanked Stone County officials and Gov. Asa Hutchinson for their contributions -- whether helping with the new well or providing fresh water to residents.
"It's been very difficult, but hey, it's almost finished," McDaniel said. "We're fixing to see the end of the tunnel."
Fifty-Six's unusual name is often noted in articles and lists about cities with strange names. The community founders' preferred name for the town was rejected in the early 1900s, and the federal government began to refer to the community by it's school district number, 56, which stuck, according to Bill Earngey's book "Arkansas Roadsides."
The town is home to the nearby Blanchard Springs Caverns, one of the most visited tourist sites in the Ozark National Forest, according to the Central Arkansas Library System's Encyclopedia of Arkansas.
CORRECTION: The town of Fifty-Six is near Blanchard Springs Caverns in Stone County. An earlier version of this article misidentified the cave system.
