Discover the Lower Delta

Date: August 29, 2025 | Story: Stephanie Maxwell Newton | Photography: Mandy Jayne |

Small businesses such as Delta Dirt Distillery sow seeds of growth across this rural region

Ice cream shop Cherry on Top is a recent addition to downtown Helena.

Harvey Williams could live anywhere in the country. In fact, he and his family have been all over—from Springdale to Tampa, then Memphis, Cincinnati, Chicago, and Dallas. But the Arkansas Delta is exactly where he wants to be. “I had this yearning, or pull, that said, Hey, you still want to go home,” he says. A native of Rondo, a small town between Marianna and Helena, he grew up on his family’s farm before starting his education and career in agricultural engineering. Now, he’s in his second act as owner and co-founder of Delta Dirt Distillery with his wife, Donna. We sat down with Harvey to discuss how their distillery is paving the way for rebirth in small-town downtowns, the particular challenges faced by businesses in the Lower Delta, and up-and-coming initiatives in Helena that show promise for the future.

Q: What are some of your memories of growing up in the Lower Delta?
A: When we came to town, we came to Helena. This is where we came to shop, to get school shoes and things like that. There was a hardware store and a JCPenney. All these storefronts were filled. Now, as you can see, it’s changed a lot. But one of the reasons I put Delta Dirt Distillery downtown is because of the tens of thousands of people who come in for the King Biscuit Blues Festival every October. They close off the whole street and there are vendors and blues stages all the way down. Downtown just comes to life.

Q: Your land has been tended by members of your family for over a century. How did y’all get from growing sweet potatoes to distilling spirits?
A: It’s a complex story for sure. Where our current farm is in Phillips County, that’s where my great-grandfather started farming our land, which would have been in the late 1800s. When my granddad started farming he sharecropped it, and in 1949 he was able to buy the farm. By the time my dad started farming, soybeans had been introduced to this area, and he converted the farm from cotton to a vegetable operation. … One of my brothers farms with my dad, and they went to a vegetable farming conference in 2016 that was on sweet potatoes. I remember my brother coming back and sharing about all these things they were doing with sweet potatoes in other states—and one of those things was making vodka. I just got intrigued by the idea. I started thinking, Is that really possible? Can I create a business model out of that? I started visiting distilleries, joined the American Craft Spirits Association, started going to their conferences, and eventually got us a test still. We became an active production facility in 2020, opened the tasting room in 2021, and I left my job to pursue this full-time in 2022.

Q: What all is available in the Delta Dirt Distillery lineup?
A: There’s our Sweet Blend Vodka, which, when you taste it, most people are expecting the harshness of vodka—either the burn in the throat or the chest as it goes down. But you don’t get that from our vodka. There’s a kind of floral aroma, almost like tequila, and an earthy note from the sweet potatoes. Then we added our Tall Cotton Gin, and last year we released the first of what we call an “Arkansas Brown.” We can’t call it bourbon or whiskey because we use sweet potato spirits, but it goes through the same process and meets every other definition of being a bourbon. That makes it our own. These are all available in our tasting room, for purchase on our website, and at liquor stores all over the state.

Q: Tell us about Delta Magic, the nonprofit organization you helped found with another Helena local, Drew Smith.
A: The whole purpose of Delta Magic is to create and deliver positivity in the community. We do programming like movie nights at the Malco Theater and identify homes that are doing trick-or-treating at Halloween. But there are a couple things I’m really excited about right now. One is called Rising Leaders, where we have a cohort of students from the three high schools learning financial literacy and doing a community project together. We’ve partnered with two banks in the county and at the end of the program—guess what?—each student gets a $500 bank account.

Another thing we’re doing is with the historic Cleburne Hotel. It’s here on Cherry Street in downtown Helena. Delta Magic got a grant to clear it out and do feasibility work to hopefully turn it into student housing for Phillips Community College. It would be a 130-bed facility. Imagine 130 young people, college students, on this street; it won’t take long before you have a coffee house, bookstore, or pizza place.

Q: You’re all about encouraging people to bring commerce back to downtown. And while much of our conversation is specific to Helena, It seems a lot of these ideas apply across the region. Do you feel like you’re at the forefront of a tide turning?
A: I think our business has shown that you can build a business downtown and people will come. A town needs to get together and say, What can our city become that would attract people to visit? What are we missing that going to Walmart can’t give us? And to me, it’s community. It’s arts, entertainment, culture—the things that you can’t just go to a store and buy. And that’s what you should be remaking your downtown to be.

Read on for a few more of our favorite ways to discover the Lower Delta.

Kelly Courtyard in Helena

Downtown Helena

Downtown Helena

Riceland in Stuttgart

SHOP
Sugartown Mercantile (sugartownmercantile.com) has become a mainstay in Stuttgart’s historic downtown. Shop home goods, kitchenwares, seasonal décor, and vintage finds from this sister-owned store. In Helena, Handworks (870.338.4340) offers a selection of gifts for kids and adults plus bath, bar, and pantry goods. Down the street, the gift shop inside the Delta Cultural Center Visitor’s Center (870.338.4350) is a perfect stop for locally made products as well as books, art, and music inspired by the region.

DINE
El Manin Cafe & Taqueria (870.456.9290) in Stuttgart, open for breakfast and lunch, serves a range of classic Mexican dishes in addition to unexpected offerings like croissant French toast, a burger with elote corn, and fresh-pressed juice. Dumas locals claim Taylor’s Steakhouse (taylorssteakhouse-dumas.com) is home to the best steak in Arkansas; make a reservation and be the judge yourself. To fuel up—either with coffee or bites from a full breakfast and lunch menu—stop by Monticello Coffee Company (monticellocoffeecompany.com), a mother-daughter operation with a welcoming vibe and a drive-through window.

VISIT
Stuttgart’s Museum of the Arkansas Grand Prairie (grandprairiemuseum.org) is a local treasure with educational exhibits all about the region, including agriculture, duck hunting, and special seasonal exhibits. Cyclists from near and far have flocked to the Delta Heritage Trail State Park (arkansasstateparks.com), a “rail-to-trail” corridor through Phillips and Desha counties. While some portions of the trail are still being constructed, almost 70 miles are complete, offering a unique glimpse of towns in the Lower Delta.

STAY
Opened this year, Stuttgart’s Church House Lodge (churchhouselodge.com) is a recent addition to the area’s boutique lodging. This reconfigured church hall is now a 15-bed rental perfect for reunions, special events, and large family gatherings—and, you can book a guided duck hunt as part of your stay.

Stuttgart’s Museum of the Arkansas Grand Prairie