Most of Stamps was built recently: 7% of its homes predate 1940 and the median home dates from 1974. Its Register listings are the First Presbyterian Church, the Lafayette County Training School and the Gulf Oil Company Filling Station. Below: 3 old photos and papers, maps from 1908 on, and the census since 1900.
Founding year: the first Stamps post office (Blevins & Helbock, CC0).The full story ↓
History grade
What drives Stamps’ History grade
On its age, its old homes and the National Register, Stamps is more historic than 42% of U.S. towns. Its National Register listings hold the grade up; its age pulls it down.
C+
HistoryA character grade: shown, never part of Stamps’ overall grade.
Arkansas towns list more on the Register than most of the country (a typical Arkansas town has 20.5 per 10,000 residents, the U.S. 2.4), so Stamps’ 21.4 sits near the middle of its state (56% of Arkansas towns have fewer) while its 3 listings outnumber those of 65% of U.S. towns.
How sure. Graded on any two of the three inputs instead, the letter would range from C to B−. The pre-1940 share is a Census survey estimate (±4.3 points). The founding year is the first post office, not a stated founding date.
Founding year: the first post office (other dates in Quick answers). Homes: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register: National Park Service, May 2026 list; each listing counted once (boundary changes and added documentation belong to their listing), and a historic district counts its contributing buildings. How TownRatings grades history →
What stands out about Stamps’ past
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
Peaked at 2,859 in 1980; 1,258 people lived here in 2020.
13 censuses, 1900–2020.
U.S. Census Bureau decennial counts, from the census table on Stamps’ Wikipedia page.
Every building
Stamps, building by building, 1908–1919
Fire insurance maps drew every building, what it was made of and what it was used for, so insurers could price the risk of fire. Pick a year, then a sheet.
A post office has been in operation in Stamps since 1887. The community has the name of the local Stamps family. Stamps was the shop headquarters for the former Louisiana and Arkansas Railway until the relocation in the early 1920s to Minden in Webster Parish in northern Louisiana.
Stamps has been noted on lists of unusual place names. An early postmaster quipped that Stamps was "the only town in the U.S. that stamps Stamps on stamps".
Nothing in the archives for these yearsWeddings on Main Street, storms, parades, school pictures, the old store. If it’s in your family album, it belongs here.
The Stamps post office opened in 1887, the earliest record of the town by name (U.S. post office records).
How does Stamps rank for history?
Stamps is more historic than 42% of U.S. towns. The History grade combines the town’s founding era, the share of homes built before 1940 and its National Register listings. It’s a character grade, so it isn’t part of the overall grade. How it works.
What is on the National Register in Stamps?
Three places: the First Presbyterian Church (listed 1996), the Lafayette County Training School (2005) and the Gulf Oil Company Filling Station (2019).
How old are the homes in Stamps?
7% of Stamps’ homes were built before 1940 (Census estimate, ±4.3 points), against a typical 3.1% for an Arkansas town; the median home was built in 1974.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021).
From Wikimedia Commons (6), Wikidata (1), the National Register of Historic Places (3), Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikipedia for famous people, U.S. Geological Survey historical maps, U.S. Census counts (via Wikipedia), the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock), the USGS Geographic Names Information System and Sanborn fire insurance maps (Library of Congress). Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
c. 1904
2016
2013
2013
