Population 7, countin one coon dog, and closed now
The Booger Hollow Trading Post has been closed since 2004, and people still pull off Arkansas Scenic Byway 7 north of Dover to photograph it. It opened in 1961 in Pope County, on a ridgetop in the Boston Mountains of the Ozarks, and ran for more than 40 years. Signs counted down along the highway, Booger Hollow ten miles, nine miles, and at the entrance a sign gave the population as seven, countin' one coon dog.
The store sold hillbilly-themed knick-knacks, hand-crafted pieces and antiques next to honey, sorghum and lye soap, and at one time it held a post office and sold bait. Next door the Chuckwagon cafe served the boogerburger and the boogerdog, and a small shop on the other side sold cured hams. The best-known fixture was a two-story outhouse put up to make travelers stop: the lower level worked and the upper one stayed closed until we git the plummin' figgered out. The post billed it as the world's only double-decker outhouse, a title it shares with Nevada City in Montana, Gays in Illinois and Silver City in Idaho.
The trading post was never in a hollow. The real Booger Hollow lies ten to twelve miles away, and its name goes back to the early 1800s, when the road from Harrison ran through Bull Frog Valley and between two cemeteries, and people decided the stretch was haunted. Booger here is a variant of bogeyman, the same word as boogerman and boogieman, and other Booger Hollows turn up in Tennessee and Kentucky. This place and Dogpatch, USA, to the north sold the hillbilly image to tourists for decades.
The owner sold in 2004 and the new owners never reopened. The buildings stand empty and are being reclaimed by nature, so the double-decker is a stop for a photograph from the roadside rather than a place to go poking around.
Other places on the map within a couple of hours.
