Arkansas Summary

Arkansas is an ancient land uplifted by tectonic shifting and patterned by unsullied woodlands and rivers. It is also a state of rich frontier heritage and wilderness attractions. Though Arkansas sat in the hub of the westward expansion, the state largely remained unpopulated – so much so that until the mid-twentieth century, pocket communities lay isolated around the Ozarks.

The Ozark Mountains are the state’s natural wonder and main tourist draw, with the preservation of its mountain folk traditions and homespun lifestyle attracting the interest of travelers. A century earlier, it was the natural spring waters that lured Eastern gentry to the area’s thermal baths.

The Arkansas territory was first explored by French fur trappers and inhabited by Osage, Quapaw, and displaced Cherokee Native Americans. It was ceded in 1803 to the American government by the French as part of the Louisiana Purchase, and was first settled in the 1820s. Cotton became the state’s mainstay economy along the Mississippi Delta, while the area west of Little Rock became reliant on the Arkansas River trade.

After the Civil War, the railroads jump-star ted the state’s agricultural economy, and the short oil boom of the 1920s in the southwestern region added to its newfound prosperity. Then the Great Depression depleted Arkansas’s riches and the state is now one of the poorest in the United States. Lumber, cotton, and agriculture still remain the economic lifeline, though manufacturing industries have since set up base in key cities.

Arkansas is resolutely Southern in tradition. A state of the Confederacy, it became the arena for bloody conflicts west of the Mississippi, its eastern boundary. Racial tensions escalated during the Civil Rights Movement, with the state capital, Little Rock, taking center stage in the argument over racial integration in schools.

Renewed interest in the state grew during the presidency of its former governor, Bill Clinton.