Facts about Arkansas

Some of the earliest Indians in Arkansas were the Bluff Dwellers and Mound Builders.

  • Among the earliest inhabitants of Arkansas were the Folsom people who lived here when the last of the great glacier ice sheets was melting off the northern part of what is now the United States.
  • Arkansas Post, established by the French under Henri De Tonti in 1686, was the first permanent white settlement in Arkansas. Arkansas was ruled first by France, then by Spain, and again by France before the territory was purchased by the United States in 1803.
  • A French explorer named La Harpe discovered the sites of Little Rock and North Little Rock in 1722.
  • Arkansas, under American control, was first a part of the Louisiana Territory and then of the Missouri Territory before it became a separate territory in 1819.
  • The first Arkansas newspaper was the "Arkansas Gazette", founded by William E. Woodruff at Arkansas Post in 1819.
  • The capital of the Arkansas Territory was at Arkansas Post until 1821, when it was moved to the new town of Little Rock.
  • The original Bowie knife was made by James Black, a blacksmith of Washington, Arkansas, for Colonel James Bowie about 1830.
  • The first state Capitol (now known as the Old State House) in Little Rock was begun by Governor John Pope in 1833.
  • Nine out of ten early Arkansans were farmers, growing mostly cotton and corn.
  • Horse racing and bear hunting were popular sports in pioneer Arkansas.
  • Davy Crockett passed through Arkansas on his way to Texas in the fall of 1835 and spoke at a dinner given in his honor in Little Rock.
  • The Texas Revolution of 1836 was planned by Sam Houston and his friends at the Old Tavern in Washington, Arkansas.
  • Arkansas was admitted to the Union as the 25th state on June 15, 1836.
  • James S. Conway was the first governor of the state of Arkansas.
  • Archibald Yell was the first Arkansas representative in the U.S. House of Representatives.
  • The "Trail of Tears" was the route across northern Arkansas taken by the Eastern Cherokees on their way to Indian Territory in 1838-1839.
  • An immense logjam called the "Great Raft" impeded navigation on the Red River until 1838.
  • In 1861, Arkansas joined an attempt by 11 southern states to form an independent republic called the Confederate States of America.
  • During the last year of the Civil War Arkansas had a Union state government in Little Rock and a Confederate state government at Washington in Hempstead County.
  • Arkansas supplied an estimated 50,000 men to the Confederate Army and about 15,000 to the Union Army.
  • The Brooks-Baxter War of 1874, a contest between two Republicans over the governorship, marked the end of Reconstruction in Arkansas.
  • The Constitution of 1874, which still governs the state, is the fifth of our state constitutions. Earlier ones were drawn up in 1836, 1861, 1864, and 1868.
  • Bauxite, the ore used to make aluminum, was discovered in Arkansas in 1887 by State Geologist John C. Branner. Mining began in 1899 and Arkansas soon led all other states in production.
  • Arkansas supplies 96 percent of the nation's domestic bauxite and has the only diamond mine in the United States.
  • The General Assembly of 1915 enacted a statewide game and fish law and created the Game and Fish Commission.
  • The first radio station, WOK in Pine Bluff, began broadcasting in 1921. Television station KATV in Little Rock went on the air in 1953.
  • Orval E. Faubus was the first Arkansas governor to be elected to six terms (1955-67).
  • In 1967, Winthrop Rockefeller became the first Republican governor of Arkansas since Reconstruction.
  • The main rivers of the state are the Mississippi, St. Francis, White, Arkansas, Red, Ouachita, and their tributaries, all of which drain to the south and southeast.
  • Mt. Sequoyah was previously called East Mountain but was changed to Sequoyah in keeping with the policy of naming the assembly places for Indian leaders. Sequoyah was the Cherokee educator credited with inventing the alphabet for the Cherokee and white man to communicate.