Arkansas offers a vibrant, interesting story of its past. Read more about The Natural State’s history, plus learn about key historical sites and museums across the state.

Early Exploration & Native Americans

From 650 to 1050 A.D., the Plum Bayou Native American people had a political and cultural center in east central Arkansas in the lower Mississippi River Valley where they built 18 platform mounds, one of which was a towering 49 feet tall. Five mounds are still visible at Toltec Mounds Archeological State Park in Scott.

In 1541, when Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto reached the state, there were thousands of Native American people living in villages near the Mississippi River, and other groups were located across the state.

Two prominent Native American groups in 1541 were the Parkin people and the Nodena people. The Parkin site was occupied from 1000 to 1550. Many artifacts still exist from the Nodena site, which was established around 1350.

Shortly after de Soto’s visit, European diseases, and possibly a drought, decimated eastern Arkansas’s villages. When pioneer settlement began, the state’s major native groups were the southeastern Quapaws, the southwestern Caddos, and the Osage, a semi-nomadic people who visited the northwest to hunt.

By 1835, those Native Americans had been forced to leave to make room for European settlers and for temporary resettlement of Native Americans driven from eastern states. In the late 1830s, members of eastern tribes crossed Arkansas as part of a forced exodus known as the Trail of Tears. Read more about the Trail of Tears here.

Arkansas Post & Statehood

In 1686, French explorers established the first European settlement near the Arkansas River. It was known as Arkansas Post. The area became American soil in 1803 as part of the Louisiana Purchase.

Solitary cabins, then towns, began sprouting up along the rivers and the main wilderness travel routes. Early settlements included Cadron, Batesville and Washington.

In 1819, Arkansas became a territory with Arkansas Post as its capital. Two years later, the capital was moved to a central location, the fledgling settlement of Little Rock.

Travel became easier as roads were built, steamboats began traveling the larger rivers and new stagecoach lines were established with inns on their routes. Sawmills and gristmills dominated the early commercial industry. In 1836, Arkansas became the 25th state with a population of just over 50,000 and a new capitol.

Prior to the Civil War, most Arkansans were small-scale farmers, but large plantations existed in the Mississippi Delta below Helena, in the Arkansas River Valley and in the bottomlands along smaller rivers.

The Civil War

After a divided Arkansas seceded from the Union in 1861, it became a strategic target for both North and South because of its location on the Mississippi River and its role as a gateway to the Southwest. Included among the state’s more than 750 military engagements were a number of major conflicts.

The war’s largest battle west of the Mississippi was fought at Pea Ridge in March 1862 and included about 26,000 soldiers. The Union victory dashed Confederate hopes of occupying Missouri.

In December 1862, more than 11,000 Confederates battled Union forces at Prairie Grove in a failed attempt to prevent federal occupation of Fort Smith.

The control of Arkansas River commerce was at stake when 30,000 Union troops overwhelmed 5,000 Confederates at Arkansas Post in January 1863, while control of the Mississippi figured in the Battle of Helena on July 4, 1863.

Union forces occupied Little Rock on Sept. 10, 1863, and the state’s Confederate government moved its capital to the town of Washington.

Then in the spring of 1864, 13,000 federal troops headed southwest from Little Rock in an attempt to complete the Union conquest of the state. That failed venture is now known as the Red River Campaign.

The Civil War in Arkansas recently marked its 150th anniversary — the sesquicentennial. More information about Arkansas Civil War battles and life in Arkansas during the war can be found on the website of the Arkansas Civil War Sesquicentennial Commission.

20th Century

Navigation & Expansion Arkansas railroads, delayed by the war, began in the 1870s to spur the building of new towns and to hasten the harvest of the state’s virgin forests. Lumber emerged as an economic mainstay, while the cleared land in the Delta region enabled a major agricultural expansion.

In 1924, the first major hydroelectric dam in Arkansas was completed. Beginning in the late 1940s, numerous large lakes created by damming streams, such as the Greers Ferry Lake, dramatically altered the state’s landscape.

Difficulties also arose. The Arkansas Flood of 1927 covered one-fifth of the state. Droughts followed, along with the Great Depression of the 1930s, during which the Civilian Conservation Corps constructed Petit Jean State Park which served as the beginning of the state parks system.

The rise of air travel occurred after World War II, and the Arkansas River Navigation Project’s locks and dams – built from 1956 to 1971 – greatly enhanced river commerce.

Little Rock Nine

In 1954, the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision officially declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. All U.S. public schools were instructed to integrate, and within a week, Arkansas was one of two Southern states to announce it would immediately take steps to comply.

In September 1957, the ruling was tested for the first time when the “Little Rock Nine” enrolled at Little Rock’s previously all-white Central High School. The nine black students withstood vehement opposition from throngs of white protesters. The event was seen around the world.

The courageous efforts of the Little Rock Nine are celebrated as one of the most defining chapters in Little Rock’s history, and as one of the earliest victories of a long overdue civil rights movement. Central High remains one of the leading education centers in Arkansas and now stands as an icon for racial equality and social reform.

President William Jefferson Clinton

Bill Clinton was born in Hope and grew up in Hot Springs. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University in England and graduated from Yale Law School. He taught law at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville before being elected as the state’s attorney general in 1976.

He was elected five times as the Governor of Arkansas (1978-80, 1982-93), during which time he emphasized education reform and economic development.

Clinton became the 42nd president of the United States in 1992 and served two terms as our nation’s leader. He presided over the longest period of peacetime economic expansion in American history, winning a second full term in 1996.

Clinton left office in 2000 with the highest end-of-office approval rating of any U.S. president since World War II. Since then, he has been involved in public speaking and humanitarian work, establishing the William J. Clinton Foundation to promote and address international causes such as prevention of AIDS and global warming.

In 2004, the William J. Clinton Presidential Center & Park was dedicated in downtown Little Rock. The expansive library – cantilevered over the Arkansas River – contains an archive of numerous photos, documents and artifacts from the Clinton presidency, as well as full-scale replicas of the Clinton-era Oval Office and Cabinet Room. The center also hosts numerous visiting exhibits throughout the year.