97 Fun Facts About Arkansas

The name Arkansas comes from a French rendering of a word for which Native American people?

The Quapaw: the French took the name from Algonquian-speaking neighbours such as the Illinois, so it was never what the Quapaw called themselves.

How did the Arkansas legislature officially rule the state's name should be pronounced in 1881?

With the final "s" silent: lawmakers made the Arkansaw sound official, an ending that may come from the French pronunciation.

Which Spanish explorer crossed the Mississippi into Arkansas in 1541?

Hernando de Soto: he had passed himself off to local people as an immortal 'Son of the Sun', so after he died in 1542 his men secretly sank his body in the Mississippi.

What was the first European settlement in the future state, founded by Henri de Tonti in 1686?

Arkansas Post, set up by Henri de Tonti in 1686 near the Arkansas River's mouth, was the Arkansas Territory's first capital until 1821 and saw the state's only Revolutionary War action, an April 1783 raid.

Which country sold Arkansas to the United States in 1803?

France sold the whole Louisiana Purchase territory, Arkansas included, to the United States in 1803 for about $15 million, three years after Spain had handed Louisiana back to Napoleon.

After Little Rock fell in 1863, Arkansas's Confederate government spent the rest of the war in which town?

Washington: after the war the new Cairo and Fulton Railroad bypassed the town, which then began a slow decline.

Which president ended the 1874 Brooks-Baxter War by ordering Brooks's militia dispersed?

Ulysses S. Grant: Elisha Baxter had asked for federal help, and Grant backed his government as the lawful one.

Which Ozark resort town, famed for the 1886 Crescent Hotel, boomed on its healing springs?

Eureka Springs: settlers credited its water with cures, yet there's no evidence the Osage who hunted there thought the springs special.

The 1919 Elaine massacre began with shooting at a meeting of Black sharecroppers organizing what?

A farmers' union: in the mob violence that followed, estimates of Black people killed run into the hundreds, and five white people died.

About how many Japanese Americans were held at Arkansas's two WWII camps, Rohwer and Jerome?

About 16,000: many were American citizens, forcibly removed from their homes on the West Coast.

Which governor used the National Guard to block nine Black students from Little Rock Central High in 1957?

Orval Faubus ordered the Arkansas National Guard to turn the students away on 4 September 1957; Eisenhower federalised the Guard and sent Army troops three weeks later to escort the Little Rock Nine in.

Which Army division did Eisenhower send to escort the Little Rock Nine into Central High in September 1957?

The 101st Airborne Division's troops escorted the Little Rock Nine into Central High on 25 September 1957 and stayed for weeks; Ernest Green became the school's first Black graduate in May 1958.

Which state lies along Arkansas's northern border?

Missouri: its Bootheel dips below the straight border line, and landowner John Hardeman Walker was behind the push to keep that land in Missouri.

Arkansas's highest point, at 2,753 feet, is which flat-topped mountain in the Ouachitas?

Mount Magazine: French hunters are said to have named it for its barn-like shape, from the French magasin, a storehouse.

The Arkansas town of Bauxite takes its name from the ore of which metal?

Aluminum: the town's mines supplied ore through two world wars, but after World War II the mining faded and the town nearly disappeared.

Which 40-carat diamond turned up near Murfreesboro, Arkansas, in 1924?

Uncle Sam: the stone took the nickname of its finder, workman Wesley Oley Basham, and it is the largest diamond ever found in the United States.

Visitors to Arkansas's Crater of Diamonds State Park may do what with any diamonds they find?

Keep them: after decades of struggling mining ventures, the site's owners turned it into a tourist attraction where visitors dig for themselves.

What was notable about the Hot Springs area that Congress set aside in 1832?

Hot Springs Reservation of 1832 was the first federal land reserved for recreation, 40 years before Yellowstone; it became a national park in 1921 and got the first America the Beautiful quarter in 2010.

Which gangster was a regular visitor to the spa town of Hot Springs, Arkansas?

Al Capone: the town's illegal gambling made it a haven for gangsters, among them Lucky Luciano.

Which Arkansas waterway became the first National River in the United States in 1972?

The Buffalo River was designated the first national river on 1 March 1972, ending repeated Army Corps of Engineers plans to dam it; its 135 protected free-flowing miles run through the Ozarks.

Arkansas leads all US states in growing which grain?

Rice: rice growing took off there around 1900, thanks partly to farmer William Fuller, who became known as its legendary father.

Which Grand Prairie town draws hunters from around the world to its duck-hunting grounds on the Mississippi Flyway?

Stuttgart: German immigrants led by a Lutheran minister, Adam Buerkle, founded it and named it after the city in Germany.

Arkansas's official nickname, "The Natural State", began as a slogan created for what purpose?

Tourism advertising: state promotions made the slogan popular, and lawmakers later adopted it as the official state nickname.

Which retailer, founded in Arkansas in 1962, has its headquarters in Bentonville?

Walmart grew from Sam Walton's first discount store, opened in 1962, into a company with annual revenue past $600 billion, run from its headquarters in Bentonville.

In which Arkansas town did Sam Walton open the very first Wal-Mart Discount City in 1962?

Rogers: to reach his stores in isolated small towns, Sam Walton had learned to fly his own plane.

In which Arkansas town did Sam Walton buy his first store, a Ben Franklin franchise, after WWII?

Newport: the store did so well that the landlord refused to renew the lease and gave the shop to his own son, so Walton moved to Bentonville.

Which meat-processing giant is headquartered in Springdale, Arkansas?

Tyson Foods: the business grew during World War II, when beef was rationed but chicken was not.

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville was founded by which retail heiress?

Alice Walton: she founded the museum, which opened in 2011 in Ozark forest, and an endowment keeps general admission free.

Bill Clinton was born in 1946 in which Arkansas town?

Hope: he was born there as William Jefferson Blythe III, and later took the surname of his stepfather, Roger Clinton.

Bill Clinton's overlong speech at the 1988 Democratic National Convention nominated which candidate?

Clinton's 33-minute nominating speech for Michael Dukakis drew cheers when he said 'in conclusion'; some journalists thought it had wrecked his ambitions, yet four years later he won the presidency with 43% of the vote.

Which Arkansas senator was the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate, in 1932?

Hattie Caraway, appointed to her late husband's seat in 1931, won the January 1932 special election and then a full term that November with campaigning help from Louisiana's Huey Long.

Johnny Cash was born to cotton-farming parents in which tiny Arkansas community?

Kingsland: in 1935 the family moved to Dyess, where Cash grew up working the land and first sang on the radio as a high school student.

Which Maya Angelou memoir recounts her childhood in Stamps, Arkansas, with her grandmother?

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: her grandmother ran a store in Stamps, where the family met open racial prejudice from white townspeople.

Which soul singer was born in Forrest City, Arkansas, in 1946?

Al Green: the soul star later bought a church in Memphis, the Full Gospel Tabernacle, and became its pastor.

Which Oscar-winning actor was born in Hot Springs in 1955?

Billy Bob Thornton: as a young man he tried out for the Kansas City Royals, but an injury ended his hopes of a baseball career.

Which five-star general was born at Little Rock Barracks in 1880?

Douglas MacArthur: he was born at the barracks because his father, Army captain Arthur MacArthur, was stationed there.

Bass Reeves, born into slavery in Crawford County, Arkansas, in 1838, became famous as what?

A deputy U.S. marshal: during the Civil War he escaped slavery and found refuge in Indian Territory, where he later worked as a lawman.

Isaac Parker, who ran Fort Smith's federal court from 1875 to 1896, had what nickname?

The Hanging Judge: in 21 years on the bench at Fort Smith he sentenced 160 people to death, though only 79 were actually hanged.

Arkansas's 1909 win over which rival prompted the 'wild band of razorback hogs' nickname?

LSU: after that win, coach Hugo Bezdek said his men had played like 'a wild band of Razorback hogs', and students voted to drop the Cardinals name.

Arkansas left which conference to join the SEC in the early 1990s?

Southwest Conference: once Arkansas moved to the SEC, it no longer played old rival Texas regularly, and the rivalry faded.

Which state symbol is Arkansas's oldest, designated in 1901?

The apple blossom: Arkansas was once a major apple grower, and the bloom remains the state flower even though apple farming there has declined.

Which state bird does Arkansas share with Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas?

The northern mockingbird became Arkansas's state bird in 1929; South Carolina also had it until switching to the Carolina wren in 1948.

Which cooking pot did Arkansas name its official state cooking vessel in 2001?

The Dutch oven: explorers and settlers heading west carried these portable cooking pots with them into new territory.

Which species became Arkansas's official state butterfly in 2007?

The Diana fritillary, a large butterfly of the Ozark and Ouachita forests whose males are orange and black and females blue and black, became the state butterfly in 2007; Arkansas is the only state to choose it.

Which insect did Arkansas adopt as its official state insect in 1973?

The honeybee: Arkansas's state insect isn't a native, since the honeybee was brought to North America from Europe.

Which building in Texarkana sits directly on the Arkansas-Texas state line?

The Texarkana federal building, home to the post office and the federal courthouse, straddles the Arkansas-Texas line with State Line Avenue running to its front steps; it is the only US federal building in two states.

Which state park protects Arkansas's tallest surviving prehistoric mounds, once misattributed to the Toltecs?

Plum Bayou: after landowner Mary Knapp wrote to the Smithsonian, it sent Edward Palmer to study the mounds, and the Toltec link was later shown to be wrong.

Which singer got his first army haircut at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, days after his 1958 induction?

Elvis Presley spent four days at Chaffee and lost his famous hair in Building 803. In 1980 the same base held 19,000 Cuban refugees, briefly making it one of the biggest communities in Arkansas.

Which actor, interned as a child at Rohwer in Arkansas, later starred in the Broadway musical Allegiance?

George Takei's family was held in converted horse stables at Santa Anita before being sent to Rohwer. He went on to play Sulu in Star Trek.

Which snack did Bernell 'Fatman' Austin popularize in 1963 at the Duchess Drive-In in Atkins, Arkansas?

Fried dill pickles made Austin's name, served at first with ketchup for dipping. His family keeps the recipe secret and uses it once a year at the Atkins Picklefest.

Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie moved in with the Leding family of Altus, Arkansas, for which reality series?

The Simple Life filmed its first season in Altus in spring 2003. The pair gave up their phones and credit cards for a month in the heart of Arkansas wine country.

The border city name Texarkana is a blend of Texas, Arkansas and which third state?

Louisiana supplies the ending, though the city itself touches only Texas and Arkansas. In one account a railroad surveyor painted the name on a plank and nailed it up on the spot.

Superior Bathhouse in Hot Springs is the only business of what kind inside a US national park?

A brewery fills the smallest bathhouse on the Row. It is also the only one in the world that makes its beer with thermal spring water.

Which future NFL owner co-captained the Arkansas Razorbacks' 1964 national championship football team?

Jerry Jones was an offensive lineman on that unbeaten team. After buying the Dallas Cowboys in 1989 he fired Tom Landry and hired his old Razorback teammate Jimmy Johnson.

Alma, Arkansas, calls itself the world capital of which vegetable, having once canned over half the US supply?

Spinach earned Alma a bronze Popeye statue, which stands on a fountain holding a can of the stuff. The town's Allen Canning Company packed about 60 million pounds a year.

Which architect's Bachman-Wilson House was moved from New Jersey to Crystal Bridges in Bentonville?

Frank Lloyd Wright's Usonian house stood beside the Millstone River until the museum bought it in 2014, took it apart and rebuilt it on its own grounds in Arkansas.

Which air-gun maker, famed for the Red Ryder BB gun, moved its headquarters to northwest Arkansas in 1958?

Daisy began as a windmill company that gave a BB gun to every farmer who bought one. The guns proved so popular that it stopped making windmills altogether.

Fort Smith, Arkansas, grew from an 1817 frontier garrison right on the border with which neighboring state?

Oklahoma later became Indian Territory, and Fort Smith was the hub for law enforcement there. The city stands where the Arkansas and Poteau rivers meet.

The Arkansas River flows 1,469 miles to the Mississippi after rising in the Rocky Mountains of which state?

Colorado holds the headwaters near Leadville, where the young river drops 4,600 feet in its first 120 miles. It is the sixth-longest river in the United States.

Which Ozark city is home to Old Main, the twin-towered oldest building on the University of Arkansas campus?

Fayetteville has housed the university since the 1870s. Old Main was finished in 1875 in the Second Empire style, and its front lawn doubles as an arboretum.

In which Charles Portis novel does Mattie Ross of Yell County, Arkansas, hire Rooster Cogburn?

True Grit follows 14-year-old Mattie from the family farm near Dardanelle to Fort Smith. The 1969 film version won John Wayne the Best Actor Oscar as Cogburn.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the first woman elected governor of Arkansas, previously held which White House job?

Press secretary to Donald Trump from 2017 to 2019, she was the third woman in the job. Her win also made her the first daughter to govern a state her father had led.

Hot Springs, Arkansas, marches just 98 feet down Bridge Street each year in a parade for which holiday?

St. Patrick's Day brings what the spa city bills as the world's shortest parade of its kind. The local calendar also includes bathtub races through downtown.

Which melted appetizer does Arkansas claim was created at the Mexico Chiquito restaurant in the 1930s?

Cheese dip is taken so seriously that Little Rock hosts a world championship for it. In 2016 the Arkansas version beat Texas queso in a blind taste test among Republican US senators.

Which novelist wrote at the Piggott, Arkansas, home of his second wife's family, the Pfeiffers?

Ernest Hemingway wrote portions of A Farewell to Arms in Piggott during long visits with Pauline Pfeiffer's parents. Their house is a museum run by Arkansas State University.

Which rock band, winners of the 2004 Best New Artist Grammy, was founded in Little Rock by two teenagers?

Evanescence began when Amy Lee and Ben Moody met at a youth camp in 1994, aged 13 and 14. She was playing piano there and he was on acoustic guitar.

Queen Wilhelmina State Park on Rich Mountain, Arkansas, honors the young monarch of which country?

Netherlands money backed the railroad that built a mountaintop lodge there in 1898, the year Wilhelmina was inaugurated. The inn was soon nicknamed the Castle in the Sky.

Bentonville, Arkansas, host of the Big Sugar gravel race, markets itself as the world capital of which sport?

Mountain biking draws riders to more than 80 miles of trails running through the city, which also sits on the regional Razorback Greenway.

Rain falling on Hot Springs National Park spends roughly how long underground before it emerges as hot water?

About 4,000 years pass on the slow trip down, yet the heated water needs only about a year to rise again. It emerges at an average of 143 degrees Fahrenheit.

Reported 2004 sightings of which bird, long feared extinct, set off a search of Arkansas's Cache River refuge?

Ivory-billed woodpecker reports drew a Cornell-led search team, and visitor spending around nearby Brinkley jumped 30 percent. Whether the species survives is disputed.

Which meat is served at the annual Gillett supper that Arkansas politicians treat as a rite of passage?

Raccoon has been on the menu since the 1940s, when the supper paid for the high school football team. It became a scholarship fundraiser after the school closed.

Which Arkansas senator, once America's youngest university president, created the scholarship exchange named for him?

J. William Fulbright became president of the University of Arkansas in 1939. His 1946 exchange program later survived the McCarthy era, when the loyalty of its students came under attack.

Dogpatch USA, a theme park that ran in the Arkansas Ozarks from 1968 to 1993, was based on which comic strip?

Li'l Abner creator Al Capp approved the park and attended its ground-breaking. The community of Marble Falls even adopted Dogpatch as its official postal name.

Nolan Richardson's Arkansas Razorbacks won their first NCAA men's basketball title in 1994 by beating which team?

Duke fell 76-72 after Scotty Thurman's high-arching three-pointer beat the shot clock in the final minute. Arkansas had knocked out Arizona in the semifinal.

Johnny Cash grew up in which New Deal farming colony in the Arkansas Delta, where his boyhood home is preserved?

Dyess was founded in 1934 as a relief colony for struggling families, and Cash lived there from the age of three. His old house is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas are unusual among US ranges because their ridges mostly run in which direction?

East to west sets the Ouachitas apart from many American ranges. Their national forest, among the oldest in the South, was created by Theodore Roosevelt in 1907.

In legend, the French woman behind the name of Arkansas's Petit Jean Mountain went to sea disguised as what?

A cabin boy was her cover for following her fiance on his expedition to the New World, the story goes. The mountain became the site of the first state park in Arkansas in 1923.

Which Ozark town calls itself the Folk Music Capital of the World, with jam sessions on its town square?

Mountain View draws pickers to impromptu sessions around its square whenever the weather is fine. It is also home to the Ozark Folk Center State Park.

Which Arkansas Delta town hosts the King Biscuit Blues Festival, named after a radio show sponsored by a flour brand?

Helena's festival honors King Biscuit Time, on which Sonny Boy Williamson II played live on station KFFA every weekday between flour commercials.

Which south Arkansas city became a 1920s boomtown after the Busey No. 1 oil well came in nearby?

El Dorado was the heart of the oil boom that followed the 1921 strike and calls itself the state's original boomtown. The Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission is based there.

Which Hot Springs racetrack hosts the Arkansas Derby, won in 2015 by Triple Crown champion American Pharoah?

Oaklawn Park's original clubhouse was the work of Zachary Taylor Davis, the Chicago architect who went on to design Wrigley Field and the old Comiskey Park.

Which northwest Arkansas battlefield, where Cherokee troops fought for the South in 1862, is a national military park?

Pea Ridge went to the North that March even though its army was the smaller one. A rebuilt Elkhorn Tavern marks the scene of the heaviest fighting.

Arkansas pushed for statehood as a slave state in 1836 to offset the admission of which free state?

Michigan was applying as a free state, so territorial delegate Ambrose Sevier hurried Arkansas forward to hold the balance in the Senate. Arkansas arrived with half its partner's population.

Which Rockefeller brother became Arkansas's first Republican governor since Reconstruction after winning in 1966?

Winthrop served while his brother Nelson was governor of New York. As a dramatic last act he commuted the sentence of every prisoner on Arkansas's death row.

Which trucking and logistics giant, founded by a husband and wife in 1961, is based in Lowell, Arkansas?

J.B. Hunt takes its name from Johnnie Bryan Hunt, a former lumber salesman, auctioneer and truck driver. He bought his first five tractors and seven trailers in 1969.

Which city on Crowley's Ridge is the hub of northeast Arkansas and the home of Arkansas State University?

Jonesboro has hosted the school since 1909, the same year the first horseless carriages were driven on its streets.

Which glass-walled Ozark landmark of 1980 has 425 windows and won the AIA's Twenty-five Year Award?

Thorncrown Chapel was inspired by the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, a Gothic church known for its walls of stained glass. Its 425 windows hold 6,000 square feet of glass.

Which overloaded steamboat blew up on the Mississippi in 1865 and sank near Marion, Arkansas, killing over 1,100?

Sultana was built for 376 passengers but carried more than 2,000, most of them freed prisoners of war heading home. It is the deadliest maritime disaster in American history.

Which Arkansas dam did John F. Kennedy dedicate in October 1963, weeks before his assassination in Dallas?

Greers Ferry Dam drew Kennedy to Heber Springs seven weeks before his assassination. He told the crowd that such projects were investments in the future of Arkansas and the nation.

A dropped wrench socket caused which type of nuclear missile to explode in its silo near Damascus, Arkansas, in 1980?

Titan II fuel leaked after the eight-pound socket fell about 80 feet and pierced the missile's skin. The blast threw the nine-megaton warhead clear, and no radioactive material was lost.

Which University of Arkansas tradition etches every graduate's name, back to 1876, into miles of campus concrete?

Senior Walk began when the class of 1905 drew their names into the walkway in front of Old Main. It has grown to more than 170,000 names along over four miles of pavement.

Which bird gave University of Arkansas teams their nickname before they became the Razorbacks around 1910?

Cardinals matched the school color, cardinal red, from the first football season in 1894. Students were already using the hog name by 1907, before it became official.

Arkansas State University retired its Indians nickname in 2008 and adopted which new one for its teams?

Red Wolves beat two other finalists, Ridge Riders and Express Train. The football ground dropped its old name, Indian Stadium, as part of the same change.

Which bass boat maker did Forrest Wood found in 1968 in the small Ozark town of Flippin, Arkansas?

Ranger started when Forrest and Nina Wood built just six boats in the building that serves as Flippin's city hall.

Which fruit-flavored soda did Benjamin Fooks launch from Camden, Arkansas, after two years of taste tests?

Grapette reached the market in 1940 after Fooks bought the name, along with Orangette and Lemonette, for a total of 500 dollars.

The prized sharpening tools called Arkansas stones are cut from which rock found in the Ouachita Mountains?

Novaculite is so hard and dense that people have quarried it since prehistoric times, at first for arrow and spear points and later for whetstones.

Which abandoned bend of the Mississippi River in southeast Arkansas is the largest oxbow in the United States?

Lake Chicot curves for about 20 miles and is also the largest natural lake in Arkansas, edged with big cypress trees.