City (pop., 2000: 183,133), capital of Arkansas, U.S., located on the Arkansas River .
In 1722 Bernard de la Harpe, a French explorer, named the site La Petite Roche for a rock formation on the riverbank. It became the capital of Arkansas in 1821. It was strongly anti-Union at the outbreak of the American Civil War ; Federal troops occupied the city in 1863. It grew as the commercial centre of a farming region and as a hub of railway and river transportation. In 1957 federal troops were sent there to prevent state authorities from interfering with desegregation at Central High School. The state's largest city, it has many institutions of higher learning, including the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (1927).