ARKANSAS

The Deep South. constituent state of the United States of America lying on the west bank of the Mississippi River, in the western south-central region of the country. The capital is Little Rock. Facing the states of Tennessee and Mississippi across the Mississippi River, Arkansas is also bounded by Missouri on the north, Oklahoma on the west, Texas on the southwest, and Louisiana on the south. The state is roughly square in shape and extends about 250 miles (400 km) in each direction. The earliest inhabitants were Indian bluff dwellers along the banks of the Mississippi River whose farming and hunting culture flourished in about AD 500. Later mound-building cultures left sepulchral mounds and other remains along the Mississippi. At the time of initial European exploration the main Indian groups in the area were the Caddo, Osage, and Quapaw. In the 16th and 17th centuries Spanish and French explorers traversed the region. The first permanent European settlement was founded at Arkansas Post in 1686 by the Frenchman Henri de Tonty. Arkansas was acquired by the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase from France in 1803. Arkansas Territory was formed in 1819, and Arkansas entered the Union as the 25th state in 1836. Arkansas seceded from the Union in 1861 and during the American Civil War was a member of the Confederate States of America. It was readmitted to the Union in 1868. Following Reconstruction a rigid policy of racial segregation evolved that ended in 1957 when federal troops entered Little Rock to maintain order after the state militia had been ordered to prevent the court-ordered desegregation of a public high school there. Physiographically Arkansas can be divided into two main regions roughly equal in size. A line drawn diagonally from the southwest corner to the northeast corner approximates the division between the forest-covered Ozark Plateau and Ouachita Mountains of the north and west and the fertile Gulf Coastal Plain and Mississippi River alluvial plain of the south and east. The state drains generally southeastward through the Arkansas and Mississippi rivers. Several large lakes have been created by damming streams in the Ozark and Ouachita mountains. The Arkansas climate is temperate with mild winters and hot summers. Average temperatures at Little Rock, in the centre of the state at the border between the highlands and lowlands, are 42 F (6 C) in January and 82 F (28 C) in July. Annual precipitation of about 49 inches (1,250 mm) is distributed about equally during the year. Settlement of the Mississippi River lowlands was primarily by slave-holding cotton planters from more easterly southern states. The state's black population in 1860 was about 110,000, or 25 percent of the total; by the late 20th century there were more than 387,000 blacks living in Arkansas, making up a decreasing percentage of the population. Statewide, barely more than half of the population lives in areas classified as urban. Little Rock, the largest city, is only a moderate-sized city. In recent years numerous retirement villages in the Ozarks have attracted many residents. The Arkansas economy is no longer primarily agricultural, and cotton no longer dominates its agriculture. Rice, soybeans, corn (maize), and poultry are the major farm products. Reserves of bauxite (aluminum ore), obtained by strip-mining in the central region, represent most of the U.S. supply. The state's aluminum industries and most bauxite-mining operations, however, were suspended in the mid-1980s. Small quantities of bauxite were still mined for use in chemical-process industries. Nearly one-half of the state is covered by forests, notably extensive stands of pine and white oak. Hydroelectric power is produced at most dams, but steam-generated-power plants produce most of the state's energy. Two nuclear-power plants are in operation near Dardanelle. Manufacturing is chiefly of consumer goods, mostly food processing and the manufacture of wearing apparel, furniture, and electrical and nonelectrical machinery. The entire lengths of the Arkansas and Mississippi rivers within Arkansas are navigable. Highways, railways, and airways crisscross the state. Tourism is important to the economy; the most popular destinations are the mineral springs at Hot Springs National Park and the lakeside resorts in the Ozarks. Eastern Arkansas is typically Southern in speech pattern and customs. Negro spirituals and soul music flourished in Arkansas long before they became popular nationally. The rural areas of the Ozarks and Ouachitas have retained to the fullest degree their traditional folk arts and culture. The major higher-education institution is the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. Area 53,187 square miles (137,754 square km). Pop. (1990) 2,350,725. constituent state of the United States of America. Arkansas's 53,187 square miles (137,754 square kilometres) make it 27th in area among the states, but, except for Louisiana and Hawaii, it is the smallest state west of the Mississippi River. Its neighbours are Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, Texas to the southwest, and Oklahoma to the west. Arkansas has the high Ozark and Ouachita mountains in the north and west and a heavy tracery of rivers that cut through its rich agricultural lands. Nearly all of the rivers flow from northwest to southeast and empty via the Arkansas and the Red into the Mississippi, which forms the major eastern boundary. The state's name was used by the early French explorers for the Quapaw Indians and the river along which they settled. It probably was a phonetic spelling of the Illinois term for downriver people, a reference to the Quapaw. Ever since Arkansas was admitted as the 25th member of the United States in 1836, its people have maintained a remarkable homogeneity, and today most of them are native to the state. Striking cultural contrasts exist within Arkansas, however, with the long-isolated mountain people who eked out subsistence livings in the north and west counterposed to the people to the east and south who created a Southern environment in which cotton growing and sharecropping long were the dominant modes of economic life. Between the two regions lies Little Rock, the capital and the urban and economic centre of the state. Its location and increasingly cosmopolitan character are symbolic of Arkansas's growing unification and urbanization. Arkansans are concerned about the state's relative poverty and lack of development. Although Arkansas remains among the lowest-ranking states in income per capita and other economic indicators, the overall economy in recent years has gained faster than the national average, and the population has increased, reversing a long decline. Programs have been developed to increase these trends and to continue the process of equalizing the educational, economic, and social opportunities of the state's citizens. Additional reading John Gould Fletcher, Arkansas (1947, reprinted 1989), is one of the best single volumes about the state. Diann Sutherlin Smith, The Arkansas Handbook (1984); and Writers' Program, Arkansas: A Guide to the State (1941, reissued as The WPA Guide to 1930s Arkansas, 1987), provide general information. Geographic, economic, historical, and social aspects are mapped in Richard M. Smith (ed.), The Atlas of Arkansas (1989); DeLorme Mapping Company, Arkansas Atlas & Gazetteer (1997); and Gerald T. Hanson and Carl H. Moneyhon, Historical Atlas of Arkansas (1989). Ernie Deane, Arkansas Place Names (1986), combines geography and local history. The different groups that make up Arkansas's population are analyzed in David M. Tucker, Arkansas: A People and Their Reputation (1985). Henry S. Ashmore, Arkansas (1978, reissued 1984), is a good introduction. Specific topics in the state's history are examined in Orville W. Taylor, Negro Slavery in Arkansas (1958); James M. Woods, Rebellion and Realignment: Arkansas's Road to Secession (1987); Michael B. Dougan, Confederate Arkansas: The People and Policies of a Frontier State in Wartime (1976); George H. Thompson, Arkansas and Reconstruction: The Influence of Geography, Economics, and Personality (1976); and C. Calvin Smith, War and Wartime Changes: The Transformation of Arkansas, 19401945 (1986). Scholarly articles on Arkansas history may be found in Arkansas Historical Quarterly. Boyce A. Drummond, Jr. The Editors of the Encyclopdia Britannica