Fort Smith, Arkansas

City: Fort Smith

County: Sebastian

State: Arkansas

Lat/Long: 35.3833, -94.3833

Fort Smith, Arkansas, is a city and the county seat of Sebastian County, Arkansas. Situated in western Arkansas on the confluence of the Arkansas and Poteau rivers on the Oklahoma border, Fort Smith originated and grew up around a fort built by the U.S. Army in 1817 before being abandoned in 1824. Citizens in the community built a small town near the fort and the Army returned to the site in 1838. The town was incorporated in 1842 and the fort was used as a base during the Mexican War. Fort Smith also became an important supply post during the 1848 gold rush. By 1850, it had a population of 964. It was incorporated as a city in 1851. Fort Smith lost out to Greenwood as the county seat of the Sebastian County, but reclaimed the county seat designation in 1853. Upon commencement of the Civil War, Confederate forces occupied Fort Smith before Union forces took control of the area in 1863 in the aftermath of the nearby Battle of Devil's Backbone.

David Ross, 150 Years of Sebastian County (Fort Smith: Sebastian County Sesquicentennial, 2001), 1-7; Webster's New Geographical Dictionary (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 1988), 409; Courtlandt Canby, The Encyclopedia of Historic Places (New York: Facts on File, 1984), 1:306.