Entries - Entry Type: Place - Starting with F

Fairfield Bay (Van Buren and Cleburne Counties)

Fairfield Bay, located in north-central Arkansas on the north shore of Greers Ferry Lake, was created with the goal of becoming a recreational and retirement resort. Though small in terms of residential population, the number of people who visit each year through the town’s timeshare program is well over 20,000. As of the 2010 census, the combined population of its Van Buren County and Cleburne County portions is 2,338. Before the formation of Greers Ferry Lake in the mid-1960s, the hills of what is now Fairfield Bay were covered with large hardwood trees. Logging of these immense oak trees for lumber, railroad ties, and white oak barrel staves supported the thriving communities of Shirley (Van Buren County), Edgemont (Cleburne County), …

Falcon (Nevada County)

Falcon is an unincorporated community in southern Nevada County. One of the oldest communities in the area, it reached its pinnacle even before the creation of Nevada County. Located about six miles south of Bodcaw (Nevada County), it is also twenty-three miles south of the county seat of Prescott (Nevada County) and sixteen miles southeast of Hope (Hempstead County). The community is centered on the intersection of Arkansas Highways 53 and 355 about one mile north of the Lafayette County line. Many settlers arrived in the area in the 1850s. Early landowners in the area included John Richardson, who received almost forty acres of land in 1850. Elijah Lewis, James Hardwick, and James H. Hardwick jointly received a land patent …

Fallsville (Newton County)

Fallsville is an unincorporated community in Boston Township in the southwestern corner of Newton County. The community was also historically called Loafer’s Glory, a nickname applied to several sites in the broader Appalachian region that were known for being places of meeting and informal discussion; in Arkansas, the community of Morning Star (Searcy County) has also sometimes been known as Loafer’s Glory. Population estimates from various gazetteers, business directories, and newspapers have ranged from ten to 100 at various points in the community’s history. The 1898–1899 R. L. Polk’s Arkansas State Gazetteer and Business Directory listed Fallsville’s population at fifty, with commercial enterprises and services including distillers, a druggist, general stores, two lawyers, a blacksmith, masons, a flour mill, a …

Famous (Pope County)

aka: Mooretown (Pope County)

The Arkansas landscape is dotted with small towns that were at one time area commercial centers. Many, such as the Pope County town of Famous, have long since disappeared. Little remains of this once thriving unincorporated settlement, which was located approximately six miles west of Dover (Pope County) near present-day State Highway 333. By the 1920s, the name had been changed to Mooretown. John Thomas Moore moved his family to the area in the late 1800s, building the first house in what would eventually become Famous. He was also the first merchant, establishing the first general store. In time, the Moore family would dominate the commercial activity in the area. In 1897, a U.S. post office was established in the …

Fargo (Monroe County)

Fargo is a town on U.S. Highway 49 in northern Monroe County, north of Interstate 40. Fargo came into existence due to the railroad industry and later was home to a significant school for African Americans. Various Native American artifacts have been found in Monroe County, indicating that it has been inhabited at least sporadically for centuries. European hunters and trappers had arrived by the beginning of the nineteenth century, and the county itself was established in 1829, several years before Arkansas became a state. The northern part of the county, drained by the Cache River, was largely uninhabited throughout the nineteenth century. The St. Louis Southwestern Railway, known as the Cotton Belt, was constructed across Arkansas from Texarkana (Miller …

Fargo Agricultural School

Before the state of Arkansas made public funds available for segregated schools for black children, Floyd Brown, a graduate of Tuskegee Institute, founded and operated the Fargo Agricultural School (FAS) outside Brinkley (Monroe County). From 1920 to 1949, the private residential school offered “training for the head, hands and heart” and high school educations for hundreds of black youth at a time when the United States’ black population averaged five years or less of formal schooling. In early twentieth-century Arkansas, African-American children were seldom educated beyond the primary grades. In the 1920s and 1930s, most black Southerners were sharecroppers indebted to white landowners to whom they gave a share of their crops for rent. To supplement the family income, women …

Farmington (Washington County)

For more than a century, Farmington, one of the early settlements in northwest Arkansas, was a small village five miles west of Fayetteville (Washington County). The rapid growth of this section of the state has affected the area in and around Farmington profoundly. In 1940, its population was about 200, but as of the 2010 census, 5,974 people resided there. This population expansion mirrors the phenomenal growth of northwest Arkansas in recent years. Territorial Period to Early Statehood In 1828, settlers arrived early in the wide valley that flows west from Fayetteville, and it was truly frontier country. The federal government moved the Cherokee and Osage tribes westward into what is now Oklahoma. They took their wars along with them, …

Faulkner County

Faulkner County was one of the last counties formed in the state of Arkansas. Sparsely populated in its early years, it had become the fifth-most-populous county in the state by 2020. Faulkner County is home to the University of Central Arkansas (UCA), Hendrix College, and Central Baptist College. Lake Conway, a large man-made lake, lies in the southern part of Faulkner County. Much of the county consists of rolling hills and river valleys, but flat prairie lands can be found in the northern part. European Exploration and Settlement The first European explorers in the area were the group traveling with Jean-Baptiste Bénard de La Harpe, who traveled up the Arkansas River from Arkansas Post (Arkansas County) in 1722. A fur …

Fayetteville (Washington County)

Fayetteville, one of the largest cities in the state, is located in the Ozark Mountains and has been the seat of county government since formation by the state legislature. From the early pioneers to modern-day residents, Fayetteville’s citizens have been dedicated to the enhancement of the cultural, educational, and economic growth of the area and state. Louisiana Purchase through Early Statehood The first settlers in Fayetteville were George McGarrah and his sons James, John, and William. Around 1828, they settled near the spring in an area that was to become the Masonic Addition to Fayetteville, the eastern part of which is at the base of Mount Sequoyah. James Leeper, a Revolutionary War veteran, was the second settler in Fayetteville. His …

Fayetteville Female Seminary

One of the most influential institutions in early Arkansas was the Fayetteville Female Seminary in Fayetteville (Washington County), which provided a quality education for girls throughout the region in a time when most women received little, if any, schooling. It also accepted both Cherokee and white students in an era when the “mixing of the races” was discouraged. Though it was only in existence from 1839 through 1862, the Fayetteville Female Seminary is often cited as one of the factors leading to the location of the state’s land-grant university, the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville. The Fayetteville Female Seminary was created by Sophia Sawyer of Rindge, New Hampshire. She went to Georgia 1823 as a missionary to the Cherokee through …

Fayetteville National Cemetery

In 1867, the Fayetteville National Cemetery in Fayetteville (Washington County) was established by the federal government to be used for proper burial of Union soldiers of the Civil War who died in the Arkansas campaigns. The first five acres, about one mile southwest of the old courthouse, were purchased from local residents David Walker and Steven K. Stone. The original burial layout resembled a compass rose. Graves were placed in a circular pattern around the flagpole with the headstones facing the flag and pathways between sections forming a six-pointed star. Smaller sections shaped as diamonds were located between the points of the star, for a total of eighteen sections. The first burials were disinterred from local battlefields and reinterred in …

Felsenthal (Union County)

Felsenthal is near the Saline River’s termination into the Ouachita River in southeastern Union County, just north of the Louisiana state line. It was an important location for the local lumber industry, but since 1975 has prospered due to tourism, including hunters and fishers. David Felsenthal, a Jew born in Bavaria (now part of Germany) in 1833, moved to Arkansas when he was twenty years old. He lived first in Woodlawn (Ouachita County) and then moved to Camden (Ouachita County). He and his wife had nine children, four of whom—Adolph, Isaac, Sidney, and Lee—formed the Felsenthal Land and Timber Company around the beginning of the twentieth century to harvest the trees of southern Union County. Some sources report that the …

Felsenthal National Wildlife Refuge

Felsenthal National Wildlife Refuge encompasses approximately 65,000 acres at the confluence of the Ouachita and Saline rivers, spreading across the borders of three counties—Union, Bradley, and Ashley—in southeastern Arkansas near the Louisiana Border. The refuge takes its name from the nearby town of Felsenthal (Union County). The refuge was established in 1975 in order to mitigate the environmental impact of the Ouachita and Black Rivers Navigation Project of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which entailed the construction of locks and dams along both rivers in order to facilitate river traffic and prevent flooding. Felsenthal Lock and Dam on the Ouachita River impounds Lake Jack Lee, which the refuge surrounds. Numerous other waterways, such as Caney Bayou and Big Brushy …

Fendley (Clark County)

Fendley is a community in Clark County located about three miles east of Alpine (Clark County). Early settlers in Clark County visited the Fendley area due to the presence of a chalybeate spring nearby. Visitors used the waters to bathe, claiming that the iron-enriched water helped treat ailments. The name of the community comes from the Fendley family that settled in the area. Elisha and Martha Fendley arrived in the area in the late 1870s and were accompanied by their son Thomas and daughter-in-law Mary. The younger Fendleys had two children by 1880, and both families farmed. The Fendley Post Office opened in 1901. Thomas Fendley, the son of early settler Thomas, served as the first postmaster. The post office …

Ferndale (Pulaski County)

Ferndale is an unincorporated community in Pulaski County located near the intersection of Kanis and Congo roads west of Little Rock (Pulaski County). Chiefly a farming area, the settlement was once home to a large timber operation and speculative mining. The first white settlers to the area were the Thomas Reese Sevier family, who briefly settled there in 1838. The first long-term settler was Isaac Crowson, who settled his family there in 1840. The Crowson family was important to the development of Ferndale. In 1875, Dr. George Sutton, also the area’s first physician, was the first to build a home on the actual town site. As people were gradually attracted to the rich farm land near the Little Maumelle Creek, …

Fifty-Six (Stone County)

Fifty-Six is one of two cities in Stone County. It stands on State Highway 14 in the northern part of the county. Fifty-Six (sometimes spelled without the hyphen) is located near Blanchard Springs Caverns, one of the most visited tourist sites in the Ozark National Forest. The forested hills and mountains of northern Arkansas were claimed as hunting and fishing land by the Osage, who lived in southern Missouri, when the United States first acquired the land as part of the Louisiana Purchase. White settlers gradually arrived in the area, but the rugged land remained only sparsely settled for many years. Stone County, which was formed in 1873 from parts of four other counties, had about 5,000 residents at the …

Files Cemetery

The Files Cemetery in Hot Springs (Garland County) is located on a quarter-acre lot off Arkansas Highway 7 South, on Files Road. It has been the resting place of Ruth Coker Burks’s family since the late 1880s. The oldest headstone dates back to the mid-1880s and the most recent was from 2019. Aside from the Burks family, the cemetery is also reportedly the burial place for more than three dozen men who died from AIDS in the 1980s. While most of the headstones in the cemetery are simple rectangles with name, birthdate, and death date, and occasionally a cross or flower engraved, some are marked with symbols and iconography. One such headstone is that of Emma L. Files Burrough, which …

First Baptist Church (Little Rock)

aka: EMOBA
aka: Museum of Black Arkansans and Performing Arts Center

The historic building of First Baptist Church of Little Rock (Pulaski County) is located at the corner of 12th and Louisiana streets just south of downtown. Various congregations of First Baptist worshiped in locations around the city throughout the 1800s. In 1889, First Baptist purchased a new lot and began construction on a large brick church at the historic site of 12th and Louisiana streets. The current building was built on the same site in 1941–42 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 21, 1994. In 1974, the First Baptist congregation moved to west Little Rock. The buildings on Louisiana remained unused until 1993, when Ernestine (Ernie) Dodson purchased the buildings on Louisiana to create …

Fisher (Poinsett County)

Fisher is located on U.S. Highway 49 in the southwest corner of Poinsett County. Like many other Arkansas cities, Fisher owes its existence to the railroad industry and the lumber industry. In the nineteenth century, western Poinsett County was a flood-prone hardwood forest. A road connecting Helena (Phillips County) to Batesville (Independence County) ran across the future site of Fisher, but no families chose to live in the area until after the Civil War. Reportedly, the first building erected in what would be Fisher was a double-pen log cabin built by Allen Steelman in about 1875. Steelman’s son-in-law, Shep Pope, lived in the other half of the cabin. Local historians have written that, following the death of Steelman, his widow married Charley …

Fitzhugh (Woodruff County)

Fitzhugh (Woodruff County) is a community six miles northeast of the county seat of Augusta (Woodruff County). Named for Rufus K. Fitzhugh Jr., the community developed and grew around his 800-acre plantation. Over time, two schools, a cotton gin, churches, and a general mercantile store came to be located at Fitzhugh; the area is mostly large farm fields in the twenty-first century, with only a few residences. Early settlers to the Fitzhugh community were attracted by the area’s rich alluvial soil deposits that became so profitable for cotton production in the nineteenth century. Area farms benefited from Fitzhugh’s proximity to the White River just a few miles west. In 1859, Rufus King Fitzhugh Sr. brought his family and a large …

Fleming (Hot Spring County)

Fleming is an unincorporated community located in Hot Spring County about five miles south of Malvern (Hot Spring County) and six miles northwest of Lono (Hot Spring County). One of the earliest landowners in the area was Isiah Salyers, who obtained a federal land patent for 120 acres in 1857. More extensive settlement took place after the Civil War, with Oliver Norwood obtaining a patent for eighty acres in 1885. In the 1880 federal census, Norwood appeared as a farmer living with his wife, Margaret, and their five sons and two daughters in Hot Spring County. In 1903, Norwood (or his oldest son who shared the same name) obtained an additional eighty acres to the north. Nathan Stiles received a …

Flippin (Marion County)

Hometown of the internationally recognized Ranger Boats bass boat manufacturer, Flippin (Marion County) is located seven miles from the county seat of Yellville (Marion County) and is surrounded by areas offering a wealth of recreational opportunities. The city of Flippin began as a small community outside the present-day city limits, near the site of what today serves as Flippin’s airport. Here, the first families settled in an area called the Barrens. Established sometime in the early 1800s, the Barrens was a small settlement that included a general store, flour mill, and cotton gin. The name later changed, and local legend purports that the owner of the general store, a man named Johnson, was not pleased with the wares being sold …

Floral (Independence County)

Floral is a community in Independence County located south-southwest of the county seat of Batesville (Independence County). Floral is believed to have received its name from the beautiful flowers that grow in the area, but may have been named for the Floral family who lived in the area at one time. An early pioneer in the region was John (Johnny) Thomas, who was born in 1814 in Alabama. He and his family crossed the Mississippi River and settled in Arkansas by the 1840s; the 1860 census reported him living at Round Pond in Independence County. The same census also listed the area’s first doctor, Sterling Wesley Allen, who had come from Tennessee. During the Civil War, lawless bands roamed the …

Fordyce (Dallas County)

Located at the intersection of Highways 167 and 79 in south central Arkansas, Fordyce was established in 1882 and named for Colonel Samuel Wesley Fordyce, a railroad builder and developer. It has long been a center for the timber industry in southern Arkansas. Pre-European Exploration Prior to European settlement, present-day Fordyce was inhabited by ancestors of the Caddo. Although no historic Caddo communities existed there, artifacts of Native American life are occasionally found in the area. Louisiana Purchase through Reconstruction Fordyce was a relatively late bloomer in Dallas County as compared to centrally located Princeton (Dallas County), which was incorporated in 1849 and served as the first county seat, and Tulip (Dallas County), which was considered the cultural center of …

Fordyce Commercial Historic District

The Fordyce Commercial Historic District includes the core of downtown of Fordyce (Dallas County). Centered on Main Street, the district included sixty-one resources at the time of its addition to the National Register of Historic Places on May 20, 2008. Thirty of the resources contributed to the district, with six additional sites being empty lots. The boundaries of the district are roughly Fifth Street to the north, Oak Street to the west, Spring Street to the east, and the railroad tracks south of First Street. Incorporated in 1884, Fordyce served as a stop on the Texas and St. Louis Railway, later named the St. Louis, Arkansas and Texas, but commonly known as the Cotton Belt. Named for Samuel Wesley Fordyce, …

Foreman (Little River County)

aka: New Rocky Comfort (Little River County)

The city of Foreman, also known as New Rocky Comfort, was at one time the county seat of Little River County. Located about twenty miles north of Interstate 30 on State Highway 41, the city’s primary industry is a cement factory that was built in 1957 and renovated in 2007. Before the beginning of the Cenozoic Era, the southwestern corner of Arkansas was covered by a shallow sea. Layers of sediment deposited on the seabed formed chalk and lime, which are the principal substances found in the terrain surrounding the city of Foreman. A natural spring supported a stand of willow trees and attracted wildlife and human visitors to the area, which became known as both Willow Springs and Rocky …

Forester (Scott County)

Forester was a self-contained sawmill town owned by the Caddo River Lumber Company. It was founded and built by Thomas Whitaker Rosborough in 1930 in southeastern Scott County. At first, a prominent Waldron (Scott County) businessman wanted the mill built in his town, but after hearing that Rosborough intended to employ African Americans, this businessman was happy with the chosen location and later was instrumental in getting the railroad extended from Waldron into Forester. The mill became the largest and most productive in the state, with its huge lumber shed measuring eighty feet wide and 1,000 feet long and storing millions of board feet of kiln-dried, planed lumber. The company town was named after Waldron businessman Charles A. Forrester. Contractors …

Forrest City (St. Francis County)

Forrest City, located on the western slope of Crowley’s Ridge near the center of St. Francis County, has been a center of commerce and trade since its incorporation in 1870. Serving as the county seat since 1874, the city is named in honor of Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest. It is the only such named city in the world spelled with two Rs. Pre-European Exploration through Early Statehood The many Native American artifacts found along the St. Francis River and a number of identified Indian mounds within the county provide evidence that the area was inhabited long before the expedition of Hernando de Soto visited the surrounding area in 1541.White settlers began to be attracted to the high ground on …

Fort Chaffee

aka: Camp Chaffee

Fort Chaffee, just outside of Fort Smith (Sebastian County) and Barling (Sebastian County) on Arkansas Highway 22, has served the United States as an army training camp, a prisoner of war camp, and a refugee camp. Currently, 66,000 acres are used by the Arkansas National Guard as a training facility, with the Arkansas Air National Guard using the fort’s Razorback Range for target practice. Groundbreaking for what was then Camp Chaffee was held on September 20, 1941, as part of the Department of War’s preparations to double the size of the U.S. Army in the face of imminent war. That month, the United States government paid $1.35 million to acquire 15,163 acres from 712 property owners, including families, farms, businesses, …

Fort Curtis

Fort Curtis was a major Union army fortification located in Helena (Phillips County) during and immediately after the Civil War. It is best known for being part of the Federal defenses at the July 4, 1863, Battle of Helena. After the Battle of Pea Ridge in March 1862, the Union Army of the Southwest under the command of Major General Samuel Ryan Curtis moved across northern Arkansas and southern Missouri before eventually taking the town of Helena, located on the Mississippi River. Helena would remain under Federal control for the remainder of the war. Located at the end of Crowley’s Ridge, the land around the city was well-suited for a defensive position. Construction on fortifications began almost immediately as the Army of …

Fort Logan H. Roots Military Post Historic District

aka: Fort Roots

In 1893, the U.S. Army chose Big Rock Mountain in North Little Rock (Pulaski County) as the location for one of its new military posts. Fort Logan H. Roots, as it was later named, served as an important military training facility in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. When the United States entered World War I in 1917, Camp Pike (now Camp Joseph T. Robinson) was constructed to provide the military with a larger training facility. In 1921, Fort Roots was transferred to the Public Health Service and became a veterans’ hospital. Today, Fort Roots remains an important part of the Veterans Health Administration. The history of Fort Logan H. Roots begins with the history of Big Rock Mountain, …

Fort Pleasants

aka: Fort Weightman

Fort Pleasants was a large Confederate fortification erected on Day’s Bluff near Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) on the Arkansas River in order to impede any attempts by Union forces to advance on Little Rock (Pulaski County) using the river in 1863. Following the Union destruction of Fort Hindman during the Battle of Arkansas Post in January 1863, Confederate leaders rushed to fortify high ground upriver from the post to defend the approaches to Little Rock. Missouri troops under Brigadier General Daniel M. Frost were dispatched to White Bluff, located about sixty-five miles below the capital, in early February to begin fortifying there, but on February 18, Frost recommended building an earthwork at Day’s Bluff, fifteen miles farther downstream, writing that …

Fort Smith (Sebastian County)

Fort Smith shares its status with Greenwood as the county seat of Sebastian County. Early in the history of Arkansas and the city, Fort Smith was an important point of contact to the American West. It is now home to large manufacturing plants; St. Edward Mercy Medical Center and Baptist Health-Fort Smith, which provide healthcare to residents beyond the confines of the city; and the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith. Fort Smith was for a long time the second-largest city in Arkansas after Little Rock (Pulaski County) but, after the 2020 census, was ranked the third-largest, with Fayetteville (Washington County) now the second. Pre-European Exploration No indigenous peoples appear to have had permanent settlements at the time of European …

Fort Smith National Cemetery

The Fort Smith National Cemetery is the oldest original cemetery of the state’s three national cemeteries. The other two are in Fayetteville (Washington County) and Little Rock (Pulaski County). At the end of fiscal year 2005, there were 13,127 interments. The first recorded burial was that of surgeon Thomas Russell. He was a War of 1812 veteran who was with the original company of riflemen who landed on December 25, 1817, at Fort Smith (Sebastian County). He died there on August 24, 1819. The cemetery originally served as the post cemetery for the first Fort Smith. While the first recorded burial took place in 1819, by 1823, roughly twenty-five percent of the men at Fort Smith had died. This was …

Fort Smith National Historic Site

Fort Smith National Historic Site is a unit of the National Park Service located in downtown Fort Smith (Sebastian County) on the Arkansas River. By preserving the remains of two military posts, the federal courthouse, and two jails, the park interprets how Fort Smith helped keep the peace in Indian Territory during the nineteenth century. In the early days, Belle Point, which later became Fort Smith, was used by French fur trappers for a rendezvous point. Chosen because the converging Poteau and Arkansas rivers made it accessible, this location became an important and strategic location for keeping peace in the West. As early as 1808, approximately 2,000 Cherokee left their ancestral homeland and began to move from the Southeast and …

Fort Smith Regional Art Museum

The Fort Smith Regional Art Museum (RAM) is an art museum with exhibits, art classes, and a studio art school for children and adults. It serves as a regional center for art education and appreciation in the greater Fort Smith (Sebastian County) area. What today is RAM began in 1948 as the Arkansas Association of University Women (AAUW). In September 1950, the AAUW held its first exhibit at the KFPW Studios Fine Art Gallery in Fort Smith. The AAUW also formed a sketch class at Fort Smith Junior College, now the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith (UAFS). In 1951, the AAUW became the Associated Artists of Fort Smith (AAFS) and began exhibiting art and holding classes across the city. …

Fort Steele

Fort Steele was the principal Union fortification guarding the southern approaches to Little Rock (Pulaski County) after Federal forces took possession of the state capital in 1863. After the Little Rock Campaign culminated in the capture of the capital city on September 10, 1863, Federal officials assessed the fortifications the Confederates had erected to defend the city and began plans for improving the defenses with an emphasis on the approaches from the south. On November 9, Union commander Major General Frederick Steele wrote that his chief engineer, Captain Junius B. Wheeler, had “laid out and commenced a square redoubt, which will command the city and the principal approaches.” The fortification was located in an area roughly bounded by modern Fifteenth, …

Forty-Four (Izard County)

Forty-Four (sometimes spelled without the hyphen) in Union Township of Izard County is a historic community on Highway 56 about five miles northeast of Calico Rock (Izard County). The Forty-Four post office opened in 1928 and served the rural area until 1979. The story goes that forty-four names appeared on the petition to the postal department, thus the name. The region served as a hunting ground for the Osage and, later, the Cherokee and Shawnee. The first white settlers appeared around 1828 when a new treaty ended the Cherokee Reservation in Arkansas. The Benge route of the Trail of Tears passed a few miles west of Forty-Four. The Old Benbrook Mill on Piney Creek was near the site of what …

Fouke (Miller County)

Fouke is located eleven miles south of Texarkana (Miller County) on U.S. Highway 71 and Interstate 549 in Miller County. Its city limits are eight miles east of Texas and seventeen miles north of Louisiana. The city is six miles from the fertile soil of the Sulphur River and ten miles from the Red River. Louisiana Purchase through Early Statehood In 1818, as part of a policy to lessen Spanish influence in the area, the United States built the Sulphur Fork Factory (trading post) on the Sulphur River where it enters the Red. For four years, Native Americans traded pelts, honey, and beeswax and were given in exchange flour, tobacco, blankets, guns, and other items. By 1836, with the advent …

Fountain Hill (Ashley County)

Fountain Hill is a town on U.S. Highway 425 in northern Ashley County. The town has been a center for agriculture and the timber industry and remains supportive of both industries in the twenty-first century. The region that would become Ashley County has been inhabited for thousands of years. When the region first became part of the United States, it was considered Quapaw land, although the Quapaw villages were farther to the north. Quapaw ceded their right to the land in 1818, and settlers began to arrive from Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. James Norris farmed the land between the two springs for which the town was named. He established a cotton gin and a grist mill on the …

Fountain Lake (Garland County)

Fountain Lake is a city on State Highway 5 in Garland County. Located about halfway between Benton (Saline County) and Hot Springs (Garland County), Fountain Lake also borders on Hot Springs Village (Garland and Saline counties) to the northwest. Evidence of ancient inhabitants has been found scattered around Garland County, although the relationship of Native Americans to the Hot Springs area has been exaggerated at times to promote tourism. The Caddo inhabited the region when the 1541–1542 Hernando de Soto expedition first traveled through the area, but settlement was sparse. Only a handful of American settlers had claimed land in what would later be northern Garland County by the time of the Civil War. John Holland and Isaac Collins were …

Fourche (Perry County)

The town of Fourche (the name is pronounced to rhyme with “bush”) is located in northeastern Perry County on the banks of the Fourche La Fave River, for which it is named. Once a thriving lumber town, Fourche is now overshadowed by Bigelow (Perry County), its neighbor to the west. The Fourche La Fave River was explored by a French settler, Peter La Fave, who gave his name to the river, “fourche” being the French word for “fork.” The first white settlers, who arrived after the Civil War, were German, including Gottlob Faisst, who owned a tomato cannery he named Central Arkansas Food Products Company. Faisst and his family also owned a wine saloon, skating rink, and pool hall, all located …

Fourche Creek

Fourche Creek is a winding stream that flows more than twenty-four miles through southern Little Rock (Pulaski County). It is within the city limits for most of its length, from its headwaters south of Lawson Road at an elevation of 354 feet above mean sea level (AMSL) to its convergence with the Arkansas River near Interstate 440 (227 feet AMSL). Due to the density of the population around Fourche Creek, almost 200,000 Arkansans live within its watershed, more people than reside in the watershed of any other stream that both begins and ends in Arkansas. Fourche Creek was named by French explorers who became associated with the Quapaw who inhabited the bottomlands around Fourche Creek in the mid-seventeenth century. The …

Fourche River

The Fourche River arises in Ripley County, Missouri, from the confluence of several streams and flows through Randolph County for twenty miles before emptying into the Black River near Pocahontas (Randolph County). It is not to be confused with the Fourche La Fave River, itself occasionally called the Fourche River, in central Arkansas. On some maps, the waterway is designated Fourche Creek for at least part of its length. The Ozark foothills, through which the Fourche River flows, have been the site of human habitation since at least 10,000 BC. In the historical period, the Osage Indians claimed this area as part of their hunting grounds, though they were forced to cede their claims in 1825. Among the earliest white …

Fox (Stone County)

Fox is located on Highway 263 between Timbo (Stone County) and Rushing (Stone County). Turkey Creek flows a few miles north and northeast of Fox, while Jimmys Creek is to the northwest. With the passage of the Homestead Act in 1862, early settlers began to eke out a living by growing crops along Meadowcreek and the Little Red River. A few hardy frontier families slowly moved up the hill from the river; their settlements would become the community of Fox. Fox was originally called Smart, but when the post office was opened in 1905, another name was required, as there was already a Smart in Arkansas. As the debate over a name was taking place, someone caught a fox in …

Franklin (Izard County)

The town of Franklin is one of the oldest settlements in Izard County. Located on State Highway 56, it is just south of the newest settlement in the county, the retirement community of Horseshoe Bend (Izard County). The Strawberry River meanders through the hills of northern Arkansas, making the land more attractive to visitors than to farmers. At the time of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the Osage visited from their homes in the north, coming to the Strawberry River valley to hunt and to fish. By 1825, a series of treaties had moved the Osage west to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), and white settlers began to claim pieces of land for themselves. Early settlers along the river included the …

Franklin County

Franklin County, bisected by the Arkansas River into a forested northern section and a southern section primarily of farmland, was formed on December 19, 1837, from Crawford County. It is rich in minerals and had one of the first oil strikes in Arkansas. European Exploration and Settlement The area that became Franklin County has been inhabited since the end of the Ice Age, about 12,000 BC. Paleoindians hunted and gathered wild plants and other resources, residing in open air campsites and occasionally using rock shelters. Agricultural settlements began to be established during the Mississippian Period (900—1600 AD), raising corn and other domesticated plants. The Osage used lands to the north of the Arkansas River as hunting grounds, although their villages …

Frederick Hanger House

aka: Hanger House

One of the most picturesque, best preserved, and most carefully restored houses in Little Rock (Pulaski County) is the late-nineteenth-century Frederick Hanger House. It retains a high percentage of its original fixtures, fittings, and architectural features and is an outstanding example of the Queen Anne style of architecture. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on March 15, 1974. Peter Hanger, originally from Kentucky, moved to Arkansas in the 1830s, settling first in Chicot County and, by 1848, in Little Rock. In 1850, he married Matilda Cunningham, daughter of Dr. Matthew Cunningham and his wife, who were among Little Rock’s earliest settlers. He invested in real estate and was active in a variety of businesses, including U.S. Mail …

Freedmen’s Schools

Freedmen’s schools in Arkansas were created as early as 1863 in areas occupied by Union forces to provide for the education of newly freed slaves during the Civil War and in the Reconstruction period that followed. These schools were first run by teachers from the American Missionary Association (AMA) and the Quakers—particularly the Indiana Yearly Meeting of Friends. Early schools existed in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County), Little Rock (Pulaski County), and Helena (Phillips County), all areas with large populations of freed slaves. The federal government soon became involved in providing education for the freed slaves, and in 1865 the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (known as the Freedmen’s Bureau) assumed responsibility for educating former slaves. AMA and Quaker …

Frenchport (Ouachita County)

Frenchport (Ouachita County) is an unincorporated community located about eight miles southeast of Camden (Ouachita County). The current channel of the Ouachita River is located about two miles east of the community. Originally based close to the river, the community moved west as better roads linked the community to Camden. Arkansas Highway 7 runs to the west of the community. Early settlers in the area included the Fogle, Labeff, and Peveto families. Originally residents of France, the families traveled to New Orleans, Louisiana, and moved up the Mississippi, Red, Black, and Ouachita rivers to the area. Finding a logjam on the river that prevented further movement, the families settled in the area. The name of the community comes from the …