April 14, 2012

Van Buren County, founded in 1833, was the twenty-ninth county in Arkansas Territory and preceded statehood by three years. Soon after the county’s founding, a one-room log courthouse was raised at the first county seat, Mudtown, later Bloomington. When the government was moved to Clinton in 1842, a new log courthouse was constructed. It burned near the end of the Civil War and was replaced by a frame structure in 1869. The present courthouse, shown here, was constructed with the assistance of the Works Progress Administration in 1934.