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Fort Smith, Arkansas
Fort Smith is the third-most populous city in Arkansas, United States, and one of the two county seats of Sebastian County. As of the 2020 census, the population was 89,142. It is the principal city of the Fort Smith, Arkansas–Oklahoma Metropolitan Statistical Area, a region of 298,592 residents that encompasses the Arkansas counties of Crawford, Franklin, and Sebastian, and the Oklahoma counties of LeFlore and Sequoyah.
Fort Smith lies on the Arkansas–Oklahoma state border, situated in the Arkansas Valley at the confluence of the Arkansas and Poteau rivers, also known as Belle Point. Fort Smith was established as a western frontier military post in 1817, when it was also a center of fur trading. The city developed there. Strategically located between the Ozarks to the north and the Ouachita Mountains to the south, it became well known as a base for migrants' settling of the "Wild West" and for its law enforcement heritage, as it was the hub for white law enforcement of the adjacent Indian Territory.
The city government is led by Mayor George McGill (D), who in 2018 was elected as the city's mayor (the first African American in its history), and a city Board of Directors composed of three members elected at-large and four members elected by ward.
In 1803, the United States acquired vast areas west of the Mississippi River from France in the Louisiana Purchase. While the Lewis and Clark Expedition explored the northern portions of the Purchase territory, the government sent the contemporaneous Pike Expedition of 1806 to explore the southern portions by following the route of the Arkansas River. The U.S. Army founded Fort Smith in 1817 as a military post on the Arkansas River. It was named after General Thomas Adams Smith (1781–1844), who commanded the United States Army Rifle Regiment in 1817, headquartered near St. Louis. General Smith had ordered Army topographical engineer Stephen H. Long (1784–1864) to find a suitable site on the river for a fort. Smith never visited the town or the forts that bore his name.
A stockade was built and occupied from 1817 until 1822 by a small troop of regulars commanded by Major William Bradford. A small settlement began forming around the fort, but the Army abandoned the first Fort Smith in 1824 and moved 80 miles further west to Fort Gibson. John Rogers, an Army sutler and land speculator, bought up former government-owned lands at this site and promoted growth of the new civilian town of Fort Smith.
Due to the strategic location of this site, the federal government re-established a military presence at Fort Smith during the Indian removal era of the 1830s, during which tribes native primarily to the Southeast United States were forcibly relocated to lands west of the Mississippi River in the Indian Territory, which is present-day Oklahoma. In 1838, the Army moved back into the old military post near Belle Point and expanded the base. They used troops to remove the Choctaw and Cherokee from their ancestral homelands in the Southeast; they were the last of the tribes to leave. Remnants of the Five Civilized Tribes remained in the southeast, and some of their descendants have reorganized and been federally recognized. The Cherokee called the forced migration the Trail of Tears, as some of their people and the people who were enslaved died from starvation, hypothermia, exhaustion, and various illnesses along the way. The army enforced the removal of these tribes to the reserved Indian Territory, where the federal government set aside land that was less fertile while imposing détentes between distinct nations. Many displaced people stopped walking and settled in Fort Smith and adjoining Van Buren on the other side of the river.
The U.S. Army also used Fort Smith as a base during the Mexican–American War from 1846 to 1848. As a result of the war, the U.S. acquired most of what is now the Southwest United States, and later annexed the Republic of Texas, which had been an independent nation from 1836 to 1846.
Sebastian County, Arkansas was formed in 1851, separated from Crawford County north of the Arkansas River. In 1858, Fort Smith was designated as a Division Center of the Butterfield Overland Mail's 7th Division route across Indian Territory from Fort Smith to Texas, and as a junction with the mail route from Memphis, Tennessee, an important port on the eastern bank of the Mississippi River.
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Fort Smith, Arkansas
Fort Smith is the third-most populous city in Arkansas, United States, and one of the two county seats of Sebastian County. As of the 2020 census, the population was 89,142. It is the principal city of the Fort Smith, Arkansas–Oklahoma Metropolitan Statistical Area, a region of 298,592 residents that encompasses the Arkansas counties of Crawford, Franklin, and Sebastian, and the Oklahoma counties of LeFlore and Sequoyah.
Fort Smith lies on the Arkansas–Oklahoma state border, situated in the Arkansas Valley at the confluence of the Arkansas and Poteau rivers, also known as Belle Point. Fort Smith was established as a western frontier military post in 1817, when it was also a center of fur trading. The city developed there. Strategically located between the Ozarks to the north and the Ouachita Mountains to the south, it became well known as a base for migrants' settling of the "Wild West" and for its law enforcement heritage, as it was the hub for white law enforcement of the adjacent Indian Territory.
The city government is led by Mayor George McGill (D), who in 2018 was elected as the city's mayor (the first African American in its history), and a city Board of Directors composed of three members elected at-large and four members elected by ward.
In 1803, the United States acquired vast areas west of the Mississippi River from France in the Louisiana Purchase. While the Lewis and Clark Expedition explored the northern portions of the Purchase territory, the government sent the contemporaneous Pike Expedition of 1806 to explore the southern portions by following the route of the Arkansas River. The U.S. Army founded Fort Smith in 1817 as a military post on the Arkansas River. It was named after General Thomas Adams Smith (1781–1844), who commanded the United States Army Rifle Regiment in 1817, headquartered near St. Louis. General Smith had ordered Army topographical engineer Stephen H. Long (1784–1864) to find a suitable site on the river for a fort. Smith never visited the town or the forts that bore his name.
A stockade was built and occupied from 1817 until 1822 by a small troop of regulars commanded by Major William Bradford. A small settlement began forming around the fort, but the Army abandoned the first Fort Smith in 1824 and moved 80 miles further west to Fort Gibson. John Rogers, an Army sutler and land speculator, bought up former government-owned lands at this site and promoted growth of the new civilian town of Fort Smith.
Due to the strategic location of this site, the federal government re-established a military presence at Fort Smith during the Indian removal era of the 1830s, during which tribes native primarily to the Southeast United States were forcibly relocated to lands west of the Mississippi River in the Indian Territory, which is present-day Oklahoma. In 1838, the Army moved back into the old military post near Belle Point and expanded the base. They used troops to remove the Choctaw and Cherokee from their ancestral homelands in the Southeast; they were the last of the tribes to leave. Remnants of the Five Civilized Tribes remained in the southeast, and some of their descendants have reorganized and been federally recognized. The Cherokee called the forced migration the Trail of Tears, as some of their people and the people who were enslaved died from starvation, hypothermia, exhaustion, and various illnesses along the way. The army enforced the removal of these tribes to the reserved Indian Territory, where the federal government set aside land that was less fertile while imposing détentes between distinct nations. Many displaced people stopped walking and settled in Fort Smith and adjoining Van Buren on the other side of the river.
The U.S. Army also used Fort Smith as a base during the Mexican–American War from 1846 to 1848. As a result of the war, the U.S. acquired most of what is now the Southwest United States, and later annexed the Republic of Texas, which had been an independent nation from 1836 to 1846.
Sebastian County, Arkansas was formed in 1851, separated from Crawford County north of the Arkansas River. In 1858, Fort Smith was designated as a Division Center of the Butterfield Overland Mail's 7th Division route across Indian Territory from Fort Smith to Texas, and as a junction with the mail route from Memphis, Tennessee, an important port on the eastern bank of the Mississippi River.