Harrison, Arkansas
Harrison, Arkansas
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2291542

Harrison, Arkansas

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2291542

Harrison, Arkansas

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Harrison, Arkansas

Harrison is a city in and the county seat of Boone County, Arkansas, United States. It is named after Marcus LaRue Harrison, a surveyor who laid out the city along Crooked Creek at Stifler Springs. As of the 2020 census, Harrison had a population of 13,069. It is the 30th largest city in Arkansas, based on official 2019 estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. Harrison is the principal city of the Harrison Micropolitan Statistical Area, which includes all of Boone and Newton counties.

The community has a history of racism; there were two race riots in the early 20th century and an influx of white supremacist organizations during the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Native Americans were the earliest inhabitants of the area, probably beginning with cliff dwellers who lived in caves in the bluffs along the rivers. In later times, the Osage, a Siouan speaking people, were the main tribe in the Ozarks, and one of their larger villages is thought to have been to the east of the present site of Harrison. The Shawnee, Quapaw, and Caddo people were also familiar to the area.

The Cherokee arrived around 1816 and did not get along with the Osage. This hostility erupted into a full-scale war in the Ozark Mountains. By the 1830s, both tribes were removed to Indian Territory.

It is possible that the first Europeans to visit the area were some forty followers of Hernando de Soto and that they camped at a Native village on the White River at the mouth of Bear Creek. It is more likely that the discoverers were French hunters or trappers who followed the course of the White River.

In early 1857, the Baker–Fancher wagon train assembled at Beller's Stand, south of Harrison. On September 11, 1857, approximately 120 members of this wagon train were murdered near Mountain Meadows, Utah Territory, by a local Mormon militia and members of the Paiute Indian tribe. In 1955, a monument to memorialize the victims of the massacre was placed on the Harrison town square.

Boone County was organized in 1869, during Reconstruction after the Civil War. Harrison was platted and made the county seat. It is named after Marcus LaRue Harrison, a Union officer who surveyed and platted the town. The town of Harrison was incorporated on March 1, 1876.

In 1905 and 1909, white race riots occurred in Harrison, which drove away black residents and established the community as one of hundreds of sundown towns in the country.

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