Introduction
On June 7, 1964, I was born in St. Edward Mercy Hospital at North 15th Street and Rogers Avenue. Except for four years of college and four years in Boston immediately after college, I have always been here, born and raised. To understand how I feel about the city, you have to understand and feel the word "roots." That word has been used so often to describe what I am talking about that it almost is threadbare. Nevertheless, it works. I feel my spirit is sunk into the earth of the Arkanas River valley. Whenever I've spent an extensive amount of time in another place, I start to feel disoriented, a little lost.

On returning to western Arkansas from Boston in late 1990, I stopped at Artist's Point in the Ozarks to look at the hills. Tears came to my eyes because I recognized I was home. I looked at the maternal curves of the hills and mountains and knew that the land had made me as much as my mother and father.

Fort Smith is the second largest city in Fort Smith after Little Rock and the third largest Metropolitan Statistical Area after Little Rock and Fayetteville. It shares status as the county seat of Sebastian County along with Greenwood. Sebastian County was created in 1851 by the Arkansas legislature, and Fort Smith was incorporated in 1842. Early in the history of Arkansas and the city, Fort Smith was an important point of contact to the American West. One of the state’s westernmost cities and one of its most Western. It is home to large manufacturing plants such as Whirlpool Corporation’s side-by-side refrigerator plant, Baldor Electric’s motor and drive factory and Hiram Walker’s blending and bottling facility. St. Edward Mercy Medical Center and Sparks Regional Medical Center provide health care to residents beyond the confines of the city, and the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith offers many bachelor’s and associate’s degree programs.

Those are the facts, and clearly, Fort Smith has some things going for it. But, it has some negatives, too. Fort Smith is family. Sometimes we have members of our families who are flawed and have problems, but that doesn't mean we stop loving them. In fact, it often means we just love them more. Wouldn't it be wonderful if there was more here for everybody? Absolutely, yes. The city is constantly and slowly in the process of becoming. It always will be. Will it become the city everyone wants? No, never. When Spanish explorers tramped through the area looking for El Dorado, he didn't find it here. There is no city of gold.

Settlement to Civil War
No indigenous peoples appear to have had permanent settlements at the time of European contact in what became Fort Smith. However, very near to Fort Smith in present-day Oklahoma the Spiro Mounds still give evidence of earlier occupation by Native Americans. The site is 140 acres in area, contains 12 mounds and evidence of a Native American culture that occupied the site from 850 to 1450. In south Fort Smith, a platform mound commonly called the Cavanaugh Mound exists in isolation and may have provided a vantage point from which the Spiro Mounds could have been seen in an earlier century. Sidenote 1.

Hernando de Soto’s expedition into Arkansas in 1541 may have reached as far west as Fort Smith. Some of his men may have explored the areas west and south of Fort Smith encountering dry, treeless prairie. Place names in eastern Oklahoma and western Arkansas — Poteau, Belle Point and Massard Prairie — give some evidence of the presence of French trappers and others who perhaps used the Arkansas River and its tributary the Poteau River. The Arkansas River valley between the Ouachita Mountains to the south and the Ozark Mountains to the north of Fort Smith provided fertile bottom land to earlier farmer settlers. Belle Point, a river bluff, along the Arkansas River just north of its juncture with the Poteau, afforded an excellent vantage point looking west and a defensible position for the first Fort Smith military post. 2

In November 1817, the first troops arrived at Belle Point and began building the first structures. The principal purpose of the fort was to keep the peace between the Osage and Cherokee tribes that had entered the area. Around the fort, a small settlement began forming which took its name from the fort that in turn was named for Gen. Thomas A. Smith. No record exists of Smith, who was the military district’s commander, ever visiting the post or city. In 1822, John Rogers first arrived in the town and established himself as a supplier to the fort and trader with trappers, Native Americans and other settlers. The army abandoned the fort and moved west to establish Fort Gibson in the Indian Territory (later Oklahoma). By 1836, the army returned and began building the second Fort Smith military post just a few hundred yards east of Fort Smith. Rogers lobbied successfully for the military’s return. Because of his strong association with both forts and his early efforts to promote the town, many consider him to be the founder of the city of Fort Smith. His Rogers Avenue namesake is the central commercial corridor in the city. 3

In a letter dated June 26, 1876, John Billingsley recalls seeing men in Fort Smith during this period who dressed in full suits of deer skin and some French traders in large canoes who paid for goods in pelts. “The first settler was John Rogers, and he got very rich,” Billingsley wrote. The Weaver Papers give an account of horse races on what was the eastern edge of the city on which betting was common. “Sporting men,” according to Weaver, all chipped in gold pieces and other money to pay for the construction of the first Union Chuch in 1844. Because it was on the western edge of Arkansas where dueling was illegal and because travel up the river was easier than over land, several duels were fought on sandbars in the river between the Fort Smith and the Indian Territory, notably faceoffs between Solon Borland and Dr. Benjamin Borden as well as Albert Pike and John Selden Roane. 4

Fort Smith was an important center for outfitting Forty-Niners during the Gold Rush in late 1848 and early 1849 and of soldiers in the Mexican War from 1846 to 1848. Thousands of emigrants converged on Fort Smith and nearby Van Buren during the Gold Rush. Although more Forty-Niners probably disembarked from Missouri for California seeking to stake claims to sources of gold, the first wagon train of those journeying by land left from Fort Smith. Primarily, this was because the more southernly route west from Fort Smith had fresh grass earlier in the spring than the more northerly route. Fresh forage was needed for the draft animals in the wagon train. Secondly, trading posts at Fort Smith could supply the gold seekers and the fort itself could provide military escorts as guides and defenders against possible Native American attacks. Acccording to W.J. Weaver, who settled in Fort Smith in 1841, 68 men enlisted at Fort Smith for service in the Mexican War and saw action in the battles of Contreras, Molino del Rey, Cherubusco, Chapultepec and Mexico City. The 1850s appears to have been a decade of slow and steady economic growth. Troops occupied the military fort for most of the 1850s, but many of them were transient — on their way to posts further west or returing to the East. The fort served as an important place for outfitting and supplying companies. Fort Smith also became increasingly central to communications on the frontier and beyond as stage, steamboat and mail transportation networks matured.

With the election of Abraham Lincoln as president in 1860, the secession crisis erupted and the War Department prepared to abandon Fort Smith. Citizens of the town protested citing the “almost unanimous voice in the counties adjoining Fort Smith for Union as against violence, mob law and secession.” Federal troops remained until just before Arkansas seceded, and the commander viewed his military position as untenable. Arkansas volunteers and Confederate took control of the for shortly after its abandonment. In 1862, secessionist forces fled for a time following their defeat at the Battle of Pea Ridge and Union raids on supplies at the fort itself. They returned and occupied it until Union forces returned permanently to occupy the garrison in September 1863. Although they continued to hold the fort, Union forces hold on the surrounding countryside became increasingly tenuous in 1864, especially after the unsuccessful Red River campaign. Bushwhackers and Confederate regular and irregular forces marauding and conducted raids on Union forces and their supporters. The small-scale engagement, the Battle of Massard Prairie, remains an example of that period and style of combat during the latter half of the Civil War in Arkansas. The town and garrison of Fort Smith together served as an important refuge from guerilla soldiers and attacks as well as a source of the meager food and clothing supplies that did exist. 5

The Parker Era
After the war, federal forces out of Fort Smith worked to restore order to the countryside and rural areas of western Arkansas. The city also was the site of the Fort Smith Council, a gathering of federal and tribal representatives for the purpose of negotiating the terms under which the former Confederate Indian nations could resume their proper relationship with the United States.

After fires destroyed soldiers quarters at the fort in 1870, the federal government officials initially resolved to sell it, but later decided to move the Western Arkansas Federal District Court from Van Buren to the land at Belle Point. Judge William Story presided over the court but was replaced in May 1875 by Judge Isaac C. Parker, a former Congressman from Missouri. Parker’s judgeship lasted until his death in 1896 and marks one of the most celebrated periods in Fort Smith history. Hollywood romanticized and memorialized the period in films such as “True Grit” and “Hang ‘Em High.” U.S. marshals and deputy marshals headquartered in Fort Smith not onlyenforced the law in western Arkansas but also in the neighboring, frequently lawless Indian Territory next door. During his tenure, Parker sentenced 160 to hang and the court’s officers hung 79 of those. In the city of Fort Smith, the late 19th century marked a period of booming growth in the 1880s in which the population nearly tripled, commercial trading expanded and Garrison Avenue became the wholesale and retail center of the region. The banks later known as First National Bank and Merchants National Bank were founded during this time. Railroad transportation arrived in the 1870s, giving the city an important alternative to the Arkansas River.

In fits and starts, much of the city’s history until the onset of the Great Depression is a story of the growth of its economy and culture. Large hotels like the Goldman Hotel opened in 1911 and the Ward Hotel in 1928 . An electric streetcar network within the city grew as it did. In 1907, the citybecame one of the few in U.S. history not only legalize but also regulate prostitution. Commercial sex outside the designated Row area near the riverfront and rail yards of Fort Smith remained illegal, but until 1924 when it was again made in illegal throughout the entire city, prostitutes and madams working within the Row purchased licenses and underwent bimonthly health inspections. Fort Smith never had the sizeable African-American communities that Little Rock and other cities in the state had, but Jim Crow came to it nevertheless. Natural gas was discovered in the area and became an important feature, which later attracted some manufacturers to the city, namely a noticeable glass manufacturing industry. Furniture manufacturing also became increasingly central to the metropolitan economy. In 1922, a bridge to accommodate automobile traffic was constructed to span the Arkansas River at the west end of Garrison and connected downtown Fort Smith to Oklahoma. When the Great Depression rolled over the national economy in the 1930s, Fort Smith suffered just as the rest of the nation did. The coal mines of south Sebastian County, increasingly unproductive, closed as the Depression deepened and demand for the fossil fuel fell sharply. Infamous criminals Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow hid in Fort Smith to elude capture while Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd robbed and did the same in nearby Oklahoma. The New Deal brought public works projects to the area though. Federal workers built a dam in Crawford County to create a water source for the citycalled Lake Fort Smith.

World War II and the Modern Era
Camp Chaffee, later renamed Fort Chaffee, was activated as an Army base on Sept. 11, 1941, just a short time before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that cause the United States to enter World War II on the Allied side. During the war, Chaffee was used for training armored divisions of the U.S. Army. The Army built three prison compounds comrising about 53 acres of the camp to house 3,400 German prisoners of war. Although Chaffee was well outside the city of Fort Smith’s limits, it was nearby in Sebastian County and economic ties between it and the city were strong. Many thousands of troops trained and were housed in barracks at the base. Military families resided in the city, and nearly all of them shopped and ate in Fort Smith. However, after the war, it was activated and deactivated many times. In the 1950s and 1960s, the city struggled and succeeded in diversifying its economy, or at least making it less reliant on Fort Chaffee.

In 1960, the Norge company opened a factory for the manufacture of refrigerators, freezers and air conditioners. It was purchased by the Whirlpool Corp. in 1968 and expanded. As recently as 2004, it employed 4,600 people in the making of side-by-side refrigerators and ice makers. Homegrown companies like Baldor Electric Co., a maker of motors, drives and generators, and ABF Freight System Inc., a less-than-truckload carrier and subsidiary of Arkansas Best Corp. also are major employers in the city and drivers of the local economy. Many of them can trace their origins back to the period of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

Social change came with economic growth. Fort Smith sought to avoid the divisive integration struggle that Little Rock underwent and for the most part did so. Instead of starting at the high school level, Fort Smith schools integrated black and white students at the elementary first and on a gradual basis. In 1966, all-black Lincoln High School graduated its last senior class.

Fort Smith’s population grew during the 1960s and 1970s and its manufacturing base deepened. Other institutions also matured. St. Edward Mercy Medical Center opened in a new hospital facility on what was then the eastern edge of town in 1975. Central Mall, one of the largest indoor shopping malls in Arkansas, opened about 20 blocks to the west along Rogers Avenue. Many downtown merchants relocated to the mall. Dozens of the buildings that they had occupied along Garrison and Rogers Avenue downtown emptied out. Westark Community College in the north east section of the city grew to become the University of Fort Smith at Arkansas in 2002.

Layoffs at Whirlpool have occurred as its parent company has shifted production from Fort Smith to a new plant in Ramos Arizpe, Mexico. The job losses have highlighted threats to the city’s investment in its manufacturing base, albeit challenges also faced by manufacturers nationwide. What that means for the city’s economic future has been made all the more complicated by the good news of expansions by other resident manufacturers and businesses.

Demographically, the city of Fort Smith has become more diverse. In 1975, Fort Chaffee was used as the center for federal resettlement Vietnamese refugees who fled their country following the fall of Saigon in that year. Many of the Vietnamese stayed in the community. Hispanic immigrants became residents of the city and region in recent years as they have in other parts of the state. Finally, a sizeable Laotian community also settled in Fort Smith beginning in the 1980s.Famous residents: Fort Smith has many residents of note. They include American explorer Benjamin Bonneville, federal Judge Isaac C. Parker, World War II general and hero William O. Darby, writer Thyra Samter Winslow and blaxploitation star Rudy Ray Moore.

Conclusion
Fort Smith is in many ways a blue-collar town in transition. Of course, it never has been purely blue collar and has always enjoyed a healthy mix of professionals, educators and others in a variety of economic sectors. In this first decade of the 21st century, the city and its residents are consciously and unconsciously redefining its identity. Will it become a generic American city or will it retain enough significant, individual elements to be something easily and quickly seen by an outside observer as unique?

Sources

Bearss, Edwin C., and Arrell M. Gibson, Fort Smith: Little Gibraltar on the Arkansas, 2nd ed., Norman, OK, and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1979.

Duncan, David Ewing, Hernando De Soto, A Savage Quest in the Americas, Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996.

The Goodspeed Histories of Sebastian County, Arkansas, originally published 1889, Columbia, TN: Woodward & Stimson Printing Co., reprinted 1977.

Insight 2000, ed. by Nancy Steel, Fort Smith: Times Record, 1999.

McArthur, Priscilla, Arkansas in the Gold Rush, Little Rock: August House, 1986.

Weaver, J. F. and W.J. Weaver, Early History of Fort Smith, unpublished typescript, University of Fayetteville at Fayetteville archives.