Arkansas

HISTORY

The name of the state is taken from the Arkansas River, which was named for the Arkansa, or Quapaw, Indians; the s was added as a plural, and the French pronunciation was retained.

The Arkansa Indians were one of the most numerous of the tribes that occupied the region before the coming of white settlers.

Arkansas became the 25th state to enter the Union on June 15, 1836.

A slaveholding state, Arkansas was part of the Confederacy during the American Civil War\.

During the Great Depression, the state of Arkansas was in such bad financial shape that the treasurer at one point reported a balance of $4.62 for the entire general revenue fund of the state.

In 1932 Hattie Caraway, a Democrat from Arkansas, became the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate.

Wal-Mart was founded in 1962 by Sam and Bud Walton in Rogers, Arkansas.

Paul McCartney wrote the Beatles song "Blackbird" about the civil rights struggle for blacks after reading about race riots in the US. He penned it in his kitchen in Scotland not long after the federal courts forced the racial desegregation of the Arkansas capital Little Rock's school system.

Bill Clinton was known as the “Boy Governor” when he won election as governor of Arkansas in 1978 at the age of just 32. He served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and again from 1983 to 1993.

Long known as an agricultural state with diverse mineral resources, Arkansas by the 1990s had an economy that was dominated by the manufacturing and service sectors.

FUN ARKANSAS FACTS

Arkansas, with an area of 137,742 sq km (53,182 sq mi), is the 29th largest state in the U.S.

The United States Census Bureau estimates that the population of Arkansas was 3,017,804 on July 1, 2019, a 3.49% increase since the 2010 United States Census.

The capital and most populous city is Little Rock, located in the central portion of the state.

The Arkansas State Capitol, often called the Capitol Building, is the home of the Arkansas General Assembly, and the seat of the Arkansas state government that sits atop Capitol Hill at the eastern end of the Capitol Mall in Little Rock.

Arkansas State Capitol in Little Rock. By Daniel Schwen

Tourism is also very important to the Arkansas economy; the official state nickname "The Natural State" was created for state tourism advertising in the 1970s, and is still used to this day.

Arkansas is currently the only U.S. state in which diamonds are mined. This is done by members of the public with primitive digging tools for a small daily fee, not by commercial interests.

The names of the states Kansas and Arkansas have the same root, the name of the Kansa tribe, thought to mean "people of the south wind". However the 'kansas' in the states' names are pronounced differently due to Kansas being an English derivation, and Arkansas being a French.

It is technically illegal to mispronounce “Arkansas” while in Arkansas. In 1947, in an effort to preserve the heritage upon which it was founded, the state decreed “The only true pronunciation of the name of the state … is that received by the French from the native Indians and committed to writing in the French word representing the sound. It should be pronounced in three syllables, with the final ‘s’ silent,"

The tomato is both the state fruit and state vegetable of Arkansas.

The world’s largest can of spinach is on display in Alma, Arkansas, the ‘Spinach Capital of the World’. It contains a million gallons of spinach.