![]() Two of Fort Smith's most notable historic figures were Judge Isaac Parker and William Henry Harrison Clayton, also known as W.H.H. The town continued to thrive despite the absence of federal troops. Federal troops abandoned the post of Fort Smith for the last time in 1871. The slaves were freed under the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1863 by President Abraham Lincoln. As a result, many refugee slaves, orphans, Southern Unionists, and others came here to escape the guerrilla warfare raging in Arkansas, Missouri, and the Border States. A small fight occurred there on July 31, 1864, but the Union army maintained command in the area until the war ended in 1865. ![]() Union troops under General Steele took control of Fort Smith on September 1, 1863. Civil War, the fort was occupied by the Confederate Army. ![]() 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 east side of the Mississippi River.įor roughly a year of the U.S. Sebastian County was formed in 1851, separated from Crawford County north of the Arkansas River. As a result, the US acquired large territories in the Southwest, and later annexed the Republic of Texas, which had been independent from 1836-1846. The US Army also used Fort Smith as a base during the Mexican War (1846-1848). Many displaced people stopped walking and settled in Fort Smith and adjoining Van Buren, Arkansas on the other side of the river. 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 detentes between distinct nations. 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 many illnesses along the way. Remnants of the Five ‘Civilized’ Tribes remained in the southeast, and some of their descendants have reorganized and been federally recognized. They used troops to forcibly relocate the Choctaw and Cherokee, from their ancestral homelands in the Southeast they were the last of the tribes to leave. ![]() In 1838 the Army moved back into the old military post near Belle Point, and expanded the base. 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.ĭue 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, primarily of tribes from the American Southeast to west of the Mississippi River in Indian Territory, which is present-day Oklahoma. ![]() 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. General Smith never visited the town or the forts that bore his name.Ī stockade was built and occupied from 1817 until 1822 by a small troop of regulars commanded by Major William Bradford. Long (1784–1864) to find a suitable site on the Arkansas River for a fort. General Smith had ordered Army topographical engineer Stephen H. It was named after General Thomas Adams Smith (1781–1844), who commanded the United States Army Rifle Regiment in 1817, headquartered near St. The US founded Fort Smith in 1817 as a military post. Soon after, the government sent the Pike Expedition (1806) to explore the areas along the Arkansas River. The United States acquired the territory and large areas west of the Mississippi River from France in the Louisiana Purchase (1803). The city government is led by Mayor George McGill (D), who made history in 2018 when he was elected as the city's first African American mayor, and a city Board of Directors composed of three members elected at-large and four members elected by ward. It became well known as a base for migrants' settling of the " Wild West" and for its law enforcement heritage. Fort Smith was established as a western frontier military post in 1817, when it was also a center of fur trading. 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.įort Smith lies on the Arkansas–Oklahoma state border, situated at the confluence of the Arkansas and Poteau rivers, also known as Belle Point. As of the 2020 census, the population was 89,142. 72901-72906, 72908, 72913-72914, 72916-72919įort Smith is the third-most populous city in Arkansas and one of the two county seats of Sebastian County. ![]()
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