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Fort Smith, Arkansas For Sale By Owner - Local Information
Fort Smith is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of Arkansas and one of the two county seats of Sebastian County. With a population of 80,268 at the 2000 census, it is the principal city of the Fort Smith, Arkansas-Oklahoma Metropolitan Statistical Area, a region of 288,818 residents which encompasses the Arkansas counties of Crawford, Franklin, and Sebastian in Arkansas, and the Oklahoma counties Le Flore and Sequoyah.
Fort Smith has a sister city relationship with Cisterna, Italy, site of the World War II Battle of Cisterna fought by the United States Army Rangers commanded by Fort Smith native William O. Darby.
Fort Smith lies on the Arkansas-Oklahoma state border, situated at the junction of the Arkansas and Poteau Rivers, also known as Belle Point. The city began as a western frontier military post in 1817 and would later become well-known for its role in the settling of the "Wild West" and its law enforcement heritage.
In 2007, Fort Smith was selected by the US Department of the Interior to be the location of the new US Marshal Service National Museum.
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Additional information about Fort Smith, Arkansas
Fort Smith was founded in 1817 as a military post to keep the peace between the Osage Indians and emigrating Cherokee in the neighboring Indian Territory. The Army abandoned the first Fort Smith in 1824 and moved 80 miles further west to Fort Gibson to be closer to the center of Osage territory. Army sutler and land speculator John Rogers (who some genealogists claimed to be an ancestor to 20th-century Oklahoma comedian Will Rogers) bought up former government-owned lands and promoted growth of the new civilian town of Fort Smith, eventually influencing the federal government to re-establish a strong military presence at Fort Smith during the era of Indian Removal and the Mexican War.
Fort Smith's name comes from 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 Arkansas River for a fort. General Smith never visited the town or forts that bore his name.
In 1838 the Army moved back into the old military post near Belle Point, and expanded the base as part of the federal policy of removing Cherokees and Choctaws from their ancestral homelands in the Southeast and resettling the survivors in the nearby Indian Territory. Many displaced Native Americans settled down in Fort Smith and Van Buren, while Sebastian county was formed in 1851, split from Crawford county in the north of the Arkansas River. In 1871 the U.S. Army moved out of the second Fort Smith. The fort had been occupied by the Confederate Army during the early years of the U.S. Civil War. Union troops under General Steele took control of Fort Smith on 1 September 1863 and maintained command in the area until the war ended in 1865. The town became a haven for runaway slaves, orphans, Southern Unionists, and other victims of the ferocious guerrilla warfare then raging in the Border States. Federal troops abandoned the post of Fort Smith for the last time in 1871. The town continued to thrive despite the absence of federal troops.
Two of Fort Smith's most notable historic figures were Judge Isaac Parker and William Henry Harrison Clayton. In 1874, William Henry Harrison Clayton was appointed United States Attorney for the Western District of Arkansas by President Ulysses S. Grant. Fort Smith was a bustling community full of brothels, saloons and outlaws across the river from Indian Territory. William Clayton realized that a strong judge would be necessary to bring law and order to the region. He knew of a strong judge in Isaac Parker. There was a problem, Judge Parker had been appointed Chief Justice of Utah Territory and confirmed by the US Senate. With the help of President Grant and US Senator Powell Clayton, former governor of Arkansas, William Clayton was able to undo that appointment and redirect Judge Parker to Fort Smith.
Judge Isaac Parker served as US District Judge from 1875-1896. He was nicknamed the "Hanging Judge" because in his first term after assuming his post he tried eighteen people for murder, convicted fifteen of them, sentenced eight of those to die, and hanged six of them on one day. Over the course of his career in Fort Smith, Parker sentenced 160 people to hang, of those 79 actually were executed on the gallows. Judge Parker represented the only real law the rough and tumble frontier border town had at the time. His courthouse is now a National Historic Site where "More men were put to death by the U.S. Government... than in any other place in American history."
William Clayton was appointed US Attorney by four different presidents and later served as Chief Justice of Indian Territory. He was instrumental in achieving statehood for Oklahoma and together with Territorial Governor Frank Frantz, carried the Oklahoma Constitution to President Teddy Roosevelt after that state was admitted in 1907. Governor Frantz and Judge Clayton both lost their territorial positions when Oklahoma was admitted to the Union. Fort Smith foresaw an economic boom in World War I and the 1920's by the US Armed Forces in the Fort Chaffee Military Reservation established east of the city.
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