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is a city in and the county seat of Ouachita County in the southern part of the U.S. state of Arkansas. According to 2007 Census Bureau estimates, the population of the city was 11,657. Camden is the principal city of the Camden Micropolitan Statistical Area, which includes all of Ouachita and Calhoun counties.
In 1783, a French trader named Fabre settled on a bluff above the Ouachita River and called the settlement “Ecore Fabre” (Faber’s Bluff or the Hill of Faber). This would mark the permanent settlement of what would become Camden. The city of Camden marks its founding as 1824, but it was not incorporated and officially named “Camden” until 1844. Some controversy exists over the origin of the name but most agree it is named for Camden, Alabama, the hometown of General Thomas Woodward, an early city founder. Prior to the name change from Ecore Fabre to Camden, the location was simply known as "The Bluff".
In the American Civil War, Camden was occupied for several months in 1864 by Union soldiers as a part of the Union army's ill fated Red River Campaign. During this epidode the Confederate victory in the Battle of Poison Springs occurred west of the city on April l8, 1864.
For several decades, Camden was the headquarters of the Clyde E. Palmer newspaper chain, which included the
.
Palmer's son-in-law, Walter E. Hussman, Sr. (1906–1988), and Palmer's grandson, Walter E. Hussman, Jr. (born 1947), were threafter publishers of the
and chief executive officers of the Palmer properties. Hussman, Jr., is the publisher of the
In pre-Civil War days Camden was a bustling river port and mercantile center at the headwaters of the Ouachita River, and the town remained an important cotton shipping depot through the early decades of the twentieth century. Before the steamboat era faded, Camden had become a railroad town--served by the mainline of the St. Louis Southwestern (Cotton Belt) and by branch lines of the Missouri Pacific and the Rock Island. A major economic infusion accompanied the South Arkansas oil boom of the 1920's and a new International Paper Co. mill in 1927. Near the end of World War II thousands of new jobs were created with the 1944 construction of a Naval Ammunition Depot across the Ouachita at Shumaker--and a resurgence of that activity during the Korean War. An economic downturn following the post Korean War closure of that plant was addressed by redeveloping its facilities and grounds into an extensive industrial area which, in time, came to host some major defense establishments and multiple smaller industries. A technical campus of Southern Arkansas University also located there. In the 1990's, post Cold-War downsizing of the defense industry brought severe job losses--and resulting population decline--to the Camden area as did the closure of the International Paper Co. mill a few years later. But in recent years a partial resurgence of defense contracts and a diversified mixture of small business and professional activity have stablized the town's economy at a level below the peak levels of the boom years. As one of Arkansas'most historic towns, the city attracts considerable heritage tourism.