Facts About Fort Smith
- Fort Smith is the third-most populous city in Arkansas and one of the two county seats of Sebastian County.
- The city of Fort Smith has a total area of 64.6 square miles, of which 61.7 square miles is land and 3.9 square miles is water.
- The estimated population of Fort Smith is 89,142 people, of which there are 36,210 households, and 22,349 families in the city, as of the 2020 United States census.
- Fort Smith is named after General Thomas Adams Smith.
- Fort Smith was established as a western frontier military post in 1817 when it was also a centre of fur trading.
- The City of Fort Smith became incorporated on Christmas Eve, 1842.
- Two of Fort Smith’s most notable historic figures were Judge Isaac Charles Parker and William Henry Harrison Clayton, also known as W. H. H. Clayton.
- The University of Arkansas at Fort Smith was founded in 1928 as an extension of the Fort Smith Public School system.
- Fort Smith is situated near an area known as Tornado Alley in the central United States. The city has been struck by three major tornadoes, which occurred in the years of 1898, 1927 and 1996.
- The first time a woman in the South voted, she voted in Fort Smith. Arkansas became the first Southern state to allow women to vote in party primaries in February 1917.
