In 1686, Frenchmen established
the first European settlement on the lower Mississippi. Near the Arkansas River,
it was known as Arkansas Post.
The area became American soil in 1803 as part of the Louisiana Purchase. In 1819,
Arkansas became a territory with Arkansas Post as its capital.
Two years later, the capital was moved to a central location, the fledgling settlement
of Little Rock.
In 1836, Arkansas became the 25th state with a population of just over 50,000
and a new Capitol. |
Railroads, delayed by the civil
war, began in the 1870s to spur the building of new towns and to hasten the harvest
of the state's virgin forests.
Lumber emerged as an economic mainstay, while the cleared land in the Delta region
enabled a major agricultural expansion.
These days, agiculture outputs in Arkansas are poultry and eggs, soybeans, sorghum,
cattle, cotton, rice, hogs, and milk and industrial outputs are food processing,
electric equipment, fabricated metal products, machinery, paper products, bromine,
and vanadium. |
