About Arkansas

Arkansas, one of the 50 states that make up the USA. Arkansas is the smallest state west of the Mississippi River and has the 29th-smallest total area among the 50 states, behind only Louisiana and Hawaii. In addition to Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, Texas to the southwest, and Oklahoma to the west, these states are its neighbors. Early French explorers gave the Quapaw people—a significant indigenous population in the region—and the river along which they settled the name Arkansas. The title was perhaps a corruption of the term “akansea,” which the Illinois, another area indigenous group, used to refer to the Quapaw. The state’s capital, Little Rock, is situated in the state’s center.

The scenery of Arkansas is diverse. The lush, flat, river-dotted agricultural regions of the east contrast sharply with the Ozark and Ouachita mountains in the north and west. The majority of the state’s rivers pour into the Mississippi, which serves as the main eastern boundary, through the Arkansas and Red rivers as they run from northwest to southeast.