Ft. Smith, AR – Alma

Alma is a city in Crawford County, Arkansas, United States. It is located within the Arkansas River Valley at the edge of the Ozark Mountains; the city is the sixth largest in the Fort Smith metropolitan area.

This is where we arrived for the next 13 weeks. Elsa works in the much larger Fort Smith, about 25 minutes away. It is situated in the midwestern part of Arkansas, bordering  Oklahoma.

Fort Smith is situated in the midwestern part of Arkansas, bordering Oklahoma. It was established as a western frontier military post in 1817, when it was also a center of fur trading. It became well known as a base for migrants’ settling of the “Wild West” and for its law enforcement heritage, as it was the hub for white law enforcement of the adjacent Indian Territory. More people were hung here than anywhere in the US.

We lived on a large farm overlooking the Arkansas River valley on one side and the Ozarks on the other. To get to our 8-unit apartment complex, one has to meander up n steep hill. We call it ‘hell hill’ as it is now part of our workout some mornings.

We explored the swimming hole and river tubing near us. We also embarked on a narrow rail train trip through the Ozarks for a few miles and drove to the highest point in Arkansas. Mount Magazine is a flat-topped mountain with two summits, Signal Hill and Mossback Ridge, reaching 2,753 feet (839 m) and 2,700 feet (823 m) respectively. A bonus was Lake Alma near us, with incredibly well-maintained trails. Many a pleasant day were spent there.

Historically, Ft Smith is the center of the ‘Trail of Tears’. The Trail of Tears was the forced displacement of about 60,000 people of the “Five Civilized Tribes” between 1830 and 1850, and the additional thousands of Native Americans and their enslaved African Americans within that were ethnically cleansed by the United States government. As part of Indian removal, members of the Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations were forcibly removed from their ancestral homelands in the Southeastern United States to newly designated Indian Territory west of the Mississippi, up the Arkansas River. Hence the fort that was established there.

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