Ft. Smith, Arkansas

We arrived in Arkansas for the next 13 weeks and settled down in the little town of Alma – a town 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. Elsa works in the much larger Fort Smith, about 25 minutes away.

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.

It also formed the distribution center of the forced removal of Tribal Indians from their native lands in the southeast. The Cherokee called the forced migration the Trail of Tears, as some of their people and the people who were enslaved died from starvation, hypothermia, exhaustion and many illnesses along the way. The army enforced the removal of these tribes to the reserved Indian Territory, where the federal government set aside land that was less fertile while imposing détentes between distinct nations.

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 a steep hill. We call it ‘hell hill’ as it is become part of our workout some mornings. Below are images of the road to Arkansas over the Mississippi River and the farmstead we stayed at for three months.