Twenty Arkansas facts

  1. Arkansas is a state located in the southern region of the United States.
  2. The capital and most populous city is Little Rock, located in the central portion of the state.
  3. Total Area: 28th among states, 137,732 sq km (53,179 sq mi)
  4. The name "Arkansas" derives from the same root as the name for the state of Kansas.
  5. Pivot Rock balances on a base 15 times smaller than its top.
  6. The name Arkansas comes from an Indian word that means down-stream people.
  7. The mockingbird is the official state bird. It was designated in 1929.

  8. Alma is claimed to be the Spinach Capital of the World.
  9. Famous singer Johnny Cash was born in Kingsland.
  10. The Ozark National Forest covers more than one million acres.
  11. Sam Walton founded his Wal-Mart stores in Bentonville.
  12. In 1983, Arkansas becomes the first state to require teachers to pass a basic skills test.
  13. The pine tree is the official state tree. It was designated in 1939.
  14. There are 47 hot springs that flow from the southwestern slope of Hot Springs Mountain, at an average temperature of 143F.
  15. Large burial mounds found in Arkansas were a prominent feature of the region's last prehistoric culture, the Mississippian, which began about 700 AD.
  16. The Arkansas River is the longest stream to flow into the Mississippi-Missouri river system. Its total length is 1,450 miles.
  17. The word "Arkansas" itself is a French pronunciation ("Arcansas") of a Quapaw (a related "Kaw" tribe) word "akakaze" meaning "land of downriver people" or the Sioux word "Akakaze" meaning "people of the south wind".
  18. During the 1930s, the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union, a radical labor group based in Arkansas, brought national attention to the tenant farming and sharecropping system.
  19. The pronunciation of Arkansas (AR-kən-saw) was made official by an act of the state legislature in 1881, after a dispute between the two U.S. Senators from Arkansas. One wanted to pronounce the name /ɑrˈkænzəs/ ar-KAN-zəs and the other wanted /ˈɑrkənsɔː/ AR-kən-saw.
  20. Mount Ida is known as the Quartz Crystal Capital of the World.
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