ARKANSAS, one of the West South Central states of the U.S., bounded on the N and NE by Missouri, on the E by Tennessee and Mississippi, on the S by Louisiana, on the SW by Texas, and on the W by Oklahoma. The Mississippi R. forms virtually the entire E boundary.
Arkansas entered the Union as the 25th state on June 15, 1836. A slaveholding state, it was part of the Confederacy during the American Civil War. Long known as an agricultural state with diverse mineral resources, Arkansas by the 1990s had an economy that was dominated by the manufacturing and service sectors. The name of the state is taken from the Arkansas R., which was named for the Arkansa, or Quapaw, Indians; the s was added as a plural, and the French pronunciation was retained. Arkansas is called the Natural State.
Arkansas, with an area of 137,742 sq km (53,182 sq mi), is the 29th largest state in the U.S; 7.1% of the land is owned by the federal government. Arkansas is roughly square in shape, although narrower in the S, and its extreme dimensions are about 355 km (about 220 mi) from both N to S and E to W. Elevations range from 17 m (55 ft) along the Ouachita R., near the Louisiana border, to a maximum of 839 m (2753 ft) at Magazine Mt. The mean elevation is about 198 m (650 ft). |