Fort Smith (Arkansas) is a city in western Arkansas and seat (with Greenwood) of Sebastian County. The second biggest city around the state (after Little Rock), Fort Smith is found at the confluence of the Arkansas River and also the Poteau River, at the Arkansas/Oklahoma border. It's an industrial center and an agricultural processing and distribution point, with huge livestock marketplaces. Processed foods as well as electrical appliances are major manufactures. Nearby Fort Chaffee Military Reservation has been important to the city's history; throughout 1975 it housed roughly 25,000 Vietnamese refugees, and in the early 1980s Cuban immigrants were quartered on the post. Fort Chaffee was reorganized and scaled down by the federal government in 1993.
The city expanded around a fort founded in 1817 to maintain peace in between the Cherokee and Osage peoples. It is named for General Thomas A. Smith, commanding officer of the force that developed the fort. The city was incorporated in 1851. A new fort (today a National Historic Site) constructed nearby in 1838 was vacated by the army in 1871. During 1875 the fort became a federal court, recognized by the decisions of Judge Isaac C. Parker, who dealt sternly with lawlessness in the region.