Fort Smith is the third-largest city in Arkansas and one of the two county seats of Sebastian County. As of the 2020 census, the population was 89,142. It is the principal city of the Fort Smith, Arkansas–Oklahoma Metropolitan Statistical Area, a region of 298,592 residents that encompasses the Arkansas counties of Crawford, Franklin, and Sebastian, and the Oklahoma counties of Le Flore and Sequoyah.

Fort Smith lies on the Arkansas–Oklahoma state border, situated at the confluence of the Arkansas and Poteau rivers, also known as Belle Point. Fort Smith was standard as a western frontier military read out in 1817, when it was in addition to a center of fur trading. The city developed there. It became with ease known as a base for migrants’ settling of the “Wild West” and for its undertaking enforcement heritage.

The city supervision is led by Mayor George McGill (D), who made history in 2018 as soon as he was elected as the city’s first African American mayor, and a city Board of Directors composed of three members elected at-large and four members elected by ward.

Before the European colonization of the Americas, this region was inhabited by various original American peoples, attracted by the proximity to two rivers. They used the waterways for transportation and trading, and to supply fish and water to their villages. The French claimed this Place as allocation of their New France and La Louisiana. Some colonial fur traders traveled the Arkansas and extra rivers to difference of opinion goods following the tribes.