Last week I wrote about the founding of Fort Smith by the U.S. Army in December 1817. Today I continue to summarize the 200-year history of Arkansas' second largest city.
I left off with the reopening of the military post at Fort Smith in 1851 after one of several times the Army abandoned the facility. Fort Smith was established to ensure peace between the Cherokees and other eastern Indians being relocated to lands already claimed by Osage and other groups. As time passed, political pressure from Fort Smith businessman John Rogers and the Arkansas congressional delegation prevented the War Department from closing Fort Smith permanently.
No amount of lobbying could keep federal troops at Fort Smith once it became clear that Arkansas was going to secede and join the Confederacy. As early as Feb. 6, 1861--months before Arkansas officially seceded--Gov. Henry M. Rector had successfully demanded the surrender of the federal garrison in Little Rock. In April 1861, Rector sent the state militia to seize Fort Smith, but upon arrival found the fort deserted and all the soldiers, equipment, and supplies evacuated into Indian Territory.
Fort Smith did not suffer much direct damage from the Civil War. Just as the federals abandoned the city in 1861, the Confederates withdrew in August 1863.
The end of the Civil War opened a new era for Fort Smith. The population grew from 1,532 in 1860 to 2,227 in 1870. By 1900 the city grew to more than 11,000 citizens. It established a fire department in 1870. That same year a young attorney named William Henry Harrison Clayton arrived in town to practice law and later serve as U.S. Attorney.
It was a momentous day in May 1871 when the Federal Court of the Western District of Arkansas was relocated from nearby Van Buren to Fort Smith. Isaac C. Parker of Missouri was named judge of the Western District in the spring of 1875. Parker would bring great notoriety to Fort Smith as the "hanging judge."
Parker's jurisdiction was huge, consisting of all Indian Territory as well as about half of Arkansas. During his career, he sentenced 168 men to death, but only 79 prisoners were hanged. Newspapers throughout the country unjustly portrayed Parker as bloodthirsty, for he was personally ambivalent about capital punishment. His reputation was tarnished by the huge crowds which turned out for many of the hangings in Fort Smith, "a struggling mass of humanity" in the case of the 1896 hanging of Cherokee Bill.
Fort Smith, like many frontier towns, was home to a number of prostitutes--or "soiled doves" as they were sometimes called in polite frontier company. Without a doubt, the most prominent house of prostitution in Fort Smith was Miss Laura's Social Club, which opened in 1903. Today the building which housed Miss Laura's is used as the visitor center for Fort Smith. It is the only former house of prostitution listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The city established a horse-drawn streetcar system in 1882, and in 1899 the system converted to electrical power. One of Fort Smith's early Jewish businessmen, George Tilles, started the city's telephone exchange in 1884 with a mere 30 customers. Tilles was extremely diversified, owning the Hotel Tilles, the Tilles Theatre, George Tilles Insurance Co., and the George Tilles Co., leading cotton and grain factors. He was the first Arkansan I know of who owned a billboard company.
The arrival of the 20th century found Fort Smith in an expansive mood. New businesses were cropping up, including a surprising number of furniture factories. A Coca-Cola bottling plant opened by 1903. The following year saw the municipal power company open Electric Park, an impressive facility replete with extensive ornamental gardens, a dance pavilion, dining facilities, a theater, and a large casino of Moorish design.
Fort Smith developed a surprisingly diverse cultural scene in the halcyon days of the Gilded Age. An ornate opera house, replete with a red brick turret, opened in 1887 and offered entertainment ranging from grand opera to minstrel shows. The first Fort Smith Symphony Orchestra was established in 1923. Before long Fort Smith was home to dozens of dance bands including the renowned Alphonso Trent Orchestra, established by a Fort Smith-born black musician.
For much of its early history Fort Smith managed with only two small hospitals. In 1903 the Sisters of Mercy opened St. Edward Infirmary, today known as Mercy Hospital Fort Smith. The largest hospital in Fort Smith today is Sparks Regional Medical Center. It was named for prosperous businessman George T. Sparks, whose untimely death in a 1907 shipwreck off the coast of California resulted in a large bequest and renaming the old Belle Point Hospital in his honor.
While the military post known as Fort Cheffee was permanently closed in 1997 and turned over to the Arkansas Army National Guard, the city was destined to benefit from the creation of Camp Chaffee in nearby Barling in the autumn of 1941, only months before America's entry into World War II. Several armored divisions received training at Camp Chaffee.
Camp Chaffee is remembered in the public mind as the location where Elvis Presley trained and as reception centers for the refugees who fled southeast Asia in 1975 after the fall of Saigon, and--especially--the Cubans sent to America during the Mariel Boatlift of 1980. Conflict among the Cubans--some of whom were criminals and mental patients--became an issue in the 1980 elections and contributed to the narrow defeat of Gov. Bill Clinton.
Fort Smith and Sebastian County were never strongholds for Bill Clinton because that area is strongly conservative. Fort Smith began electing Republican legislators in the 1960s, and several of them built solid records of service. State Rep. Carolyn Pollan and State Sen. John Miles in particular were highly regarded on both sides of the aisle.
Some of the Vietnamese and Laotian refugees settled in the Fort Smith area, and the city is today home to two good-sized Buddhist temples, one being the largest in Arkansas.
Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist living near Glen Rose in Hot Spring County. Email him at [email protected].
Editorial on 12/31/2017