Arkansas

F

Animal Life

The bobcat, opossum, muskrat, weasel, rabbit, and squirrel are very common. Red and gray foxes can be found; deer and elk thrive in state and federal game refuges. Black bear reintroduced from Minnesota are thriving in Arkansas’s highlands areas.

The Mississippi River and the lower valleys of its tributaries lie on one of the great flyways for birds migrating between the Gulf of Mexico and Canada. When southward migration begins in the fall, millions of ducks, geese, and other waterfowl are on the move, and many of them find rich feeding grounds in the rice-growing country around Stuttgart. The rice fields also attract many other game birds, among them woodcocks, teal, and quail. Quail are also found in brush patches all over the state, and, through protection, the wild turkey is increasing in numbers in upland and lowland areas. The level country is the habitat of several species of warblers, the painted bunting, and the mockingbird, the state bird. Herons wade in lowland streams, and the Mississippi kite, Bachman’s sparrow, blue grosbeak, and chuck-will’s-widow occur in the Delta country of the Mississippi-Arkansas-White river floodplain. In mountain areas the whippoorwill, Eastern phoebe, American goldfinch, and brown thrasher are common. The Ozarks-Ouachita region is also the breeding ground for such species as the scarlet tanager, ovenbird, summer tanager, Carolina wren, rufous-sided towhee, and roadrunner.

The poisonous snakes in Arkansas are the cottonmouth water moccasin, copperhead, coral snake, and three species of rattlesnake. Non-poisonous snakes include the speckled king snake, black snake, blue racer, and garter snake. Turtles, frogs, lizards, and salamanders are plentiful, and a few alligators are found in the swamplands of south central Arkansas.

The rivers, streams, and lakes of the state in general support a wide variety of fish, including largemouth and spotted bass, catfish, and several species of bream. Mountain waters contain smallmouth bass and the colorful darter. The broad, slow rivers of the Delta teem with crappie, sturgeon, buffalo fish, and pickerel. Striped bass have been introduced to many reservoirs, and trout populations are found below dams in the White River system. Norfolk National Fish Hatchery is the largest trout hatchery in the country. Each year about 2 million recently hatched fish, called fingerlings, are introduced into many Ozark waters, including the White, Spring, and Little Red rivers. The White River and its tributaries also provide good habitat for freshwater mussels.

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G

Conservation

Soil erosion is widespread in Arkansas. The most widely eroded areas are Crowley’s Ridge and the Gulf Coastal Plain. In 1937 Arkansas was the first state to pass legislation to organize voluntary soil conservation districts.

President Theodore Roosevelt took an active interest in conserving the state’s timber resources, and he set aside the Ouachita National Forest in 1907 and the Ozark National Forest in 1908. The move to preserve Arkansas’s forests was made just in time. Great inroads had already been made into the state’s vast stands of virgin timber. Moreover, heavy rains had washed away the soil on the treeless land, increasing the danger of flooding. Since the first quarter of the 20th century, however, a great deal of research and effort has been directed to the simultaneous conservation of all the state’s resources, including soil, water, forests, and wildlife, through multipurpose river basin development. The lumber industry has followed conservation practices for many years, and since 1933, its work has been supplemented by the Arkansas forestry commission. Federal government wildlife refuges have also been established.

The eastern border of Arkansas is protected by high levees, or embankments, from the occasional floods of the Mississippi River. When this giant river is in flood, it is likely not only to submerge its own alluvial plain but also to back up the waters of its tributaries, the Saint Francis, the White, and the Arkansas rivers, and inundate their valleys. In 1927 the Mississippi flooded about one-seventh of the total area of Arkansas, in one of the greatest peacetime disasters in United States history. The following year, Congress authorized a river control program. Serious flooding, however, has developed in other river valleys of Arkansas. But in the second half of the 20th century many large dams were built for flood control, as well as other purposes, on the White and Ouachita rivers and their tributaries. Dams on the tributaries of the Arkansas River and the dams and locks of the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System, completed in 1971, have done much to limit the destruction once caused by the Arkansas River.

Arkansas has laws controlling the emission of contaminants into the air, requiring the licensing of operators of waste water treatment plants, setting standards for sewage and sewerage treatment, and requiring companies engaged in strip mining to reclaim stripped lands by filling and planting. The Arkansas Pollution Control and Ecology Department is responsible for monitoring the effects of industry, mining, and agriculture on the environment. In addition, the Arkansas Department of Health monitors water quality levels in the state.

In 2006 Arkansas had 10 hazardous waste sites on a national priority list for cleanup due to their severity or proximity to people.

III

Economic Activities

In the early days of settlement, some farsighted Arkansans recognized that the region possessed valuable resources other than furs and hides. But the opportunities for economic development were limited. In the 1870s, railroads set up land offices to encourage new settlers, for more landholders in the state meant more farm products for rail shipment. Toward the end of the century, lumbering, still a major Arkansas industry, expanded rapidly in the immense, level pinelands of the south and the dense hardwoods of the Delta country. Coal mining, too, developed in the Arkansas River Valley as the railroad network was expanded.

By the 1920s, cotton growing had shifted toward the Mississippi lowlands, livestock raising and dairying were increased, and oil had been discovered near the Texas and Louisiana borders. But, except for a flourishing wood-products industry, there was little manufacturing, and most Arkansans who left the land learned industrial skills outside the state.

In the later half of the 20th century manufacturing became important. The Arkansas Industrial Development Commission was established in 1955 to bring new industries into the state, expand existing ones, and provide technical assistance in locating factories. Within five years Arkansas had achieved extensive industrialization.

Arkansas had a work force of 1,365,000 people in 2006. The largest share of those, 32 percent, worked in the diverse services sector, which includes such occupations as health care workers and automobile mechanics. Another 21 percent were employed in wholesale or retail trade; 17 percent in manufacturing; 16 percent in federal, state, or local government, including those in the military; 4 percent in farming (including agricultural services), forestry, or fishing; 6 percent in transportation or public utilities; 5 percent in construction; 25 percent in finance, insurance, or real estate; and just 0.3 percent in mining. In 2005, 5 percent of the state’s workers were members of a labor union.

A

Agriculture

Farms in Arkansas range from tiny cultivated patches in the narrow valley bottoms and on the steep slopes of the Ozark-Ouachita uplands to prosperous commercial farms in the Arkansas River valley and large commercial farms in the Mississippi bottomlands. In 2005 there were 47,000 farms in Arkansas, 44 percent of which had annual sales of $10,000 or more. Farmland occupied 5.8 million hectares (14.4 million acres), of which 68 percent was cropland. Many of those working on Arkansas farms are farm operators or members of their families, who do not work for wages.

A

1

Crops

Although its agriculture is becoming more and more diversified, Arkansas remains one of the leading cotton-producing states. Cotton was introduced into Arkansas about 1800, and was first grown by homesteaders. Later, when steamboat transportation opened up the fertile bottomlands, landowners arrived from other cotton-growing states to cultivate large plantations with slave labor.

In the 1930s the cultivation of soybeans was encouraged by the Soil Conservation Service as a means of replenishing the fertility of soils impoverished by the growing of cotton. Farmers began to appreciate its advantages as a cash crop well suited to mechanization, and in the 1950s there was a huge increase in soybean acreage. Soybeans have now become Arkansas’s most valuable crop.

Rice was first introduced to the state in 1904. By the mid-1970s, Arkansas ranked as the nation’s leading rice-producing state, a rank it still holds. The state produces two-fifths of all the rice grown in the United States. Other important crops are wheat, sorghum grain, and hay (including lespedeza, alfalfa, clover, and wild hay) and similar plants used for livestock feed. Tomatoes, peaches, apples, grapes, strawberries, pecans, snap beans, sweet potatoes, watermelons, and spinach are also grown. Crops of winter wheat are increasingly grown in the Mississippi Plain.