The city of Fort Smith is on the eve of its bicentennial. On Christmas day of 1817, after an almost three-month journey by keel boat down the Missouri and Mississippi and up the Arkansas rivers, U.S. Army Major William Bradford and a company of troops landed at a place called Belle Point. Situated on high bluffs where the Poteau River empties into the Arkansas, it was an excellent location for a new Army post.
Major Bradford wasted no time in commencing his work. Within a week he could report that his men were "all comfortably situated--together with a hospital for the sick, a store house ... a provision house ... and a hut for myself." The English botanist Thomas Nuttall visited "the garrison" in May 1819, describing the post as "consisting of two block-houses, and lines of cabins or barracks for the accommodation of 70 men ... [and] is agreeably situated at the junction of the Pottoe on rising ground of about 50 feet elevation [above the river]."
While the military post known as Fort Smith was destined to an unpredictable future of repeated closures and reactivations, the city which grew up around it persevered and, with 88,000 citizens, is today the second largest municipality in Arkansas.
The Belle Point post was intended to serve as a buffer between the Osage Indians and the Cherokees; the latter were forced west by President Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Policy. Discord among the Indians farther west resulted in the garrison at Fort Smith being moved to Forts Gibson and Towson in modern Oklahoma in 1824.
Arriving in 1822, John Rogers was one of the early settlers in the village growing up adjacent to the fort. Rogers would prove crucial to the development of the town. He received a contract to serve as the post sutler, the civilian contractor who sold provisions to the military as well as civilians. Surviving account books show that whisky was the most popular store item, though coffee, sugar, and salt were also in demand.
Perhaps Rogers' most important role was lobbying for the reactivation of the military fort, a role he would perform more than once. Fort Smith was temporarily reactivated several times during the 1830s, in part to provide support for President Andrew Jackson's systematic removal of the Indians from east of the Mississippi River. In 1839 work began on a new fort, located to the east of the old one. When local labor could not be found, the commander brought in a crew of 55 skilled workers from Maine.
No small amount of skill would be needed, for the contract called for erecting "works of defence [to] consist of a stone wall about twelve feet high, and from two to three feet thick enclosing an area of 600 feet by 400 feet, with a block house bastion, two stories high at each angle." Since it was expected that the fort would accommodate at least two companies of mounted Dragoons, stables for horses were required. A large steam engine was purchased, allowing for a sawmill. Local clays were used to make bricks, and a stone quarry was opened nearby. The fort was completed and garrisoned in 1846.
Meantime, John Rogers had been busy. His settlement had grown enough by 1828 to warrant a post office, with Rogers as postmaster--a position he would hold for 25 years. In 1838, with a large new fort in the planning, Rogers platted his town and named it Fort Smith. He laid out a main street, known as Garrison Avenue.
Fort Smith was incorporated in 1842, and the town grew rapidly. The Masonic Order recognized the Belle Point Lodge in 1847, and in 1851 the Joseph Knoble Brewery opened. Later Knoble, a native of Wittenberg, Germany, expanded the brewery to include a beer garden. A church was established in 1844, followed by the publication of the city's first newspaper, the Fort Smith Herald, John F. Wheeler, editor. Wheeler would later print a newspaper for the Cherokees using the alphabet developed by the Cherokee silversmith Sequoyah.
John F. Wheeler was important to Fort Smith not only as an editor and businessman, but especially as a promoter of the city as an ideal departure point for the California gold rush of 1849. Wheeler's goal was to displace Independence, Mo., as the most popular embarkation place. He advertised throughout the Mississippi Valley, touting the fact that trains departing from Fort Smith would have the advantage of a military escort at least to Santa Fe.
By the first of March 1849, Fort Smith was surrounded by camps of emigrants bound for the gold fields. During the month of April 1849, some 400 wagons departed Fort Smith, but every arriving steamboat brought new emigration companies from places as diverse as Pontotoc, Miss., and Philadelphia, Pa.
Not everyone was pleased that Fort Smith had become a departure point for California. U.S. Senator Solon Borland, never known for his foresight, was said to fear that the gold rush would "tend to depopulate western Arkansas" and he opposed using Fort Smith as a departure point. Borland's wrongheaded thinking no doubt played a role in President Zachary Taylor's decision to close the post in 1850. Thus, today the Gateway Arch stands in St. Louis, rather than Fort Smith.
By 1850 the city of Fort Smith was large enough to survive without a military post. The city was a transportation center, with the first commercial steamboat arriving in 1822. Several roads converged in Fort Smith, including the Fort Towson road, today known as Towson Avenue. The Butterfield Overland Mail stagecoach line opened in 1858, putting Fort Smith on the major route to the west coast.
No sooner was the fort decommissioned than President Taylor died unexpectedly. Immediately Wheeler and state political leaders successfully lobbied for reopening the fort, and on March 14, 1851, U.S. Army soldiers marched back into the walls of Fort Smith.
Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist living near Glen Rose in Hot Spring County. Email him at Arktopia.td@gmail.com.
Editorial on 12/24/2017