London, Arkansas

London sits in the Arkansas River Valley in Pope County, and its naming is one of history's small mysteries. When a post office was established here in eighteen seventy-seven, the first postmaster, John McClure, chose the name London, and no one recorded why. Some believe he simply admired the English capital; others suspected a dry sense of humor from a man who never left the Ozark foothills.

Five years later, when the community was incorporated, the name stuck. The area itself has older roots: the Dwight Mission, a Cherokee educational outpost founded in eighteen twenty by Cephas Washburn, stood just a few miles away, and nearby Scotia served as Pope County's earliest county seat. London today is a small city tucked between the Arkansas River and the Ouachita highlands.