North Little Rock: The City That Refused to Stay Annexed
Near Little Rock, Arkansas
North Little Rock sits directly across the Arkansas River from Little Rock, close enough to share a skyline, but it has spent most of its history fighting to stay separate. In the late eighteen hundreds, Little Rock annexed the north bank community in eighteen ninety, blocking a petition to incorporate separately. Residents pushed back, incorporating as North Little Rock in nineteen oh one, and by nineteen oh four the courts had let the town reclaim its independence.
Locals sometimes called it Argenta, the name of its oldest neighborhood, and that name still belongs to the lively arts and dining district in its downtown. With over sixty-four thousand residents, North Little Rock is the seventh-largest city in Arkansas. Its Burns Park, along the river, is one of the largest municipal parks in the United States, a counterweight to Little Rock's Capitol that the north bank residents built on their own terms.
