Ozark, Arkansas, Where the French Said "Here"

The name Ozark sounds like a place name, and it is, but its origin is linguistic rather than geographical. The word comes from the French phrase aux arcs, meaning at the bends, or at the arc, a shorthand that French explorers and traders used when speaking of the Arkansas River corridor. This particular town sits at what cartographers called the most northerly bend in the Arkansas River as the river sweeps through the mountains of western Arkansas before turning south toward Fort Smith.

Ozark was founded in eighteen thirty-six, making it one of the oldest communities in the state. Franklin County, which Ozark anchors as the northern county seat, was carved out of Crawford County in December eighteen thirty-seven and named for Benjamin Franklin. The county was divided so awkwardly by the Arkansas River that two separate county seats were established, Ozark on the north bank and Charleston on the south, a situation that persisted well into the nineteenth century.

Local legend holds that French explorers came up the river as early as eighteen nineteen. One story claims that a group of them shot an arrow into the forest and pledged to found a town wherever it landed. The arrow reportedly came down northeast of what is now the Franklin County courthouse. Whether true or folklore, the story captures something real about this stretch of the river: it was a place where people passing through decided to stay.

Franklin County sits on remarkable geology. It holds early oil shows along with extensive deposits of coal, clay, iron, and shale under its ridges and river bottoms. Agriculture eventually dominated, but the county never quite forgot that something valuable ran underground.

Ozark remains a small river town today, population around three thousand five hundred, perched at the mountain's foot where the highway follows the same water corridor that the French paddled two centuries ago.