Arkansas county map

A state of two-seat counties

Arkansas’s 75 counties average about 700 square miles. Their most unusual feature is the number of counties with two seats: Arkansas, Carroll, Clay, Craighead, Franklin, Logan, Mississippi, Prairie, Sebastian and Yell each keep two courthouses, a legacy of the 19th century when rivers, swamps and mountains made a single courthouse hard to reach. Both seats are listed in the table.

The oldest counties lie along the Arkansas and Mississippi rivers, where French and then American settlement began. Arkansas County, organised in 1813 under Missouri Territory, predates the territory of Arkansas itself. The Ozark and Ouachita counties of the north and west were organised later, and the last counties were carved out after the Civil War, when the legislature split large counties to reward political allies.

Names come from presidents (Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Van Buren, Polk), Arkansas politicians (Conway, Sevier, Yell, Izard, Fulton, Ashley), the state’s rivers (Arkansas, Ouachita, Saline, White, St. Francis) and the Mississippi. Woodruff is named for the founder of the Arkansas Gazette, the state’s first newspaper.

All 75 counties of Arkansas

Five county facts

• Largest by area: Union County in the south, on the Louisiana line, about 1,055 square miles, with its seat at the oil town of El Dorado.
• Smallest by area: Lafayette County in the south-west corner, about 545 square miles, seat Lewisville.
• Most populous: Pulaski County, seat Little Rock, about 399,000 people in 2020. Benton County (Bentonville, Rogers) and Washington County (Fayetteville, Springdale) in the north-west corner are second and third and are the fastest-growing part of the state.
• Least populous: Calhoun County, seat Hampton, in the pine woods of the south, with about 4,700 people.
• Oldest and newest: Arkansas County (1813) is the oldest. Cleburne County, created in 1883 around Heber Springs, is the newest. Arkansas has no independent cities.

Reading the map

Press Streets and zoom in to see the county lines. The eastern counties along the Mississippi — Mississippi, Crittenden, Phillips, Desha and Chicot — are flat Delta land, and their river-side boundaries follow old channels rather than the present river. The Arkansas River runs diagonally from Fort Smith (Sebastian County) through Little Rock to Desha County. North of it are the Ozark counties, Newton and Searcy being the most rugged; south-west of it are the Ouachita Mountains in Montgomery, Polk and Scott counties. Miller County, in the far south-west corner, shares the city of Texarkana with Texas. The whole state is on Central Time.

Related maps

• Arkansas map — cities, borders and geography.
• Blank Arkansas map and printable Arkansas map.
• Little Rock, the capital and largest city, in Pulaski County.
• Neighbouring county maps: Missouri, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma.
• West South Central states · the South · Central Time Zone.
• Geography: the Ozarks, Arkansas River, Mississippi River.
• All US county maps.