Little Rock summary

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Below is the article summary. For the full article, see Little Rock.

Little Rock, City (pop., 2010: 193,524), capital of Arkansas, U.S., located on the Arkansas River. In 1722 Bernard de la Harpe, a French explorer, named the site La Petite Roche for a rock formation on the riverbank. It became the capital of Arkansas in 1821. It was strongly anti-Union at the outbreak of the American Civil War; Federal troops occupied the city in 1863. It grew as the commercial centre of a farming region and as a hub of railway and river transportation. In 1957 federal troops were sent there to prevent state authorities from interfering with desegregation at Central High School. The state’s largest city, it has many institutions of higher learning, including the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (1927).

Arkansas Summary

Arkansas, constituent state of the United States of America. Arkansas ranks 29th among the 50 states in total area, but, except for Louisiana and Hawaii, it is the smallest state west of the Mississippi River. Its neighbours are Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east,

United States Summary

United States, country in North America, a federal republic of 50 states. Besides the 48 conterminous states that occupy the middle latitudes of the continent, the United States includes the state of Alaska, at the northwestern extreme of North America, and the island state of Hawaii, in the