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Batesville, city, seat (1821) of Independence county, north-central Arkansas, U.S., about 90 miles (145 km) northeast of Little Rock. It lies in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains on the White River. The land on which the city is built once belonged to the Osage Indians, who ceded the territory to the United States in an 1808 treaty. Named for James W. Bates, a judge and delegate to the U.S. Congress from the Territory of Arkansas, Batesville was founded (1812) by John Reed, who built a trading post at the mouth of Poke (now Polk) Bayou, where a fork of the Southwest Trail crossed the river. Ferry service began in 1818, and in 1831 the settlement became a steamboat shipping point for farm products.
Poultry processing, industrial chemicals, and lime and black marble quarries form the modern economic base, and it serves as a retail trading centre for the region. Batesville is the home of Lyon College (formerly Arkansas College, 1872; Presbyterian). The White River Dam and Locks (1900) are nearby. The Arkansas Scottish Festival (formerly the Ozark Scottish Festival) has been held annually each spring since 1980. Inc. town, 1841; city, 1846. Pop. (2000) 9,445; (2010) 10,248.
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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, Louisiana to…
Little Rock, city, capital of Arkansas, U.S. It is the seat of Pulaski county, on the Arkansas River in the foothills of the Ouachita Mountains in the central part of the state. In 1722 Bernard de la Harpe, a French explorer, saw on the bank of the Arkansas River two…
Ozark Mountains, heavily forested group of highlands in the south-central United States, extending southwestward from St. Louis, Mo., to the Arkansas River. The mountains occupy an area of about 50,000 square miles (130,000 square km), of which 33,000 square miles (85,500 square km) are in Missouri,…
White River, river rising in the Boston Mountains, in northwestern Arkansas, U.S., and flowing northeast into southern Missouri, where it bends southeast and reenters Arkansas, continuing in a southerly direction to join the Arkansas River near its confluence with the Mississippi River, above Arkansas City. The river’s descent in the…
Osage, North American Indian tribe of the Dhegiha branch of the Siouan linguistic stock. The name Osage is an English rendering of the French phonetic version of the name the French understood to be that of the entire tribe. It was thereafter…