Arkansas County, Arkansas

Arkansas County, officially the County of Arkansas, is a county located in the U.S. state of Arkansas. As of the 2020 census, the population was 17,149. Located in the Arkansas Delta, the county has two county seats, DeWitt and Stuttgart. The first of the state's 75 present-day counties to be created, Arkansas County was formed from New Madrid County on December 13, 1813, when this area was part of the Missouri Territory. The county was named after the Arkansas River, as was the subsequent Arkansas Territory which was later split off from Missouri Territory and eventually admitted to the union as a state. The riverfront areas in the Arkansas Delta were developed for cotton plantations that used enslaved African Americans. Cotton was the major commodity crop before and after the Civil War. Since then, the county lies within the largest rice-growing region in the United States. Arkansas County is one of seven present-day counties in the United States that have the same name as the state in which they are located.