Bookin' It: Fort Smith, AR
Categories: Featured Travel Stories
By: TW Editors 03/01/2008
FORT SMITH, AR
“Fort Smith, Arkansas, was smaller than Saint Joseph, Missouri, but in many respects the towns were similar,” wrote Michael J. Brodhead in Isaac C. Parker:?Federal Justice on the Frontier. “Like Saint Joseph at the time of Parker’s 1859 settling there, Fort Smith was a busy river town and was becoming a railroad and manufacturing center…. Fort Smith was also a border town with its share of disreputable inhabitants and shady businesses. Still, like Saint Joseph, it became a stable community of some importance within the state.”
Let’s face it—Fort Smith’s place in history has little to do with railroading, manufacturing or river transportation. Folks know of Fort Smith because of the work of Isaac C. Parker, the “Hanging Judge” who oversaw the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas from 1875 to 1896. It included some of the roughest areas and toughest characters in the Old West. Some of the top lawmen of the period reported to Fort Smith.
Much of that trial history is preserved at the Fort Smith National Historic Site, as well as Judge Parker’s courtroom and the jail that held so many doomed men over the years. Within a few years, the U.S. Marshals Museum will open there. It’s enough to make visitors hang around, so to speak.
Trip Lit:
Isaac C. Parker: Federal Justice on the Frontier by Michael J. Brodhead
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