Arkansas

Arkansas is in the south central United States. The eastern boundary is mostly defined by the Mississippi River (except that part in the northeastern corner of the state against the St. Francis River and the Missouri bootheel, and in a few places where the Mississippi has deviated from its former surveyed channel). The state rises westward from there to the Ozark and Ouachita Mountains.

Arkansas is home to a number of geological formations: the Ozark Plateau, many limestone caverns and, of course, Hot Springs National Park. Arkansas is also one of the very few places in the United States where you can dig raw diamonds out of the ground.

The first European to come to Arkansas was Hernando de Soto on his famous expedition that began near Tampa Bay, Florida in 1539. Three years after that landing found him searching high and low in Arkansas, looking for gold and for a passage to China. As much as he was a veteran of the Pizarro conquest of Peru and the Incan Empire, it was Arkansas that finally finished him off, near Lake Village on the Mississippi River in 1542.