Greenwood City

Sebastian County, Arkansas

Home | Whats New | Site Index | Contact

Greenwood City Hall is located at 30 Bell Road, Greenwood, AR 72936.
Phone: 479‑996‑2742.

Neighborhoods

Beginnings [1]

The Town of Greenwood, founded by John Carnall on the banks of the Vasche Grasse stream, is located in the county of Sebastian, which was created from portions of Crawford, Scott, and Polk counties in 1851. The first county seat was located in Greenwood in that year but by 1852 it had been moved to Fort Smith only to be moved back to Greenwood in 1865. William M. Fishback, a delegate in the Secession Convention in 1860 and 1861 was credited with providing Sebastian County with two county seats. Today there is a seat at Fort Smith and one at Greenwood, which is considered the "lower district."

The population of Greenwood grew slowly but by the beginning of the Civil War it had become a business center of relative importance since it was the largest town after Fort Smith in the county. During the war the town was occupied alternately by Confederate and Union troops, both of who would entertain themselves by setting fires. This resulted in only eighteen houses remaining in Greenwood by the end of the war.

Prior to the arrival of the railroad in the 1880s subsistence farmers tended the valleys surrounding the community, but the railroad contributed to economic growth through shipment of fruits, berries and potatoes to northern markets. Surrounding ridges provided quarries with building stone and Greenwood became a thriving commercial center after the turn of the century, due to the presence of exceptional veins of semi-bituminous coal. For over fifty years many mining operations were located in the area and thousands of tons of coal were shipped out. By the 1950s several factories and large cattle ranches were operating near the city.

  1. State of Arkansas, Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, Robert Atlas Harper House, Greenwood, Sebastian County, www.arkansaspreservation.com, accessed August, 2012.

Home | Whats New | Site Index | Contact
Privacy | Disclaimer

Copyright © 1997-2024, The Gombach Group