Fort Smith: hell on the edge of the West

At the border between Arkansas and ancient Indian territory, Fort Smith was the seat of the court of the feared Judge Isaac Parker, nicknamed the 'hanging judge' by locals.

The downtown, once nicknamed the hell on the edge of the wild West, requires a car to navigate between distant neighborhoods.

The Fort Smith National Historic Site preserves the original courtroom and gallows where Judge Isaac Parker condemned hundreds of Wild West criminals.

A few minutes away, the Fort Smith Museum of History recounts the long history of the city as a military outpost at the border of Indian Territory in the nineteenth century.

Continuing along the Arkansas River, you walk the Riverfront with views of the historic bridges connecting Arkansas and Oklahoma.

Towards evening, the historic downtown neighbourhood comes alive with various restaurants in commercial buildings dating from the nineteenth century.

Judge Isaac Parker, nicknamed the 'Hanging Judge' for the large number of death sentences he handed down, presided over Fort Smith's federal court for over twenty years with jurisdiction over a vast Indian Territory.

Fort Smith, founded way back in 1817 as a military outpost on America's frontier border, remains the second-largest city in all of Arkansas today.