Bentonville Municipal-Louise M Thaden Field

Founded in 2005 by Alice Walton (only daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton) and opened November 11, 2011 — a 200,000-square-foot museum on 134 acres of Ozark forest in a natural ravine fed by Crystal Spring, in Walton's hometown of Bentonville. Eight interconnected pavilions designed by Moshe Safdie, two of them literal bridges spanning spring-fed ponds. Construction was funded by an $800 million endowment from the Walton Family Foundation; admission is free for life thanks to a $20 million Walmart gift. The permanent collection spans five centuries of American art: Asher B. Durand's "Kindred Spirits" (Hudson River School), Norman Rockwell's "Rosie the Riveter," Georgia O'Keeffe's "Jimson Weed," plus extensive contemporary holdings. On the grounds, Frank Lloyd Wright's 1956 Bachman-Wilson House — moved from New Jersey and reassembled. The museum has measurably transformed Bentonville: from a Walmart corporate town of 35,000 to a Northwest Arkansas cultural destination ringed by new restaurants, the 21c boutique hotel, and the Momentary contemporary-art satellite. The Razorback Greenway connects it five miles south to Fayetteville.

The capital of the Cherokee Nation since 1839 — chosen after the forced removal of the tribe from Georgia and the Carolinas along the Trail of Tears, when an estimated 4,000 Cherokee died on the 1,200-mile march west. Tahlequah was established as the seat of the new Cherokee government in Indian Territory; today it is the headquarters of the Cherokee Nation (the largest federally recognized tribe in the U.S., with 450,000+ enrolled citizens) and of the United Keetoowah Band. The old Cherokee National Capitol (an 1869 brick courthouse on the town square) remains the symbolic center; the modern Cherokee Nation government complex sits south of town. The Cherokee Heritage Center at nearby Park Hill closed in 2022 but is being reconceived; in the meantime, the National Cherokee Museum and several historic sites tell the story. The Cherokee written language — Sequoyah's 86-character syllabary, invented in the 1820s — appears on street signs, in the Cherokee Phoenix newspaper (first Native American newspaper, founded 1828, still publishing), and on the Cherokee Nation flag. Northeastern State University in Tahlequah is the second-oldest college west of the Mississippi (1846).

For a pilot the draw at Branson isn't the theaters, it's the setting: Table Rock Lake and Lake Taneycomo, blue reservoirs folded into steep Ozark hills, near KSGF in southwest Missouri. Under Silver Dollar City, the 1880s-themed park, sits Marvel Cave, one of the deepest in the state; its Cathedral Room entrance is over 200 feet high, one of the largest cave mouths on the continent. The cave drew visitors from 1894, and the theme park grew up around its entrance.

On the Arkansas-Oklahoma border at the confluence of the Arkansas and Poteau Rivers — the western edge of the United States from 1817 until 1907 (Oklahoma statehood), and the gateway to Indian Territory. Two forts stood here in succession (1817 and 1838). After the Civil War, the second fort became the seat of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas under Judge Isaac C. Parker, the "Hanging Judge," who served 1875–1896 and sentenced 160 men to death (79 were actually hanged) — Parker's jurisdiction extended over all of Indian Territory, and his deputy U.S. marshals (including Bass Reeves, the first African-American deputy west of the Mississippi, born into slavery, model for some versions of the Lone Ranger) policed the most dangerous territory in the country. The site preserves the second fort's barracks, the courtroom, the basement jail (the "Hell on the Border"), and a reconstructed 1886 gallows. The Trail of Tears passed through Fort Smith — five tribes (Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, Seminole) were forced through this point during the 1830s removal. The site became a unit of the National Park Service in 1961.