Little Rock, the capital of Arkansas

From Arkansas Post to the little rock

When Congress created the Arkansas Territory in 1819, its government sat at Arkansas Post, an old French trading post near where the Arkansas River meets the Mississippi. It was on the edge of the territory, and legislators soon wanted a more central location. In February 1820 a bill was introduced to move the seat of government to Cadron, a settlement up the Arkansas River. During the debate it was amended to name Little Rock instead, and in October 1820 Governor James Miller signed the law.

Little Rock took its name from a rock formation on the south bank of the Arkansas River, a small outcrop known to French travelers as la petite roche, which marked the point where the flat Delta gives way to higher ground. It sat close to the geographic center of the state, where the Ozark foothills, the Delta and the southwestern plains meet. After a fight over competing land claims to the townsite, the government moved there in the fall of 1821. When Arkansas became a state in 1836, Little Rock stayed the capital.

The capital in wartime

The Civil War split Arkansas’s government. In May 1862, with Union troops advancing, the Confederate state government left Little Rock for Hot Springs, staying until mid-July. In September 1863 Union forces captured Little Rock, and the Confederate government moved to Washington, a small town in southwest Arkansas, where it remained until the war ended in 1865. Meanwhile a Unionist state government sat in Little Rock. Until the war ended, Arkansas had two capitals and two rival governments.

The Old State House

Arkansas’s first state capitol was a white Greek Revival building on the riverbank, begun in the 1830s. It housed the government through statehood, secession and Reconstruction, and it served until 1911. Today it is the Old State House Museum, and it is the oldest standing state capitol building west of the Mississippi River.

A Capitol built by convicts

By the 1890s the state had outgrown the old building. An 1899 law authorized a new capitol on the site of the old state penitentiary west of downtown, and it made 200 convicts available as laborers. Work began that year, and the cornerstone was laid on November 27, 1900.

Then the project stalled. Delays, a bribery scandal and disputes over the quality of the work dragged on for years. The original architect, George R. Mann, was replaced in 1909 by Cass Gilbert, the New York architect who designed the Minnesota State Capitol and later the US Supreme Court building. The legislature first met in the new building in January 1911, and it was declared essentially complete on January 1, 1915.

The finished Capitol is a neoclassical building 440 feet long, with walls of Arkansas limestone and a dome of Indiana limestone that rises 213 feet to the top of its gilded lantern.

Little Rock today

Little Rock had about 206,000 residents in 2025, the largest city in Arkansas and roughly twice the size of Fayetteville, the second largest. The Capitol is open to visitors, and the Secretary of State’s office offers tours; see its visitor page for details.