Baxter County, Arkansas: History and Information

Baxter County, Arkansas

Baxter County History, Geography, Demographics, Cities and Towns, and Education

County Seat: Mountain Home
Year Organized: 1873
Square Miles: 554

Court House:

1 East 7th Street, Courthouse Square Suite 303
County Courthouse
Mountain Home, AR 72653-4409
Phone: (870) 425-2755
Fax:

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Meaning of County Name

Demographics:

History

Created on March 24, 1873, from parts of Fulton, Izard, Marion, and Searcy counties, and was named for Elisha Baxter, then Governor of Arkansas. Mountain Home is the county seat. The landscape of Baxter County is rocky and mountainous. The county courthouse sits between two of the state's largest lakes, Bull Shoals and Norfolk. The third floor rooms of the courthouse were added between 1908 and 1912 to give a third floor because the previous courthouse only had two stories, and in the early nineteen hundreds another thriving town in Baxter County was trying to get to be the county seat, therefore the Arkansas Legislature passed an Act requiring the courthouse to have three stories; thus, a third story was built in a hurry. The courthouse is located fourteen miles from the oldest courthouse in Arkansas, the log house of Major Wolfe, built in 1809 and still standing at the town of Norfolk. Over the past three decades, the population of Baxter County has boomed. Much of the county's growth and more than half its tax dollars can be traced to tourism and retirement. Visitors often return to take up residence. Other resources include a technical campus of Arkansas State University and a fine regional medical center located in Mountain Home. The county has a large water-base recreation such as the White River, North Fork River, Lake Norfork, Bull Shoals Lake and the Buffalo National River.

Neighboring Counties:

North: Ozark County, Mo.

East: Fulton County

Southeast: Izard County; Stone County

Southwest: Searcy County

West: Marion County

Cities and Towns:

Big Flat

Briarcliff

Cotter

Gassville

Lake View

Lakeview

Midway

Mountain Home (County Seat)

Norfork

Salesville

County Resources:

Enter County Resources and Information Here

The history of our nation can be seen as a prolonged struggle to define the relative roles and powers of our governments: federal, state, and local. And the names we've given our counties, our most locally based jurisdictions, reflects the "characteristic features of our country!"

But age, size and colorful names of our counties isn't the only reason to explore counties' role in American history, or the history of county government itself. In fact, the story of county government reflects the larger meanings of American history.

Today's counties are the most flexible, locally responsive and creative governments in the US. They are the most diverse, varying in size, population, geography, and governmental structure. In their politics and policies, they express a 1990's political slogan "Think globally, act locally."

Arkansas State...

Arkansas

Arkansas Counties

Baxter County, Arkansas

Baxter County History, Geography, Demographics, Cities and Towns, and Education

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Demographics:

History

Neighboring Counties:

Cities and Towns:

County Resources:

Baxter County, Arkansas

County Resource Guide

Penn Foster High School