Withstanding the siege

Oct. 30 – Fort Smith, AR

Fort Smith is a plucky little city located on a bend in the Arkansas River. It was founded in 1817 as a military outpost on the border of the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). That is to say, its original function was to keep exiled Indians from taking back any of their land. Just this evening, somebody told me I could walk across the bridge into Oklahoma, but don't get caught there.

There's a main drag, Garrison Street, lined with old brick building fronts. Literally. At least two of the façades I saw were nothing more than that: mere faces of buildings held up artificially while something else was being built behind them. And of the intact buildings, few were still being used for their original purposes. The historic downtown district is compact, and the blocks immediately beyond give an appearance that alternates between demilitarized zone and Mexico (the neighborhood buildings of Fort Smith look more authentically Mexican than any I saw in El Paso).

Yet somehow, the city's heritage is not lost with the re-use of old structures or, for that matter, the blocks of new large-scale development elsewhere downtown. And at the same time, it's not retained solely because of organized historic preservation, although this is also taking place. For some reason, history permeates the town of its own accord.

There's a difference between a place that has rekindled or reconstructed its past, and one that, despite decades of decline, never got around to dismantling its history in the first place. Fort Smith is the latter type. Its burnt-out appearance notwithstanding, the city has abided, with no apparent break in its historical continuum. While today there is (arguably) no need for Arkansas to defend its border with Oklahoma, Fort Smith is clearly the descendant of its foundling self, a town that, accounting for nearly two hundred years of aging, looks very much as it would have when new. At least from the front.

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