Van Buren

Van Buren sits directly across the Arkansas River from its bigger, louder neighbor Fort Smith, and it seems to have decided long ago that it would rather be quiet and intact than big and reinvented. The six-block historic Main Street here is almost entirely original nineteenth-century brick, gaslamps included, and it survived mostly because the town’s commercial center simply shifted elsewhere decades ago and nobody bothered tearing the old buildings down. Lia called it a museum you’re allowed to shop in, which is about right.

Main Street and the old train depot

We spent a full afternoon working our way up Main Street — an old-fashioned drugstore with a soda counter, antique shops stacked floor to ceiling, a bakery that still uses a coal-fired oven. At the north end sits the 1901 depot, still the boarding point for the Arkansas & Missouri Railroad’s scenic excursion train, which climbs up through the Ozarks toward Winslow on weekends. We didn’t have time to ride it, but we watched it pull out, whistle blowing, past buildings that would have looked exactly the same the day the depot opened.

The Arkansas River and the view to Fort Smith

Below Main Street, a short walk drops you to the Arkansas River, wide and brown and busy with barge traffic even here, well upstream from the Mississippi. Across the water, Fort Smith’s skyline is close enough to feel like an extension of the same town rather than a separate city, and locals move between the two constantly. We ate dinner on a patio overlooking the river as the barges’ running lights came on, which felt like a fittingly unhurried end to an unhurried town.

Getting There

Van Buren shares an airport with Fort Smith — Fort Smith Regional, just across the river — with connections through Dallas. From Little Rock, it’s about a three-hour drive west on I-40. A car is necessary for reaching the depot and river overlooks, though the historic Main Street itself is entirely walkable once you’ve parked.