Americans familiar with the Red River think of it as the stream that emerges from two forks in the Texas Panhandle then flows east as it forms the border between Texas and Oklahoma. But the river also forms part of the border between Texas and Arkansas before taking a southern turn at Fulton in Hempstead County. From there, it flows into Louisiana.

According to the Central Arkansas Library System's Encyclopedia of Arkansas: "Although only about 180 miles of the river touches upon or passes through Arkansas, it has had a major impact on the people of southwest Arkansas from prehistoric times to the present. Important prehistoric Caddo artifacts have been unearthed in the Red River valley, particularly the Crenshaw and Bowman sites in Arkansas and the Mounds Plantation site in Louisiana.

"The Caddo established salt works along tributaries of the Red River in Arkansas. Caddoan mound-building survived in the Red River valley, though with stylistic differences, even as it disappeared within other river valleys during the late Mississippian Period. There's evidence of a dense population of people along the river from the Great Bend near Fulton south to what's now Shreveport."

Luis de Moscoso, leader of Hernando de Soto's expedition, crossed the Red River in 1542 after de Soto's death. In the late 1600s, the French established trading posts along the river. Members of the Caddo tribe continued to live along the river near what's now Texarkana until 1790 when they moved downstream into Louisiana.

Red River and Little River tributaries in Arkansas start in the Ouachita Mountains, but the Red is very much a lowland stream by the time it reaches Arkansas. There are vast row-crop operations in the river bottoms of southwest Arkansas that resemble what one would see in the Delta. Natural lakes and swampy areas near Hope are home to some of the state's most famous duck hunting clubs, including Grassy Lake and Yellow Creek.

The Little River begins as a mountain stream in the Ouachita Mountains of southeastern Oklahoma but is also a lowland river by the time it empties into the Red River near Fulton. During the 1800s and early 1900s, steamboats could make it up the Little as far as Millwood Landing. Farmers raised cotton in its........

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