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Arkansas is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Arkansas shares a border with six states, with its eastern border largely defined by the Mississippi River. Its diverse geography ranges from the mountainous regions of the Ozarks and the Ouachita Mountains, which make up the U.S. Interior Highlands, to the eastern lowlands along the Mississippi River. The capital and most populous city is Little Rock, located in the central portion of the state.
The name Arkansas is a French pronunciation of a Quapaw word meaning "land of downriver people". The pronunciation "arkansaw" was made official by an act of the state legislature in 1881.
The Little Rock-North Little Rock-Pine Bluff Combined Statistical Area had 829,032 people in the 2006 census estimates and is the largest in Arkansas.
In 1912 the battleship Arkansas was to be commissioned, and the Pine Bluff chapter of The Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) promised to present the ship with an Arkansas state flag for the occasion. However, when they wrote to the Secretary of State to learn more about the flag, he replied that Arkansas had no State flag!
The DAR went into action and held a contest in Arkansas for a state flag design. Miss Willie Hocker from Wabbaseka, AR submitted the winning entry (the Confederate star was not part of this original design, but added later by legislature).