2190 UNITED STATES (Arkansas) - SLSF GP15-1 #100 at Hope (Arkansas), on May 1978

The EMD GP15-1 is a 4-axle diesel-electric locomotive built by General Motors Electro-Motive Division between June 1976 and March 1982, generally employed as a yard switcher or light road switcher. This locomotive is powered by a 12-cylinder EMD 645E engine, which generates 1,119 kW. The GP15-1 uses a 50ft 9in (15.47m) frame, has a wheelbase of 29ft 9in (9.07m) and has a length over couplers of 54ft 11in (16.74m). A total of 310 units were built for American railroads.

1388, 1403, 1421 UNITED STATES (Arkansas) - Arkansas map and flag

Posted on 01.01.2015, 05.01.2015, and 25.01.2015
Located in the Southern region of the United States, between Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Tennessee and Mississippi, nicknamed in the past the Land of Opportunity, Arkansas is often stereotyped as a "poor, banjo-picking hillbilly" state, a reputation dating back to early accounts of the territory by frontiersmen in the early 1800s. Its name is of Siouan derivation, denoting the Quapaw Indians. The state's diverse geography ranges from the mountainous regions of the Ozark and the Ouachita Mountains, which make up the  U.S. Interior Highlands, to the densely forested land in the south known as the  Arkansas Timberlands, to the eastern lowlands along the Mississippi River and the Arkansas Delta. The capital and most populous city is Little Rock, the home city of Bill Clinton, the 42nd President of the U.S.

 

Prior the arrival of Europeans, Arkansas was inhabited by indigenous peoples as the Caddo, Osage, and Quapaw. The Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto passed through the region in 1541, but only the Frenchman Henri de Tonti established the first European settlement in the territory, Arkansas Post, in 1681. In the early 18th century the fur trappers used Arkansas Post as a home base and entrepôt, and during the colonial period, it changed hands between  France and Spain following the Seven Years' War. In April 1783, Arkansas saw its only battle of the American Revolutionary War, a brief siege of the post by British Captain James Colbert. Napoleon sold Louisiana to the U.S. in 1803, including all of Arkansas (Louisiana Purchase), and following a controversy over allowing slavery in the territory, the Territory of Arkansas was organized on July 4, 1819.

 

Slavery became a wedge issue, forming a geographic divide that remained for decades. In the 1830s the U.S. government forced the removal of many Native American tribes to Arkansas and Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River. The Congress admitted it in the Union in 1836 as the 25th state. When the Gulf states seceded in early 1861, Arkansas voted to remain in the Union, and didn't seceded until Lincoln demanded Arkansas troops be sent to Fort Sumter to quell the rebellion there. Upon returning to the Union, the state would continue to suffer due to its earlier reliance on slavery and the plantation economy, causing the state to fall behind economically. White rural interests continued to dominate the state's politics until the Civil Rights movement in the mid-20th century.