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University of Arkansas Fayetteville is located in Fayetteville, a city of nearly 60,000 residents. Fayetteville is at the southern tip of a metroplex that runs northward for 25 miles along I-540 through Washington and Benton counties in Northwest Arkansas and ends in Bella Vista, an upscale retirement community near the stateís northern border.
The Northwest Arkansas metroplex, from Fayetteville northward, also includes Springdale (home of Tyson Foods, the world's largest meat producer), Lowell (home of J.B. Hunt Trucking), Rogers and Bentonville (home of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest corporation).
The two Northwest Arkansas counties (Washington and Benton) that contain this metroplex are growing rapidly, due to a booming regional economy. The Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers metropolitan area is ranked by the U.S. Census Bureau as being the sixth fastest-growing metro area in the nation. From 1990 to 2000, the metropolitan area grew 47.5 percent, from 210,908 to 311,121. In 2002, Northwest Arkansas was ranked 23rd among the top 269 metro areas considered as the ìBest Places for Business and Career according to Forbes magazine and the Milken Institute. The rankings were based on job growth, salary growth, plus high-tech growth.
Situated on the Ozark Mountain Plateau, Northwest Arkansas offers friendly people, beautiful scenery, a moderate climate, excellent school districts, and a robust economy in which the unemployment rate runs well below national averages. Fayetteville itself presents the vibrant cultural life that would be expected in any major university town. Since the 1960s, the area has been a haven for writers, artists, poets and musicians.
In 2002, Business Week magazine ranked Fayetteville as one of the dazzling Dozen small cities in the United States, on the basis of low unemployment and the ability to create jobs during the past year. In 2001, Fayetteville was one of only 23 locales and the only Arkansas location to be included in the book The Most Beautiful Villages and Towns of the South (New York: Thames and Hudson). In 2000, The Searchers, a St. Louis-based data research company, ranked Fayetteville as one of the 157 best places to retire in the United States.
The University of Arkansas campus proper comprises 130 buildings on 345 acres. It rests upon a former hilltop farm that overlooks the Ozark Mountains to the south; at the time of the University's founding, the site was described as second to none in the state of Arkansas Old Main, the University's signature building designed in Second Empire architectural style, has come to symbolize higher education in Arkansas. Old Main is one of 11 campus buildings that have been placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The campus also is graced by the unique, much-loved tradition of Senior Walk. Since the University's founding, the names of all 120,567 graduates have been etched into more than five miles of campus sidewalks, their names arranged by year of graduation.
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