Phillips County, Arkansas

Phill P hillips County is located in the eastern part of the state of Arkansas, where the St. Francis River empties into the Mis- sissippi River, in what is known as the Arkansas Delta. In addition to ancient Indian cultures who inhabited some of the region’s higher land, the area witnessed several fa- mous European explorers who made forays into the wilderness: the Spaniard, Hernando de Soto, entered just south of the current city of Helena in 1541, and the Frenchmen, Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet, led an expedition to find the mouth of the Mississippi River in 1673. The county was named after Sylvanus Phil- lips, the area's first-known white settler and representative to the first Territorial Legisla- ture of the Arkansas Territory, and Helena, the county seat, was named after his daughter who died in 1831, at the age of fifteen. Estab- lished in1820, the county is the second oldest in Arkansas. Like most Delta counties, Phillips County, which is situated on prime agricultural