Yell County is a county in the U.S. state of Arkansas. As of the 2020 census, the population was 20,263.^[1] The county has two county seats, Dardanelle and Danville.^[2] Yell County is Arkansas's 42nd county, formed on December 5, 1840, from portions of Scott and Pope counties. It was named after Archibald Yell, who was the state's first member of the United States House of Representatives and the second governor of Arkansas. He died in combat at the Battle of Buena Vista during the Mexican–American War.

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Yell County
County
Yell County Courthouse, Dardanelle
Location within the U.S. state of Arkansas
Arkansas's location within the U.S.
Coordinates: 34°59′54″N 93°27′09″W
Country	United States
State	Arkansas
Founded	December 5, 1840
Named for	Archibald Yell
Seat	Danville (western district); Dardanelle (eastern district)
Largest city	Dardanelle
Government
• County judge	Jeff Gilkey
Area
• Total	949 sq mi (2,460 km2)
• Land	930 sq mi (2,400 km2)
• Water	19 sq mi (50 km2)  2.0%
Population  (2020)
• Total	20,263
• Estimate  (2021)	20,155
• Density	21/sq mi (8.2/km2)
Time zone	UTC−6 (Central)
• Summer (DST)	UTC−5 (CDT)
Congressional district	4th
Website	yellcountyar.gov

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Yell County is part of the Russellville micropolitan statistical Area. Yell County is a dry county as alcohol is prohibited.

Native Americans first inhabited present-day Yell County and the Arkansas River Valley for thousands of years prior to European colonization. They used the open, fertile floodplain of the Arkansas River for hunting grounds and later farming settlements. During the Thomas Jefferson and Indian Removal era, many Cherokee were voluntarily relocating from Georgia along the Arkansas River, including in Yell County, between 1775 and 1786. A large Cherokee reservation across the Arkansas River from Yell County was established in 1815 to encourage further voluntary relocation from Georgia.

The area presently encompassed as Yell County was first settled by European settlers when James Carden built a house in 1819 among Cherokee farms in the Dardanelle Bottoms, at the confluence of the Arkansas and Petit Jean rivers.^[3] Lands south of the Arkansas River had been deeded to the Choctaw in the 1820s when they removed from their homelands east of the Mississippi River, but white settlement and Cherokee relocation continued apace into the 1820s. The peoples competed over the prime river-bottom lands.

In June 1823, a meeting between numerous Cherokee chiefs and acting Territorial Governor Robert Crittenden was held under two large oak trees. Long believed by many to result in a "Council Oaks Treaty" reestablishing Cherokee title of 3.2 million acres (1.3 million hectares) north of the Arkansas River, Crittenden had no treaty-making authority and the meeting ended with no agreement other than each party sending separate letters to Secretary of War John C. Calhoun.^[4][5][6]

Some Cherokee remained on their farms south of the river, the group identifying itself as Black Dutch, intermarrying and assimilating with the area's white settlers.^[7]

In 1830, the United States Congress enacted the Indian Removal Act, leading to further, forcible Cherokee settlement from the Southeast into the Arkansas River Valley. Cherokee, Muskogee (Creek), and Seminole were forcibly removed along the Trail of Tears through Yell County to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma).

Yell County was taken by Union forces in the Civil War in October 1862. A Confederate force of approximately 1,500 tried to retake Dardanelle in January 1865, failing after a four-hour battle. First Sergeant William Ellis of the 3rd Wisconsin Cavalry received a Medal of Honor for holding his position despite multiple wounds.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 949 square miles (2,460 km²), of which 930 square miles (2,400 km²) is land and 19 square miles (49 km²) (2.0%) is water.^[8]

Yell County has several historical homes, structures, and monuments dedicated to preserving the history and culture of the area. The Dardanelle Commercial Historic District preserves the historic commercial hub of Yell County along the Arkansas River. The Mt. Nebo State Park Cabins Historic District preserves ten cabins built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s. The county also has seven homes, three churches, and two bridges listed on the NRHP.

Upon settlement, Yell County's varied topography created a stratified society, splitting settlers between the more fertile and productive farms of the "lowlands" and the subsistence farming of the steep and less-productive mountain soil of the "uplands".^[20] A planter class emerged in the lowlands, and as Dardanelle evolved into a cohesive community, the large landowners moved to town and managed their landholdings from stately homes, similar to the model seen in the Arkansas Delta and the Mississippi Delta.^[20] This left the lowlands inhabited largely by poor sharecroppers and tenant farmers, who largely shared economic fortunes with the small farms in the uplands, shifting the "upland/lowland" split to a "town-country" divide based largely on economics.

As mechanization and society evolved and Arkansas became less of a frontier, a wealthy upper class emerged in Dardanelle that came to wield societal, political, and economic power in the county. This society remained relatively closed, with separate social events and often summering on Mount Nebo with other wealthy Arkansans visiting to enjoy the cool mountain breezes.^[21] With little of the industrialization that defined the Gilded Age in the Northeast and Midwest, Yell County instead retained an adjusted Old South economic model based on agriculture but adapted to a post-Reconstruction reality.^[22]

The county government is a constitutional body granted specific powers by the Constitution of Arkansas and the Arkansas Code. The quorum court is the legislative branch of the county government and controls all spending and revenue collection. Representatives are called justices of the peace and are elected from county districts every even-numbered year. The number of districts in a county vary from nine to fifteen, and district boundaries are drawn by the county election commission. The Yell County Quorum Court has eleven members.^[23] Presiding over quorum court meetings is the county judge, who serves as the chief operating officer of the county. The county judge is elected at-large and does not vote in quorum court business, although capable of vetoing quorum court decisions.^[24][25] Though Yell County has two county seats, the constitutional officers are not duplicated, with duties split between the two courthouses.

• Ray R. Allen (1920–2010), public official in Alexandria, Louisiana, was born in Yell County
• John Daly, professional golfer
• Arthur Hunnicutt, Academy Award-nominated Western Actor
• Kelly Ring, WTVT news anchor
• Johnny Sain, Major League Baseball player
• William L. Spicer, Republican state chairman, 1962–1964, was born in Yell County, but owned a chain of drive-in theaters in Fort Smith
• Cousins Jim Walkup (left-handed pitcher), and Jim Walkup (right-handed pitcher), MLB pitchers
• James Lee Witt, former FEMA Director
• Henry C. Bruton, Rear Admiral in the United States Navy, born in Belleville, Arkansas in 1905
• Jacob Lofland, American actor
• Timothy Balarabe, jazz musician

• List of lakes in Yell County, Arkansas
• National Register of Historic Places listings in Yell County, Arkansas