Bartlesville Public Library

Arkansas is a public domain land state whose land once belonged to the federal government. The federal government gave 8,600,000 acres, or roughly 1/4th of the total land in Arkansas, to the State of Arkansas to sell at reduced prices as swamp and overflowed lands which can be found in nearly all of 75 Arkansas counties.

Until now, the only record of these swamp land sales have been in chronological and geographical ledgers in the State Land Commissioners office at the Capitol Building in Little Rock. Desmond Walls Allen has recently published books of the Arkansas Swamp Land Sales from as early as 1855 to 2001. Indexes of these sales can be viewed at: www.arkansasresearch.com/dessland.html by clicking on the time period and volume desired and then searching in alphabetical order by name. Some sales are for thousands of acres; others for only an acre or two.

Allen's published indexes list the patentees' names, the patent date, patent and application numbers, land description (section, range, and township), number of acres, citation to the land office ledger and notes about assignees, partners, attorneys, heirs, etc. The web address only allows access to names of the patentees in the volume, but might be a clue to Arkansas land records previously difficult to locate.