North Little Rock, AR

Fare-free replica streetcars cross the Arkansas River between North Little Rock's Argenta district and downtown Little Rock. The 3.4-mile METRO Streetcar line stops on Main Street, at Simmons Bank Arena, in Little Rock's River Market, and near several museums and civic destinations. That present-day link overlays a complicated municipal history. Argenta was platted on the north bank in 1866, annexed by Little Rock in 1890, and later joined with a separately incorporated North Little Rock after residents voted to merge. The Arkansas Supreme Court upheld that union in 1904; the city used the Argenta name from 1906 until restoring North Little Rock in 1917. Its population was 64,591 in the 2020 census and an estimated 65,120 in July 2025. The riverfront is also the spine of an extensive recreation system. North Little Rock maintains 7.5 miles of the Arkansas River Trail through six city parks, forming part of a loop across the Big Dam and Clinton Presidential Park bridges.

ATTRDclemens1971 / CC BY 4.0

Burns Park covers more than 1,600 acres and combines paved and natural-surface trails with soccer, baseball, softball, tennis, pickleball, golf, disc golf, archery, camping, a dog park, and fishing access. A March 2023 tornado damaged much of the park, but the city's current status page says the majority has reopened; Funland now includes an accessible play area and splash pad. The public-library system operates Laman Library, an Argenta branch in the former post office on Main Street, and ROVER, a mobile branch that rotates among neighborhood stops. Downtown, the Arkansas Inland Maritime Museum conducts tours of the submarine USS Razorback and the tug USS Hoga, a surviving vessel from the Pearl Harbor attack.