Springfield, AR

Springfield is a census-designated place in Conway County, Arkansas, counted as a place for the first time in the 2020 census, with 223 residents. Its older story starts at a reliable spring beside the Old Cherokee Boundary Line and a route used by the Western Cherokee. The area became a trading post, then a county seat in 1850 after a courthouse and jail were built on a donated 23-acre tract. Springfield lost the county seat to Lewisburg in 1873, but it kept a crossroads role. The Springfield–Des Arc Bridge, built in 1874, is recognized as Arkansas's oldest bridge.

The community also had a Springfield Male and Female College in the old courthouse from 1887 to 1890, and later served as a market center for farms and church-school communities around Conway County. Local schools eventually merged with Morrilton, while the broader Springfield area still reaches across 55 square miles and serves as the north access to Brewer Lake, a 1,200-acre Cypress Creek impoundment. The local scoop is the layered route through the place: spring, Cherokee boundary, county courthouse, historic bridge, school, and lake access all sit in the same rural Conway County story.