Fort Smith National Historic Site

Western justice -- the kind delivered with a short rope and a long drop -- will be a frequent topic for discussion this month at Fort Smith National Historic Site, which preserves the site where more than a few hangings were carried out in the late 1800s.

A special event at Fort Smith National Historic Site on April 10 will offer the chance to interact with historical characters portraying U.S. Deputy Marshals and Chickasaw Light Horsemen. Tours of the jails, the gallows and Judge Parker's courtroom plus a photo op with a reproduction 1890 jail wagon will be followed by an outdoor screening of the movie True Grit.

Finicky bears, addled boaters, a cannon that was, a cannonball that wasn’t. In 2009, these and other outside-the-box stories reminded us that you just never know what you’re going to run into – or what might run into you -- in America’s national parks.

On the morning of April 21, 2009, a local homeowner arrived at the visitor center at Fort Smith National Historic Site in Arkansas with the best of intentions but the worst of plans—he was carrying an old cannonball he'd dug up in his garden.