Home to the only C-130 training base for the U.S. Department of Defense, Jacksonville is an important part of the nation’s military force, but the city of 30,000 also possesses a family-friendly atmosphere that attracts many people.

Live
Jacksonville has some good housing buys starting around $75,000, and large custom homes are available for between $250,000 and $450,000. New construction on the city’s west side includes contemporary dwellings apart from Jacksonville’s more established neighborhoods like Penn Pointe, Base Meadows and Graham Settlement. Choosing a smaller neighborhood here often means more acreage and house for the price. Distinguished areas include Stonewall and Foxwood, where residents enjoy an 18-hole golf course and country club that features a pool, tennis courts, and a volleyball sandpit.

Work
There is a lot more than military operations happening in Jacksonville. As the third-largest city in the Little Rock-North Little Rock Metropolitan Statistical Area, Jacksonville residents enjoy a vibrant business community that provides services to the area around the base, which has the distinction of being the largest employer in the state with more than 7,000 active duty military personnel and more than 1,000 civilian employees.
The health care and education industries are two more of the city’s largest employers, and manufacturing ranks high as well. Graphics Packaging International, a company that designs packaging so that consumers form strong connections with products, employs 300 here.

Play
Jacksonville boasts two community pools and 11 parks. A variety of athletic and aerobic classes attract athletes to the city’s 56,000-square-foot community center, whose crown-jewel is an aquatics area that features a heated, six-lane pool. Other amenities include basketball and volleyball courts, an aerobics classroom, a walking track, racquetball courts and personal training services. Dupree Park, the site of Jacksonville’s annual Wing Ding Festival, is home to a playground, walking trails, ball fields and a 10-acre lake with a fishing pier. If these recreation options aren’t enough, Jacksonville’s very own water park, Splash Zone is nearby.

Experience
More than 11,000 residents are military personnel, civilians and their families who live and work on the 6,128-acre base. Members of the 19th Airlift Wing are often called upon to assist as the supply mechanism for military destinations worldwide. In 2005, the base was inundated with incoming flights from around the world bringing supplies for distribution to evacuees of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. And because the base draws servicemen and women from all over the nation and from different backgrounds, Jacksonville has become a melting pot of sorts.

History Lesson

Jacksonville’s military history dates back to long before the Little Rock Air Force Base opened its hangar doors – all the way back to Aug. 27, 1863 and the Civil War, in fact. Within the city lies the site where Confederate soldiers once fought to prevent the Union advance on Little Rock in the Battle of Reed’s Bridge.

The battlefield site, located on Arkansas Highway 161 S., is listed on the National Historic Register. Recently restored to look as it would have nearly 150 years ago, it’s now considered the most well preserved Civil War site in Arkansas. And residents now enjoy an annual, authentic reenactment featuring booming cannons, cracks of gunfire and soldiers charging, to commemorate the battlefield brawl.

Another military marker, the Jacksonville Museum of Military History, is located in the downtown district on the site of the former Ordnance Plant headquarters building. A Veteran’s Monument was built in front as a reminder of local servicemen who gave their lives for our freedom.