Fort Chaffee Maneuver Training Center

Fort Chaffee is in the northwest Arkansas region adjacent to the city of Fort Smith, located one mile southeast of Fort Smith Regional Airport. The Arkansas River flows eastward along the northern border of the post. Interstate 40 is five miles to the north on the opposite side of the river. Fort Chaffee is primarily used as a training facility by regional National Guard and Army Reserve units as well as active military units from other installations. Fort Chaffee currently houses no active units.

Fort Chaffee was first established in 1850 to replace the earlier forts in where Van Buren currently sits, when it was the border town of the Indian Territory of present-day Oklahoma. Fort Chaffee and the towns across the Arkansas River bank served as a stopping point for travelers heading west and the displaced Cherokee and Choctaw Indians whom are uprooted in the Southeastern states in the 1840's.

Fort Chaffee has twice served as a primary center for housing foreign refugees, first, holding Vietnamese following the fall of Vietnam in 1975, and again, in 1980 with Cubans following the Mariel Boatlift. Riots among the Cubans were a key factor in Governor Bill Clinton's loss of the office in 1980. The latest use of Fort Chaffee to house refugees was when Hurricane Katrina struck Louisiana in 2005. Many of the evacuees were sponsored or temporarily housed at Fort Chaffee. Many of the evacuees have since decided to make Fort Smith their new home. This has brought a slight increase to the city's economy.

Fort Chaffee served as the home of the U.S. Army's Joint Readiness Training Center from 1987 to 1993.

There were two movies filmed at Fort Chaffee: A Soldier's Story and Biloxi Blues.

In recent years, Fort Chaffee has forfeited large portions of land to the Fort Chaffee Redevelopment Authority (FCRA), an organization with the purpose of stimulating the local economy.

In 1958, the entertainer Elvis Presley stopped off at Fort Chaffee en route to his basic training at Fort Hood, Texas. It was here that the public information officer John J. Mawn told a news conference that Presley would receive the standard "G.I. haircut" and would resemble a "peeled onion". Mawn, thereafter stationed in Germany, was the technical advisor for Presley's film G.I. Blues.

During the morning hours of January 29, 2008, a mixture of high winds and fire (which local authorities determined later an electrical brush fire) burned approximately 100 acres (0.4 km²) and damaged or destroyed 150 abandoned buildings at Fort Chaffee.