Miller County Arkansas Landlord-Tenant Law: The County That Tried to Be Texas, the State Line Post Office, Scott Joplin, and Everything a Landlord Needs to Know
Miller County has one of the more unusual origin stories in American county history. Established in April 1820 as the sixth county under the newly formed Arkansas Territory, it was named for James Miller, the territory’s first governor. The problem was that most of Miller County’s residents didn’t consider themselves Arkansas citizens. They considered themselves Texans — and not just philosophically. For a period in the 1830s, the territory of the future Miller County was simultaneously represented in both the Arkansas state legislature and the Texas Congress. Texas organized Red River County out of the disputed territory in 1837; Arkansas retaliated in 1838 by making it a misdemeanor for any citizen of Miller County to hold an office in the Republic of Texas. The standoff was eventually resolved — not by negotiation but by the United States annexation of Texas in 1845, which settled the approximate boundary between Texas and Arkansas. Miller County was dissolved in 1838 and reconstituted in December 1874 from the portion of Lafayette County lying west and south of the Red River, with Texarkana as the county seat. It is, in a real sense, a county that had to be invented twice.
The city that grew up on the county’s state line has a name that tells you exactly what it is. Texarkana was coined by a railroad surveyor, Colonel Gus Knobel, who wrote the words “TEX-ARK-ANA” on a board and nailed it to a tree at the boundary between Texas, Arkansas, and — as he believed, though he was wrong — Louisiana. The name stuck. Today, Texarkana, Arkansas and Texarkana, Texas are two separate municipalities with two mayors and two city councils, but they share a single central street (State Line Avenue), a unified economic identity, and one genuinely unique federal building: the State Line Post Office and Federal Building at 500 State Line Avenue, the only US post office situated in two states simultaneously. It is constructed of Arkansas limestone on the Arkansas side and Texas pink granite on the Texas side. A photographer’s island on the sidewalk allows visitors to stand with one foot in each state. The building is said to be the most-photographed federal building in the country after the US Supreme Court.
The Arkansas Income Tax Exemption: The Most Important Screening Nuance in Miller County
For landlords, the most practically significant quirk of Miller County is a tax provision with direct implications for tenant income documentation: Arkansas residents whose permanent address is within the corporate limits of Texarkana, Arkansas are exempt from Arkansas state individual income tax. This exemption exists because of the state line’s peculiar position through the city center, and because Texas — the neighboring state for many of Texarkana’s employers — has no state income tax. The practical effect is that tenants living within Texarkana, AR city limits will not have Arkansas state income tax withheld from their pay stubs, even if they are employed in Arkansas. This can appear puzzling to landlords unfamiliar with the exemption. The correct response is not to flag it as suspicious, but to understand it as a normal feature of the Texarkana rental market. Verify income by the standard methods — consecutive pay stubs showing employer name, base income, and pay period — without requiring AR state withholding as a prerequisite.
Scott Joplin, the Louisiana Hayride, and the Sound of American Music
In the late nineteenth century, a young African American boy named Scott Joplin moved with his family to Texarkana. He showed early musical talent and studied with local teachers, absorbing the ragtime rhythms that were percolating through Black musical culture in the post-Reconstruction South. In 1885, at approximately age seventeen, he left Texarkana to pursue a professional music career. The rest is musical history: Joplin became the most celebrated ragtime composer of his era, writing “Maple Leaf Rag,” “The Entertainer,” and dozens of other compositions that defined the genre, won him a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 1976, and found new audiences when several of his pieces were featured in the 1973 film The Sting. A mural in Texarkana commemorates his time in the city.
Half a century after Joplin left, another musical tradition passed through Texarkana. The Arkansas Municipal Auditorium — a National Register of Historic Places property since 2004 — was one of the primary stops on the Louisiana Hayride circuit, the celebrated radio broadcast from Shreveport’s Municipal Auditorium that functioned as the incubator for a generation of country and early rock and roll artists. Elvis Presley, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, and many others performed at Hayride venues, including the Texarkana auditorium. The auditorium’s role in the formation of American popular music is not incidental; the Louisiana Hayride circuit, running through Shreveport, Texarkana, and across the mid-South, was the pipeline through which Southern regional music reached national audiences.
The Fouke Monster: Arkansas’s Most Profitable Cryptid
In May 1971, Bobby Ford reported to the Fouke constable that he had been attacked at his rented home near Fouke by a large, hairy, red-eyed creature approximately seven feet tall. A Texarkana Gazette reporter wrote up the story; the AP and UPI wire services transmitted it nationally; and the term “Fouke Monster” entered the cultural vocabulary. Charles B. Pierce, a Texarkana advertising salesman, convinced a local trucking company to invest $160,000 in a pseudo-documentary film about the creature. The Legend of Boggy Creek premiered in Texarkana in August 1972 and went on to gross an estimated $20–25 million at the box office — one of the most successful independent films of the decade. Its faux-documentary approach to a regional monster legend directly influenced the Blair Witch Project (1999), whose co-director Daniel Myrick cited it as a creative model. The Fouke Monster and its annual Boggy Creek Festival remain a point of local pride and a modest tourism draw for the town of Fouke.
Screening in a Two-State Metro
Miller County’s largest employers span both sides of the state line. Christus St. Michael Health System (approximately 1,800 employees) and Wadley Regional Medical Center provide healthcare employment on both sides of the metro. The Red River Army Depot in Hooks, Texas is a major federal employer for the region. The Texarkana Arkansas School District employs teachers and staff. Major private employers on both sides of the line include railroads, manufacturing, retail, and logistics companies. All of these produce W-2 income that can be documented with consecutive pay stubs regardless of which side of the state line the employer sits on. The only documentation nuance is the AR income tax exemption for Texarkana city-limits residents, addressed above. For federal and military employees, use standard federal pay documentation and be aware of SCRA rights for active-duty military tenants.
Arkansas Landlord-Tenant Law in Miller County
All residential rental relationships on the Arkansas side of Texarkana and throughout Miller County are governed entirely by statewide Arkansas law — A.C.A. §§ 18-16-101 through 18-16-108 and the Arkansas Residential Landlord-Tenant Act of 2007, A.C.A. §§ 18-17-101 et seq. There is no local rent control, no just-cause eviction requirement, and no landlord licensing requirement in Texarkana, AR or Miller County.
For nonpayment of rent, serve a written 3-day notice to vacate after rent is at least 5 days past due. For lease violations other than nonpayment, serve a 14-day notice to cure or quit. Month-to-month tenancies require 30 days’ written notice to terminate; week-to-week require 7 days. Security deposits are capped at two months’ rent for landlords with six or more rental units and must be returned with written itemized deductions within 60 days of lease termination. Arkansas does not impose a default implied warranty of habitability; tenants have no repair-and-deduct remedy. Abandoned property may be disposed of after lease termination. Self-help evictions are prohibited. Note that Texas landlord-tenant law governs properties on the Texas side of Texarkana and is entirely separate from Arkansas law.
All evictions for Arkansas properties in Miller County are filed with Circuit Clerk Penny Kilcrease, 400 Laurel St., Suite 109, Texarkana, AR 71854, (870) 774-4501. Miller County is a wet county.
This guide applies to residential rental properties on the Arkansas side of the Texarkana metro. Properties on the Texas side of the state line are governed by Texas law. This guide is provided for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Arkansas landlord-tenant law is governed by the Arkansas Code Annotated and applies statewide, with no local rent control or just-cause eviction requirements in Miller County. Consult a licensed Arkansas attorney or contact the 8th South Judicial Circuit Court Clerk at (870) 774-4501 for guidance specific to your situation. Last updated: March 2026.
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