3 Wild & Crazy Things Happening in Northwest Arkansas

Rogers just took the number one spot on U.S. News & World Report's list of the best places to live in Arkansas — and landed at 39th in the entire country. Two of the three items below are rankings, which means the interesting part is not the number but what the number is measuring. Here is what actually happened.

1. Rogers Is the Best Place to Live in Arkansas

U.S. News & World Report builds its Best Places to Live rankings from a composite: job market, quality of life, value and affordability, and desirability. On the Arkansas list, Rogers came out first.

I will admit Rogers was not my guess. I would have said Bella Vista, or Fayetteville, or Bentonville. But when you look at what the ranking is weighting, Rogers makes sense — and the reason it makes sense is jobs.

Bella Vista is a wonderful place to live and has very little employment inside the city itself. It functions as a feeder for Bentonville and Rogers. Rogers, by contrast, is where the supplier offices are. Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Kellogg's, General Mills, Hormel, Colgate and a long list of other consumer-goods companies keep offices in the Pinnacle Hills corridor for one reason: they need to be near Walmart. That is a dense, well-paid job base packed into a few square miles.

The national number is the one that surprised me more. Out of every city U.S. News evaluates, Rogers came in at 39. Not top ten. But 39th in the country, against Dallas and Denver and everywhere else, is a real result.

2. Bentonville and Rogers Are Among the Safest Cities in the Country

A SmartAsset study of mid-size cities — those between roughly 65,000 and 250,000 people — put Bentonville at 43rd safest and Rogers at 82nd out of more than 300. Both inside the top 100.

Top ten would be better. But there are a lot of cities in America, and being in the top 100 on a list that size is not nothing.

Coming from the Chicago area, I do not take this lightly. And I will say the honest version rather than the brochure version: as more people have moved to NWA, things do come up that would not have come up ten years ago. That is what growth does everywhere. For all practical purposes it remains a very safe region, and the data backs that up.

One thing I got wrong on camera: I described Bella Vista as "an HOA city, not really a city." That is not accurate. Bella Vista incorporated in 2007 and has a real municipal government — police, fire, streets, code enforcement. What confused me is that the Bella Vista Village Property Owners Association also exists alongside it as a private nonprofit running the lakes, golf courses, pools and the water utility. Two separate organizations, both real.

3. Baum-Walker Stadium Keeps Landing Near the Top

Baum-Walker Stadium at George Cole Field in Fayetteville has a long history of ranking near the top nationally among college baseball venues.

I want to be upfront: I cannot source the number three ranking I mentioned on camera. What I can confirm is that Baseball America ranked it the number one college baseball facility in the country in 1998 and number two in 2003, and that in 2024 it won an NCAA.com fan bracket for favorite college baseball stadium, entering as a four seed. Without a source for the number three, I am not going to repeat it.

What is not in dispute is the experience. This is in a conference where Georgia, Mississippi and the rest of the SEC pour serious money into baseball facilities, and Arkansas holds its own. I have been many times. The stands are my preference, but the grass berm is a legitimate way to watch a game and a cheaper one.

If you are coming down to look at the area — house hunting, visiting, or just curious — buy a ticket to a Razorback game. It will tell you more about what living here feels like than another drive through a subdivision will.