Golf in El Dorado

El Dorado is the county seat of Union County in the Smackover oil field region of south Arkansas, a community that experienced one of the most dramatic oil booms in American history when petroleum was discovered in 1921, transforming a small town of three thousand into a chaotic boom city of thirty thousand almost overnight. The downtown's handsome brick commercial architecture, built during the boom's prosperity, reflects the aspirations of a community that understood its boom might not last and invested in lasting physical infrastructure during the period of greatest wealth. El Dorado's ongoing efforts to reinvent itself as a regional cultural destination—centered on the Murphy Arts District—reflect the same resilience that has characterized the community through the boom-and-bust cycles of the petroleum economy.