Rand McNally Slights Northwest Arkansas

We couldn’t help noticing that the 2001 issue of the Rand McNally Road Atlas had no maps for cities in Northwest Arkansas, one of the fastest growing regions of the United States.

The atlas is considered the Bible of road-trippers nationwide. It’s the one Jack Kerouac had stuffed into his back pocket as he hitchhiked across America back in the 1950s.

The 2001 atlas contained maps of four Arkansas cities: Little Rock, Fort Smith, Pine Bluff and Hot Springs.

Fayetteville, with a population of 54,600, wasn’t listed even though it’s larger than Pine Bluff (52,900) and Hot Springs (37,300), according to the atlas’ own population figures.

We called Rand McNally and were forwarded to several people before a PR person from PAN Communications in Andover, Md., called us back a few days later with an official statement.

The reason, she said after requesting that her name not be revealed, is that the maps were based on a decision made “in the early ’90s on information available at that time and travel destinations at that time.”

“Maybe Fayetteville has become a tourist destination, and they will update the map,” she said.

In other words, a decade ago, more people were trying to get to Pine Bluff than Fayetteville, according to the anonymous folks at Rand McNally. If you’ll recall, Pine Bluff was ranked as the worst city in America to live in right around that time.

We suspect the Rand McNally people are just a little too busy to be very concerned with Arkansas, even though the atlas we were looking at was the official “Wal-Mart edition,” which contains an 11-page directory of all the Wal-Mart stores in the United States. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., of course, is based in the Northwest Arkansas city of Bentonville.

We also noticed that Springdale (40,400) is also larger than Hot Springs (37,300). But the PR woman said Hot Springs is a tourist destination because there’s a national park there.