Garrison Avenue, a twelve block grand thoroughfare, was laid out by City Founder, John Rogers in 1838' and is the main street of Fort Smith, Arkansas. The town of Fort Smith was built around the first military fort on the Great Southwestern Frontier. It was, from the beginning, a merchant town, full of storehouses and suppliers. It sold guns and saddles and "necessaries" to the wagon trains of westering Americans. At the gateway of the Santa Fe Trail, the town saw California Gold Rushes, great plains settlers, cattle drivers, and the Butterfield Overland Stage. Here, in the wake of the Civil War, lingering Old South traditions came together with Northern industrial enterprise on the rough edge of Indian territory and the Great West.

Many shop owners on Garrison Avenue lived on the second floor of their buildings, others lived in Boarding Hotels located often on the second and third floors of Garrison Avenue buildings. Thus, Garrison Avenue is more than just a "main street". It was for many years the major part of the town. The east end of the Avenue was lined with private residences until the early 1900s, and at the head of the Avenue at 13th Street stands one of the oldest churches in the community. Therefore, it is the west end of Garrison Avenue that was from its beginning the "commercial" end; even though the second and third floors were often used for residential purposes. It is west Garrison  Avenue that exhibits most graphically the way the town looked around the turn of the century.

The West Garrison Avenue Historic District comprises five blocks of the twelve-block-long Garrison Avenue. It includes the oldest surviving buildings on the Avenue, which total 34 historically and architecturally significant buildings. The west end of the Avenue still appears remarkably similar to its turn-of-the-century appearance.