How likely is it you can find in one trip all things Walmart, a stunning art museum and world-class mountain biking? Pretty likely if you visit Bentonville, in the northwest corner of Arkansas.
With a population of 67,000 and growing, Bentonville is definitely the town Walmart built. Its world headquarters expand into new digs this year, company trucks fill streets and trainees pack hotels. Walmart money spawned the Crystal Bridges Museum of Modern Art, and other arts venues followed. Meanwhile, mountain bikers capitalized on the rolling terrain to land a silver-level designation from the International Mountain Biking Association.
Southern Living Magazine named Bentonville one of the South’s “Best Cities on the Rise” for 2024. One reason might be that “it feels like a small town while you are here but has big-city amenities,” says Alison Nation, chief marketing officer for VisitBentonville.
The sleepy Ozarks town’s transformation into a travel target began in 1950 when Sam Walton moved to Bentonville and opened “Walton’s 5-10” store on the central square. He established Walmart in 1962, the story of which is explained in a newly renovated museum, due to open in March.
Nation says the new version replaces a dated museum on the square and a temporary exhibit at Walmart’s Heritage Lab. “The reimagined space will be in the same location but has been updated to tell the story of Walmart with 21st century technology,” she says.
Visitors will find interactive displays, artifacts from the Walton family and videos explaining how the Waltons grew their business to become a global enterprise. The museum is free.
Also free is the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, which too is undergoing a major expansion. The museum, founded by Sam’s daughter, Alice Walton, in 2011 to make American art accessible to all, seeks to unite art, nature and architecture in 120 acres of woods not far from Walmart’s headquarters.
Architect Moshie Safdie designed the museum to flow around two ponds. Its galleries span American art from the colonial era to modern times and feature such major artists as Gilbert Stuart, Winslow Homer, Georgia O’Keeffe, Andrew Calder, Norman Rockwell and Andy Warhol.
An interesting experience in the contemporary wing is Yayoi Kusama’s “Infinity Mirrored Room – My Heart is Dancing into the Universe.” Mirrors and paper lanterns with dots that change colors fill a small room, which visitors walk through. The effect makes it seem like the dots go on forever, but also they can be a bit dizzying.
Crystal Bridges hosts temporary exhibits, a restaurant, a museum store and art studios. It pays all expenses for school groups to visit, according to Nation.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s reconstructed Usonian house, designed in 1954 and moved from New Jersey, is among the outside exhibits. Trails of varied lengths and difficulties provide views of sculptures, native plants, rock bluffs, water features and the museum’s buildings. The longest one, a 1.1-mile loop, features hundreds of spring-blooming dogwoods.
Outdoor highlights include an illuminated “Buckyball” with LED tubes forming geodesic spheres based on inventor Buckminster Fuller’s design, another Fuller design of a fiberglass “Fly’s Eye Dome” housing prototype and “Skyspace: The Way of Color” by James Turrell, which provides a changing view of the sky.
Nation says the museum’s expansion, scheduled to be finished by 2026, will increase gallery space to allow more collected art to be shown, add more hands-on experiences and expand outdoor event space.
Another Bentonville art venue is the Momentary, opened in 2020 as a satellite to Crystal Bridges. The building and grounds offer exhibits, concerts, festivals, meeting spaces and the Tower Bar for socializing.
Other museums include the Museum of Native American History, the Peel Museum and Botanical Garden, the Scott Family Amazeum, full of activities for children, and the Meteor Guitar Gallery and Museum.
When you’ve had enough of touring museums, you can join the thousands of bicyclists who flock to Bentonville. The area offers more than 70 miles of bike trails in the city, connected to a network of 400 miles in the region, according to Nation, and those aren’t just for mountain bikers. Visitors are increasingly interested in trying electric bicycles on the city’s greenway protected trails, she says.
The city’s popularity among more rugged cyclists led to the international mountain biking group’s recognition and the city proclaiming itself the “mountain biking capital of the world.”
City marketing materials call the Coler Mountain Bike Preserve “a mountain biker’s paradise,” complete with more than 17 miles of trails for every skill level, camping sites for tents and vans, a building for social gatherings and a snack bar. The preserve is a five-minute ride from the downtown square and connects to miles of trails throughout the area.
Several cycling events occur annually, including the Bentonville Bike Fest, scheduled for May 22-25 this year. From May 23 to 27, Crystal Bridges installs floral designs in its art galleries for “Art in Bloom.” The annual Bentonville Film Festival is on tap for June 16-25.
And don’t forget the renovated Walmart Museum opening this spring.
For more information on Bentonville’s events and attractions, go to www.visitbentonville.com.
Mary Bohlen spends part of her retirement from the faculty at the University of Illinois Springfield exploring and writing about interesting places to visit in Illinois and nearby states.
This article appears in Spring 2025 March 2025.
