Van Buren sits just across the Arkansas River from Fort Smith, a small town of about 24,000 with a well-preserved historic downtown. The Main Street Historic District is lined with antique shops, collectibles stores, and specialty shops housed in handsome nineteenth-century brick buildings — it is one of the better antique-hunting strips in western Arkansas. The King Opera House at the end of the district is the architectural highlight.
The town is the home station of the Arkansas & Missouri Railroad excursion train, which runs scenic trips through the Boston Mountains to Winslow and back. The Drennen-Scott House Museum preserves an antebellum Greek Revival home connected to the history of Indian Territory administration. Van Buren is also the birthplace of Bob Burns — "The Arkansas Traveler" — whose childhood home on Jefferson Street is historically marked; Burns is the unlikely man who both invented the bazooka instrument and gave a World War II weapon its name.