Alma is a city in Crawford County, in far western Arkansas, United States.

It is located within the Arkansas River Valley at the edge of the Ozark Mountains; the city is the sixth largest in the Fort Smith metropolitan area.

In his book Washington Goes to War (1996), David Brinkley described Alma's participation in the World War II effort: In the town of Alma, Arkansas (population 776), one-fourth of the girls in the 1944 high school graduating class signed up to leave for Washington, and several of their teachers cast aside their low-paying jobs and went with them, all of them climbing aboard a Pullman car for their first train ride, looking for more money and excitement than they had any reasonable expectation of finding in Alma.

[5] Many people migrated from small towns to the capital seeking jobs as the government and associated businesses expanded to run the war effort.

While most of the city lies on flat land, immediately to the north is scenic hill country.

Alma is surrounded by several rural towns, including Rudy to the north, Dyer and Mulberry to the east, and Kibler to the southwest.

Council members serve two-year terms, and elections for all seats are held concurrently.

Jerry Martin serves as mayor until his term expires in 2022, when he will be replaced by Mayor-elect Jim Fincher.

[11] The town has had various statues of the cartoon character Popeye, because of his connection to canned spinach; the most recent one was erected in 2007.

[12] The annual Spinach Festival is hosted at the City Park and Community Center on the third weekend in April.

A package of spinach is dropped from an Alma Fire Department ladder truck onto a board with entrant's names, with the winner receiving a cash prize.

This group treats and distributes potable water from Lake Alma to the residents and commercial users of the city while also owning and operating a wastewater collection system.

The plant has a design capacity of 1.75 million US gallons (6,600,000 L) per day, and discharges treated effluent to the Arkansas River in accordance with the city's NPDES permit administrated by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality.