Native American Bluff Dwellers were the original inhabitants of the area now known as Cotter for centuries before settlers arrived.

When Native Americans were moved westward on the Trail of Tears, approximately 1000 Cherokees crossed just a short distance upriver from the current location of Downtown Cotter.

He said of the area,[4] White River is one of the most beautiful and enchanting streams, and by far the most transparent, which discharge their waters into the Mississippi ... We here behold the assembled tributaries flowing in a smooth, broad.

deep, and majestic current ... skirted at a short distance by mountains of the most imposing grandeur.... [The] extreme limpidity and want of colour ... was early seized upon by the French traders on first visiting this stream, in calling it "La Rivière Blanche" (White River).In 1868, Jonathan Cunningham homesteaded 300 acres on a peninsula of the White River.

Families would travel from Mountain Home and Yellville to visit the area, picnic, fish, and enjoy the nearby spring that was created naturally via the caves under the ground.

[5] Future president, Herbert Hoover, spent the summer of 1892 helping Geologist John C. Branner survey the northern Ozarks.

Powell, Jerry South, and Thomas Combs all ended up having avenues named in their honor.

On July 7, 1904, 36 of the community's leaders petitioned to incorporate the town and on November 23, 1905, the city officially opened.

Seeking to capitalize on the growing trade in the area, the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railway (St. L., I. M. & S.) commonly known as the Iron Mountain, (merged into the Missouri Pacific in 1917) announced plans to open the White River Line which would run through the area and would connect with the main line in Lake's Landing.

In the 1950s advertisements for Cotter boasted that it was "100 per cent white", and the 1960 census recorded no African American residents.

[8] The mercurial White River caused many motorists problems, as the nearest crossing was over 100 miles (160 km) to the north in Branson, Missouri.

[9] Arkansas did not have a central highway body at the time, and was instead a patchwork of "road districts", which made the bridge-building efforts even more difficult.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 2.5 square miles (6.5 km2), all land.

Formal education in Cotter began with Miss Cora Patterson teaching 40 students under a tent on January 4, 1904.

[17] Publications lasting only a year or so include The White River Headlight,[16] The Screech Owl, and the Bull Shoals Gazette.

There is also a rural air field, Valley Airport, located on Denton Ferry Road that serves small planes owned by residents.