[4] In the early 1900s, the Jonesboro, Lake City and Eastern Railroad (later part of the St. Louis-San Francisco Railway system) extended a rail line to Manila.

[4] This train station now serves as a museum, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 3.8 square miles (9.8 km2), all land.

[1] Ecologically, Manila is located within the St. Francis Lowlands ecoregion within the larger Mississippi Alluvial Plain.

The St. Francis Lowlands are a flat region mostly covered with row crop agriculture today, though also containing sand blows and sunken lands remaining from the 1811–12 New Madrid earthquakes.

[6] The Big Lake National Wildlife Refuge, which preserves some of the bottomland hardwood forest typical of this ecoregion prior to development for row agriculture lies just east of Manila.

The Manila Municipal Airport (IATA: MXA, ICAO: KMXA, FAA LID: MXA) is a public-use airport located two nautical miles (4 km) northeast of the central business district of Manila, in Mississippi County, Arkansas, United States.

The climate in this area is characterized by hot, humid summers and generally mild to cool winters.