By the time of encounter with Europeans, the historical Quapaw were the chief people in the area, having migrated from the Ohio River valley centuries before.

[7] Joseph Bonne, a Métis fur trader and trapper of mixed Quapaw and colonial French ancestry, settled on this bluff in 1819.

[7][8] After the Quapaw signed a treaty with the United States in 1824 relinquishing their title to all the lands which they claimed in Arkansas, many other American settlers began to join Bonne on the bluff.

[19] After the war, freed slaves worked with the American Missionary Association to start schools for the education of blacks, who had been prohibited from learning to read and write by southern laws.

By September 1872, Professor Joseph C. Corbin opened the Branch Normal School of the Arkansas Industrial University, a historically black college.

Construction of railroads improved access to markets, and with increased production of cotton as more plantations were reactivated, the economy began to recover.

As personal fortunes increased from the 1870s onward, community leaders constructed large Victorian-style homes west of Main Street.

Most blacks joined the Republican Party, and several were elected in Pine Bluff to county offices and the state legislature for the first time in history.

But in postwar violence in 1866, an altercation with whites ensued at a refugee camp, and 24 black men, women and children were found hanging from trees in one of the worst mass lynchings in U.S.

The angry mob eventually forced over his custody from an Officer adamantly attempting to deliver the suspect to the jail house, then the crowd watched enthusiastically as he was hung and riddled with bullets.

Bishop Henry McNeal Turner's "Back to Africa" movement attracted numbers of local African-American residents who purchased tickets and/or sought information on emigration.

The United States Army Corps of Engineers built a levee opposite Pine Bluff to try to keep the river flowing by the city.

After many years of regional haggling, because the bond issue involved raised taxes, the county built the Free Bridge, which opened in 1914.

The state's highway construction program in the later 1920s and early 1930s, facilitating trade between Pine Bluff and other communities throughout southeast Arkansas, was critical to Jefferson County, too.

[citation needed] International Paper Co. shortly afterward bought a plant site five miles east of Pine Bluff.

[39] The decade of the 1960s brought heightened activism in the civil rights movement: through boycotts and demonstrations, African Americans demanded an end to segregated public facilities and jobs.

[42] Local leaders worked tirelessly, at times enlisting the support of national figures such as Dick Gregory and Stokely Carmichael, to help bring about change over the period.

Benny Scallion Park was created, named for the alderman who brought a Japanese garden to the Pine Bluff Civic Center.

In addition, a highway and bridge across Lock and Dam #4 were completed, providing another link between farm areas in northeastern Jefferson County and the transportation system radiating from Pine Bluff.

[50] Beginning around 2020, Utah based entrepreneur John Fenley, owner of the music streaming service Murfie, began buying properties in Pine Bluff for redevelopment.

[citation needed] A series of levees and dams surrounds the area to provide for flood control and protect from channel shift.

[52] Pine Bluff is the largest city in a three-county MSA as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau including Jefferson, Cleveland, and Lincoln counties.

[citation needed] Major area employers include Jefferson Regional Medical Center, Simmons First National Corp., Tyson Foods, Evergreen Packaging, the Pine Bluff Arsenal and the Union Pacific Railroad.

It is the large number of paper mills in the area that give Pine Bluff its, at times, distinctive odor, a feature known prominently among Arkansans.

The King Cotton Holiday Classic returned to the Pine Bluff Convention Center on December 27, 2018, as part of Go Forward, headed by Sam Glover.

The Main Library of the Pine Bluff and Jefferson County Library System contains an extensive genealogy collection, including the online obituary index Archived April 2, 2015, at the Wayback Machine of the Pine Bluff Commercial, Arkansas census records, and digital collections, which consists of many county and city records for much of southeast Arkansas.

The city-owned Pine Bluff Transit operates six routes on a 12-hour/day, weekday basis, to various points including government, medical, educational and shopping centers.

In 1972, the City of Pine Bluff and the "Fifty for the Future," a business leader group, donated 80 acres (32 ha) of land to the Arkansas Department of Correction (ADC).

[95] This partnership began in 1942 between the City of Pine Bluff and Arkansas Municipal Water Company, which has been acquired and merged to become Liberty Utilities.

This system includes over 450 miles (720 km) of pipe and 52 lift stations to collect municipal and industrial wastewater and convey it to the Boyd Point Treatment Facility (BPTF).