Shinall Mountain is made of Carboniferous rocks, and plant fossils can sometimes be found in the blue-hued black shales comprising the sides of its bluff.

The Deltic Timber Corporation, who develops and manages Chenal Valley, chose the name as a foreign branding strategy.

[3] The peak of Shinall Mountain serves an antenna farm for broadcasters in the Little Rock–Pine Bluff Designated Market Area (DMA), and is dotted by a number of communications towers housing the transmitter facilities of most of the area's television and FM radio stations as well as cellular telephone carriers, emergency response, weather radio and amateur radio services, which are easily identifiable due to the navigational lights adorning the towers that can be seen for miles.

The height of the mountain made it very attractive for broadcasters to maintain transmitter facilities, as the hilly terrain of Central Arkansas makes it difficult for communications signals to transmit at lower elevations without impairment.

Due to that station originally being licensed to Pine Bluff (until 1958) and since-repealed FCC regulations requiring a transmitter to be located within 15 miles (24 km) from a station's city of license, KATV maintained transmitters based in Jefferson County from its 1954 sign-on until 2008, transmitting for most of that timeframe from a 2,000-foot (610 m) tower west-southwest of Redfield (near the present day KASN/KETS tower); the analog transmitter of KETS was also housed on that tower.