Native Americans first inhabited present-day Yell County and the Arkansas River Valley for thousands of years prior to European colonization.

During the Thomas Jefferson and Indian Removal era, many Cherokee were voluntarily relocating from Georgia along the Arkansas River, including in Yell County, between 1775 and 1786.

A large Cherokee reservation across the Arkansas River from Yell County was established in 1815 to encourage further voluntary relocation from Georgia.

The area presently encompassed as Yell County was first settled by European settlers when James Carden built a house in 1819 among Cherokee farms in the Dardanelle Bottoms, at the confluence of the Arkansas and Petit Jean rivers.

In June 1823, a meeting between numerous Cherokee chiefs and acting Territorial Governor Robert Crittenden was held under two large oak trees.

Long believed by many to result in a "Council Oaks Treaty" reestablishing Cherokee title of 3.2 million acres (1.3 million hectares) north of the Arkansas River, Crittenden had no treaty-making authority and the meeting ended with no agreement other than each party sending separate letters to Secretary of War John C.

[4][5][6] Some Cherokee remained on their farms south of the river, the group identifying itself as Black Dutch, intermarrying and assimilating with the area's white settlers.

[7] In 1830, the United States Congress enacted the Indian Removal Act, leading to further, forcible Cherokee settlement from the Southeast into the Arkansas River Valley.

Cherokee, Muskogee (Creek), and Seminole were forcibly removed along the Trail of Tears through Yell County to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma).

First Sergeant William Ellis of the 3rd Wisconsin Cavalry received a Medal of Honor for holding his position despite multiple wounds.

The agency is led by the Yell County Sheriff, an official elected by countywide vote every four years.

Yell County has several historical homes, structures, and monuments dedicated to preserving the history and culture of the area.

As mechanization and society evolved and Arkansas became less of a frontier, a wealthy upper class emerged in Dardanelle that came to wield societal, political, and economic power in the county.

This society remained relatively closed, with separate social events and often summering on Mount Nebo with other wealthy Arkansans visiting to enjoy the cool mountain breezes.

[21] With little of the industrialization that defined the Gilded Age in the Northeast and Midwest, Yell County instead retained an adjusted Old South economic model based on agriculture but adapted to a post-Reconstruction reality.

However, the United States census does list Arkansas population based on townships (sometimes referred to as "county subdivisions" or "minor civil divisions").