Northwest Arkansas' 2025 in headlines

🛍️ Walmart town — The world's largest retailer unveiled its 350-acre "multibillion-dollar" Bentonville campus in January.

• Walmart has leased some prime locations to restaurants and other retailers like Anthropologie, Wright's Barbecue and Airship Coffee that are open to the public.

🧑‍🔬 Waltons plan STEM college — Steuart and Tom Walton, grandsons of Walmart founder Sam Walton, announced in May that they plan to develop a private, four-year college focused on science and technology at the site of the old Walmart headquarters in Bentonville.

• The brothers announced in 2022 that they would purchase the property in light of Walmart building a new headquarters, but had not said what they would do with it.

Prison escapee — Grant Hardin, the so-called "Devil in the Ozarks" who was convicted of murder and rape, escaped from prison at Calico Rock on May 25 by creating a makeshift prison guard uniform.

• The state was on high alert for two weeks, until he was finally found about 2 miles away.

👮‍♂️Prison push — Despite opposition from area residents, lawmakers, lack of infrastructure and failing — five times — to get the spending authority for a 3,000-bed prison, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders insisted in June the Franklin County site was still the best place to put a new prison.

🩺 Medical school opens — The Alice L. Walton School of Medicine, a four-year medical school, opened in Bentonville near Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in July with an inaugural class of 48 students. The school founded and funded by Walmart heir Alice Walton seeks to train future doctors using the "whole health" model emphasizing holistic and preventive care.

• The building for Walton's nonprofit focused on health care advocacy, Heartland Whole Health Institute, also opened near the museum this year.

Devil's Den double homicide — The July murders of married couple Clinton and Cristen Brink, who were hiking at Devil's Den State Park with their children when police say they were fatally stabbed with a knife, stunned NWA.

• Police asked for the public's help in the search for a suspect and arrested Andrew James McGann in Springdale four days later. McGann, who had been hired at Springdale Public Schools, has been charged with two counts of capital murder.

🏳️‍⚧️ Transgender health care ban stands — Four years after state lawmakers passed the Save Adolescents From Experimentation (SAFE) Act banning gender-affirming care like puberty blockers for transgender minors, a federal appeals court paved the way in August for it to go into effect. The ban was previously struck down in 2023.

🐗 Razorback unrest — Sam Pittman was fired in September as head coach of the Arkansas Razorbacks football team in the middle of his sixth season after some rough losses. Offensive coordinator and former head coach Bobby Petrino (who was infamously fired in 2012) finished out the season as interim head coach, expressing from the beginning that he wanted the permanent gig back. But Arkansas announced Dec. 1 that Ryan Silverfield of the Memphis Tigers will take the lead.

• Petrino is headed to North Carolina to work for Bill Belichick.

🥕 SNAP reforms and disruptions — The federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) that low-income Americans rely on to afford food was in the news multiple times this year.

• The state's request to ban candy and sugary drinks from the program was approved and goes into effect in summer 2026, a notable change to the decades-old system as a handful of other states push for reforms. Arkansas is also seeking to add rotisserie chicken as an eligible item, although prepared foods are excluded from the program.
• Some of the poorest Arkanans — including nearly 100,000 children and teens — felt the effects of the longest federal government shutdown in American history when SNAP benefits were delayed in November, leaving many to turn to food banks. Recipients received their delayed payments in mid-November when the shutdown ended.

🛒 McMillon moves — After leading Walmart for more than 10 years, Doug McMillon announced in November that he'd be stepping down at the end of January.

• John Furner, president and CEO of Walmart U.S., will slide into the seat.