Fort Smith, Arkansas in the context of Fort Smith metropolitan area

Hang 'Em High is a 1968 American revisionist Western film directed by Ted Post and written by Leonard Freeman and Mel Goldberg. It stars Clint Eastwood as Jed Cooper, an innocent man who survives a lynching; Inger Stevens as a widow who helps him; Ed Begley as the leader of the gang that lynched Cooper; and Pat Hingle as the federal judge who hires him as a Deputy U.S. Marshal. It was the first production of The Malpaso Company, Eastwood's production company.

Hingle portrays a fictional judge who mirrors Judge Isaac C. Parker, labeled the "Hanging Judge" due to the large number of men he sentenced to be executed during his service in the late 1800s as District Judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Arkansas. The film also depicts the dangers of serving as a Deputy U.S. Marshal during that period, as many federal marshals were killed while serving under Parker. The fictional Fort Grant, base for operations for that district judge seat, is also a mirror of the factual Fort Smith, Arkansas, where Judge Parker's court was located.

Interstate 40 (I-40) is a major east–west transcontinental Interstate Highway in the southeastern and southwestern portions of the United States. At a length of 2,556.61 miles (4,114.46 km), it is the third-longest Interstate Highway in the country, after I-90 and I-80. From west to east, it passes through California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina. Its western terminus is at I-15 in Barstow, California, while its eastern terminus is at a concurrency with U.S. Route 117 (US 117) and North Carolina Highway 132 (NC 132) in Wilmington, North Carolina. Major cities served by the Interstate include Flagstaff, Arizona; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Amarillo, Texas; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Fort Smith and Little Rock in Arkansas; Memphis, Nashville, and Knoxville in Tennessee; and Asheville, Winston-Salem, Greensboro, Durham, Raleigh, and Wilmington in North Carolina.

I-40 begins in the Mojave Desert in California, and then proceeds through the Colorado Plateau in Arizona and the southern tip of the Rocky Mountains in New Mexico. It then traverses the Great Plains through the Texas Panhandle and Oklahoma, and passes south of the Ozarks in Arkansas. The freeway crosses the Appalachian Mountains in Tennessee and North Carolina, before terminating in the Atlantic Coastal Plain near the Atlantic Ocean.

Interstate 40 (I-40) is an east–west Interstate Highway that has a 284.69-mile (458.16 km) section in the U.S. state of Arkansas, connecting Oklahoma to Tennessee. The route enters Arkansas from the west just north of the Arkansas River near Dora. It travels eastward across the northern portion of the state, connecting the cities of Fort Smith, Clarksville, Russellville, Morrilton, Conway, North Little Rock, Forrest City, and West Memphis. I-40 continues into Tennessee, heading through Memphis. The highway has major junctions with I-540 at Van Buren (the main highway connecting to Fort Smith), I-49 at Alma (the main highway connecting to Fayetteville and Bentonville), I-30 and I-57 in North Little Rock, and I-55 to Blytheville.

For the majority of its routing through Arkansas, I-40 follows the historic alignment of two separate U.S. Highways. From Oklahoma to Little Rock, I-40 generally follows U.S. Highway 64 through the Ozark Mountains. East of Little Rock, the route generally follows the routing of US 70 until the Tennessee state line.

Isaac Charles Parker (October 15, 1838 – November 17, 1896), also known as "Hanging Judge" Parker, was an American politician and jurist. He served as a United States representative in two separate districts subsequently from Missouri and was appointed as the first United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Arkansas (sitting in Fort Smith, Arkansas on the border), which also had jurisdiction over the adjacent Indian Territory (future Oklahoma, 1907) to the west. He was appointed by 18th President Ulysses S. Grant in 1875 and served in the federal judiciary until his death in 1896.

Parker became known as the "hanging judge" of the American frontier / Old West, because he sentenced numerous convicts to death. In serving 21 years on the federal bench, Judge Parker tried 13,490 cases. In more than 8,500 of these cases, the defendant either pleaded guilty or was convicted at trial. Parker sentenced 160 people to death; 79 were executed. The other 81 either died while incarcerated, were pardoned, or had their sentences commuted.

The Dalton Gang was a group of outlaws in the American Old West during 1890–1892. It was also known as The Dalton Brothers because three of its members were brothers. The gang specialized in bank and train robberies. During an attempted double bank robbery in Coffeyville, Kansas, in 1892, two of the brothers and two other gang members were killed; Emmett Dalton survived, was captured, and later pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, although he later asserted that he never fired a shot during the robbery. He was paroled after serving 14 years in prison.

Brothers Bob, "Grat", and Emmett had first worked as lawmen for the federal court at Fort Smith, Arkansas and then for the Osage Nation. They started stealing horses to make more money, and then fled the area. They decided to form a gang and started robbing trains and banks. While their older brother "Bill" Dalton never joined any heists, he served as their spy and informant.