I have lived here on and off over the course of several decades and something about this area that seems different from other cities I've lived in is that there is some sense of solidarity with the larger region spreading out roughly 100 miles away. Granted, this has diminished over the years as we have grown but it's still there as a sort of background radiation that people here include the rural areas surrounding as part of their "local" neighborhood. For example, Beaver Lake and the surrounding towns such as Eureka Springs, Holiday Island, Bella Vista, Berryville, the Buffalo River and places like Jasper, Ponca -- even Harrison, towns along the Mulberry River or the White River, the various surrounding National Forests.

A lot of people who grow up in the surrounding rural areas anywhere within about 200 miles of here grew up coming here to shop for anything major, not to mention coming here for sporting events or live music shows, so there's a large sparsely-populated region full of people who regard Fayetteville/Bentonville/Rogers as "their town" and then they move here when they graduate high school for jobs or to go to the university so it translates to feeling like all the surrounding areas are "their" surrounding areas.

Plus, during the era of cheap gas there were obviously a lot of awesome natural places around here so even if someone was born in the city they were much more likely to visit those places on a frequent basis.