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Rison is a city in north-central Cleveland County, and it has been the county seat since 1891.

The town was a creation of the Texas and St. Louis Railroad: when the line was routed through the county in 1882, railroad builder Samuel W. Fordyce laid out a station on the land where Rison now stands, bypassing the old county seat of Toledo.

Fordyce named the new station for William Richard Rison, his former partner in an Alabama banking venture who had fought on the opposite side of the Civil War from him.

Rison was incorporated in 1890, with J. T. Renfrow as its first mayor.

When the Toledo courthouse burned in 1889, Rison, Kingsland and Toledo fought over the county seat through two contested elections before the Arkansas Supreme Court awarded it to Rison in 1891.

The Cleveland County Courthouse in Rison, built in 1911 at the corner of Main and Magnolia streets, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1977 and is still in use.

Cleveland County was created in 1873 as Dorsey County, named for U.S. Senator Stephen W. Dorsey; after Dorsey fell from favor, the county was renamed in 1885 for President Grover Cleveland.

The Cleveland County Herald, founded in Rison in 1888, is the longest-running newspaper in the county.

The 2020 census counted 967 residents in Rison, living in 498 households; as recently as 2010 the city had 1,344 residents.

Timber long powered Rison's economy, and in the 1950s the Elrod Lumber Company employed more than 300 people, roughly a third of the town; residents affectionately called their home "Rison on the Cotton Belt."