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Tinsman is an incorporated town in eastern Calhoun County, Arkansas, incorporated on October 11, 1909, in the pine woods of south-central Arkansas.

The town grew up at a railroad junction created during construction by the Choctaw, Oklahoma and Gulf Railroad, which the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad (the Rock Island) purchased in 1904; from the junction a main line ran north to Little Rock, with branches extending service to Camden and to Junction City, and a depot was built at the site.

No record survives explaining the origin of Tinsman's name, but it was likely named for a railroad executive or worker; the U.S. Postal Service opened a post office at the junction in 1906.

By 1910 the booming lumber-era town had five general merchandise stores, a hotel, and two physicians, and it served as a busy shipping center for Calhoun County at the junction of the Rock Island and the Thornton & Alexandria railroads.

A school was built in Tinsman in 1920; the school building was later listed on the National Register of Historic Places, though it has since been demolished.

Tinsman's population peaked at 258 in the 1940 census, up from 248 in 1920, during its years as a railroad and timber town.

The town faded as the hardwoods were harvested without being replaced and automobile traffic on Highway 274 drew travelers toward Hampton and Fordyce; the Rock Island Railroad steadily cut service before going bankrupt and out of business in 1980.

The Tinsman School closed in 1961 — its building continued in use as a community center while children were bused to classes in Hampton — and the town's post office closed in 1975.

As late as 1990 Tinsman still had two churches, a grocery store, and the Smith/Roberts Timber Company, but by the start of the twenty-first century everything except the town's Baptist church had closed.

The 2020 census counted just 50 people in Tinsman, down from 54 in 2010, within a total area of about 0.53 square miles, all of it land.