The small town of Bentonville, Arkansas, has been the headquarters of Walmart for 50 years. The history of Walmart, an American discount department store chain, began in 1950 when businessman Sam Walton purchased a store from Luther E. Harrison in Bentonville, Arkansas, and opened Walton's 5 & 10. The Walmart chain proper was founded in 1962 with a single store in Rogers, expanding outside Arkansas by 1968 and throughout the rest of the Southern United States by the 1980s, ultimately operating a store in every state of the United States, plus its first stores in Canada, by 1995.

Walmart is the world's largest company by revenue, with about $570 billion in annual earnings, and the world's largest private employer with 2.2 million employees, according to Fortune Global's 500 list published in May 2022.