Since the commercialization of the first soybean cultivar Arksoy in1928 there has been 15 additional cultivars developed and released from the Arkansas soybean breeding program. These cultivars have played an important role in improving soybean yield over time. The present research was undertaken to assess the genetic diversity among the historical cultivars developed in Arkansas and to evaluate breeding progress in genetic improvement for high yield over the past 77 years. Sixteen Arkansas soybean cultivars, five Arkansas breeding lines, and 17 other popular cultivars widely grown in Arkansas but developed elsewhere were evaluated in a replicated test with a randomized complete block design in three environments. Results showed that Arksoy was the lowest yielding Arkansas cultivar with 2071 kg/ha whereas the most recent releases, UA 4805 and Ozark, had the highest yields (3389 and 3342 kg/ha, respectively) with 63% yield improvement over Arksoy. In the comparisons of all 16 Arkansas released cultivars, there was a linear increase in seed yield over years. In addition, modern cultivars are earlier in maturity and shorter in plant height. However, several historical cultivars such as Narow, Ogden, Lloyd, Dorman, Essex, Dare, Hood, and Davis were relatively competitive in yield (2435-2999 kg/ha) at the level of Hutcheson (2804 kg/ha) which was once the most popular cultivar in Arkansas. These cultivars may be valuable as parental materials for providing genetic diversity and yield genes in modern soybean breeding and germplasm enhancement programs. The genetic diversity among the 38 genotypes was assessed by AFLP with a total of 836 bands amplified using 16 primer combinations. Results indicated that 50.8% of the total loci examined are fixed in all 38 genotypes. The clustering analysis showed the close genetic relationships among the cultivars studied. The principal component analysis suggested that the 38 genotypes be classified into three divergent groups.