Except for being about Arkansas, "The State of Arkansas" and "The Arkansas Traveler" are entirely different.

Hays (from Arkansas) invented the spoken part of the song.

When I was child on the 1950s I heard a presumably "recent" song version that began,

Once upon a time in Arkansas,
An old man sat at his little cabin door,
He fiddled up a tune that he liked to hear,
A merry old tune and he played it by ear.
A traveler came riding by that way....

That(plus the line "The roof don't leak when it doesn't rain") is all I remember of it.

Does anyone have the complete words and credits?