Buffalo River & the Ozark Mountains
Lost Valley and Tyler Bend on the Buffalo National River, Boxley Valley elk, the Rush zinc ghost town, Blanchard Springs Caverns and the Ozark Folk Center.
The Osage hunted the Buffalo River country, and from 1817 to 1828 it was part of the Cherokee treaty lands, until the Cherokee were removed to Indian Territory. Shawnee and Delaware villages stood where the White and North Fork rivers meet, and the Osage Nation still counts Blanchard Springs Caverns a sacred site. Some families in Boxley Valley trace their ancestry to the Cherokee who lived there.
Settlers followed after 1828. Jacob Wolf's log courthouse at Norfork, finished in 1829, is the oldest public structure in Arkansas, and Boxley Valley's farms date from the 1830s. Calico Rock grew up around a railroad in 1903, and Rush boomed on zinc until prices fell in 1919, then became a ghost town. The Buffalo itself was spared dams and became the first national river in 1972, reached on foot at Lost Valley and Tyler Bend. Whitaker Point's trail crosses the Upper Buffalo Wilderness, where no one has lived since 1948.
Mountain View's Ozark Folk Center, which opened in 1973, keeps Ozark crafts and mountain music going, Blanchard Springs Caverns is a living limestone cave, and Bull Shoals-White River State Park sits below a dam on a trout river. Elk, gone from Arkansas by the 1840s, were brought back to Boxley Valley in 1981 and have thrived there since.
What to See in Buffalo River & the Ozark Mountains
10 places across the region, grouped by what they are.
Geology & Rock Formations
Natural Areas
Hikes & Trails
Historic Sites
Towns & Gateways
Buffalo River & the Ozark Mountains rewards the unhurried. Pick a base, fan out, and let the country between the headline stops surprise you.
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