The Talimena Scenic Drive: Tuskahoma to Mena

The Route at a Glance

Oklahoma Highway 1 is the only highway in the state built for scenic driving. It opened in 1969, following and joining two truck roads the Civilian Conservation Corps had built in the 1930s, and Lucy Baines Johnson Nugent dedicated it on June 7, 1970. Since February 1989 it has been the Talimena Scenic Byway, fifty-four miles through the Ouachita National Forest from Talihina to Mena, Arkansas, topping out near 2,600 feet on Winding Stair and Rich mountains.

This drive begins twenty miles southwest at the Tvshkahomma Capitol Museum, the Choctaw Nation's capitol of 1884, and follows US-271 up the Kiamichi Valley to Talihina. The name, the Oklahoma Historical Society says, joins two Choctaw words meaning iron road, for the Frisco tracks laid through in 1886 and 1887. Between 1915 and 1921 two tuberculosis sanatoriums, one of them for Choctaw and Chickasaw patients, were built on Buffalo Mountain northwest of town.

OK-1 starts at Talimena State Park and the Old Military Road site, where a road was cut in 1832 between Fort Towson and Fort Smith. It climbs onto Winding Stair Mountain past the Robert S. Kerr Memorial Arboretum, crosses US-259 north of Big Cedar, and runs along Rich Mountain into Arkansas, where it becomes AR-88 and passes Queen Wilhelmina State Park before dropping into Mena. Around it lies the Winding Stair Mountain National Recreation and Wilderness Area, 97,000 acres set aside in 1988. The whole drive is about 81 miles, two and a quarter hours without stops, and in the fall the forest turns gold, orange, crimson and purple.

The Drive, Stop by Stop

1 stops along the route, in driving order from Tuskahoma, Oklahoma to Mena, Arkansas.

1. 1

   Tvshkahomma Capitol Museum

   Tuskahoma

   The start, on Council House Road off US-271 at Tuskahoma.

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That's the drive. Take your time, pull over often, and let The Talimena Scenic Drive: Tuskahoma to Mena do what it does best.