US 62 Across the Ozarks: Pea Ridge to Berryville
About 36 miles on US-62 from Pea Ridge National Military Park through the Ozarks to Thorncrown Chapel, Eureka Springs and Berryville.
The Route at a Glance
US-62 in this corner of Arkansas began as the Ozark Trail, the area's main road network before US-66, kept up by the Ozark Trails Association under William Hope Harvey, who wanted a road linking Oklahoma to his resort town of Monte Ne. From Gateway to Eureka Springs it also carried the Jefferson Highway. This drive covers 36 miles of it, about an hour without stops, from Pea Ridge National Military Park east to Berryville. Bentonville, Fayetteville & Eureka Springs covers the country.
Pea Ridge National Military Park is at 15930 E. Highway 62 in Garfield. On March 7 and 8, 1862, about 10,250 Union soldiers met about 16,000 Confederates here; the result kept Missouri in the Union, and the 2nd Cherokee Mounted Rifles under Stand Watie fought on the Confederate side. The tavern stands on the old Telegraph Road, where thousands of Cherokee passed on the Trail of Tears in the winter of 1838 and 1839, and the park counts 10,370 on this stretch. Enslaved people went west with the Cherokee as well.
The road climbs into the Ozarks, crosses the White River near Busch, where an older alignment of the highway was listed on the National Register in 2008, and runs with AR 23 into Eureka Springs. About a mile and a half short of town, Thorncrown Chapel opened on July 10, 1980. E. Fay Jones designed it in native stone, pine and glass, 24 feet wide, 60 feet long and 48 feet high.
Eureka Springs was founded on July 4, 1879, when Levi Best Saunders built the first house, and its 230 streets follow the hills. Local writers say Dr. Alvah Jackson ran a Civil War cave hospital here, though the Encyclopedia of Arkansas calls those accounts not firmly documented. A Black community with its own schools and an African Methodist Episcopal church grew up in the tourist boom and disappeared when it faded; local writers report that two Black children in the 1940s were denied entry to the city's schools, and the last known resident died in 1975.
Berryville, about twelve miles east, was founded by Blackburn Henderson Berry and incorporated in 1876. On April 16, 1864, a foraging party from its Union post was caught about twenty miles out by Captain James Cooper's battalion of Stand Watie's brigade. Colonel John Phelps counted six soldiers and six Black teamsters killed, and wrote that they were butchered without mercy. A marker on the town square records it, and no one was held to account.
The Drive, Stop by Stop
3 stops along the route, in driving order from Pea Ridge National Military Park, Garfield, Arkansas to Berryville, Arkansas.
- 1
- 2
- 3
That's the drive. Take your time, pull over often, and let US 62 Across the Ozarks: Pea Ridge to Berryville do what it does best.
← Explore more of Open Road Guide