Arkansas' Great River Road Designated a National Byway

Jim Taylor, travel writer
Arkansas Tourism

From Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, the mythical Great River Road shadows the Mississippi River by traveling many different roadways, all designated by signs depicting a steamboat's pilot wheel. The route represents a longstanding effort to promote tourism along the river by the Mississippi River Parkway Commission, which was created by Congress in 1938 and includes representatives from 10 states.

In recent years, one thrust of that effort has been securing "National Scenic Byway" status from the Federal Highway Administration for the various states' segments of the route. In June, Arkansas became the latest state -- joining five others -- to have that designation bestowed on its portion of the Great River Road (GRR).

In Arkansas, the GRR's many different roads mostly travel the very flat terrain of what is by far the largest alluvial plain in the United States. Extending up the Mississippi from the Gulf to southern Illinois, "the Delta," as the broad plain is commonly known, originally contained the world's fifth largest concentration of wetlands and was, therefore, rich in wildlife and forests.

The Arkansas GRR also travels portions of an extraordinary strip of elevated ground that long puzzled geologists. Up to 10 miles wide and rising steeply as much as 250 feet above the surrounding Delta, Crowley's Ridge extends across eight counties from the Missouri border to the historic Mississippi port town of Helena. The ridge was left standing between the ancestral Mississippi and Ohio rivers as the streams carved away the land on either side. Wind-blown material deposited over subsequent centuries added to the ridge's height, particularly along its southern reaches.

After the Civil War, the Delta was largely cleared of its virgin trees, drained and converted to agriculture, and it is that activity that still dominates the region's landscape. Though cotton was the Delta's first major crop, soybeans and rice both surpassed it in the mid-20th century.

Reminders of the Delta's original landscape and wildlife can be found along the GRR at the Big Lake, Wapanocca and White River National Wildlife Refuges. They harbor bald eagles, abundant waterfowl, migrating shorebirds and songbirds, white-tailed deer, turkeys, bobcats, beavers and river otters. Black bears and alligators are sometimes seen at White River, which contains the nation's largest contiguous block of bottomland hardwood forests under a single ownership.

The handiwork of Mississippi course changes can be seen in the many oxbow lakes along the GRR, including the 20-mile-long Lake Chicot, the largest oxbow in North America and Arkansas' largest natural lake. Lake Chicot State Park offers lake tours.

The Delta's history and cultural heritage are revealed at numerous stops on and near the GRR. At the Parkin Archeological State Park at Parkin and the Hampson Museum State Park at Wilson, for example, visitors can explore the flourish of Native American population and culture that was occurring when Hernando De Soto became the first European to visit Arkansas in 1541.

The Arkansas Post National Memorial, a National Park Service unit near Gillett, tells the story of the first permanent European settlement (1686) in the lower Mississippi River Valley. Predating New Orleans by 14 years, Arkansas Post was the site of an armed encounter of the Revolutionary War, the first capital of the Arkansas Territory and a Civil War battlefield.

The Delta Cultural Center in Helena, a museum of the Department of Arkansas Heritage, provides a comprehensive look at the Delta's past. Its exhibits on the blues and gospel music are possibly the region's finest.

Helena also features a significant collection of antebellum and Victorian homes, and a county museum for which Mark Twain helped raise funds.

Among other museums for GRR travelers to explore are the Stuttgart Agricultural Museum, which reveals how Arkansas came to lead the nation in rice production, the Arkansas State University Museum in Jonesboro, and the St. Francis County Museum in Forrest City.

Four state parks are located atop Crowley's Ridge, with Village Creek State Park closest to the GRR. The Crowley's Ridge Parkway, a 198-mile route between St. Francis in Clay County and Helena, was designated a national scenic byway in 1998. Both byways pass through the 21,0000-acre St. Francis National Forest, which is one of only two national forests with property on the shores of the Mississippi below the river's headwaters.

Two of Arkansas' most prominent festivals, Helena's King Biscuit Blues Festival and Stuttgart's Wings Over the Prairie Festival with its World's Championship Duck Calling Contest, join with smaller events such as Weiner's Arkansas Rice Festival, Marked Tree's Delta Cotton Picking Jubilee and Dermott's Crawfish Festival to provide annual celebrations of the Delta's heritage.

For More Information: The sites and events listed above are but a sample of what GRR-Arkansas has to offer. The Arkansas Delta Byways Regional Tourism Association website at www.deltabyways.com provides comprehensive GRR information, including driving directions. Free brochures on the GRR, the Crowley's Ridge Parkway and the Arkansas Delta Byways tourism region can be ordered via the website, by phone at (870) 910-8080 or by mail at Arkansas Delta Byways, P.O. Box 2050, State University, AR 72467. More information on scenic byways across the nation -- including the GRR and Crowley's Ridge -- is available at www.byways.org.