Dueling Ozarks: Missouri and Arkansas both have plenty of jewels

HARRISON, Ark. — The Ozarks spread like a lush green belt across the nation's middle, spilling over southern Missouri and northern Arkansas.

The ancient hills and rocky soils aren't good for growing much but trees. But those hills drop down into valleys that glisten with rivers so clear you can spot a crawdad on the gravel bottom, creating a playland for floaters. Ozark rivers don't have the churning rapids that draw whitewater enthusiasts but offer a more leisurely ride that shows off the ferns and the wildflowers, the red-eared sliders and the great blue herons.

As a native of the Show-Me State, I was familiar with the jewels of the Missouri Ozarks — the Current and Jacks Fork rivers and the Eleven Point — and had floated the bluff-lined Buffalo River in Arkansas. I asked resident expert Mike Mills to compare the Ozarks of the two states.

"Well, Arkansas is the Ozarks," said Mills, who is more than a bit biased; he is the state's former tourism director and the current owner of Buffalo Outdoor Center at Ponca, which rents canoes, kayaks and ridge-top cabins with views of the Boston Mountains rolling into the horizon.

"The tops of the mountains in Arkansas are more than 1,000 feet higher than Taum Sauk," Missouri's tallest mountain, Mills said. "You do the Missouri rivers and like them, then come do the Buffalo and fall in love."

Now, Mills was stirring up something of a border war. When America sought to protect its sparkling streams, the Current and Jacks Fork were the first to be chosen. The Ozark National Scenic Riverways, a national park that takes in much of the two rivers, was authorized in 1964. Buffalo was named the country's first national river — eight years later.

"You don't get to be America's first national river by being second best," Mills countered.

Doug Ladd of The Nature Conservancy in Missouri picked up the gauntlet. "The Arkansas Ozarks are fine, they're a beautiful place with lots of scenic and natural amenities — for those who don't qualify to get into the Missouri Ozarks," he said.

He pointed to Missouri's fine floating streams, saying that Arkansas had nothing like "the incredible scenery of the St. Francis Mountains landscape with those ancient igneous knobs, elephant rocks and shut-ins geologic formations."

"The Missouri Ozarks, by far, are the best," Ladd said, "although they are both important areas."

To see more of what Arkansas offered, I headed to Harrison, which bills itself as the "gateway to the Ozarks."