The oldest National Forest in the southern United States, protecting the rugged Ouachita Mountains and one of the largest expanses of old-growth forest in the lower 48 states.
Ouachita National Forest
Ouachita National Forest is a vast federally designated protected forest that spans the western portion of Arkansas and a smaller portion of extreme-eastern Oklahoma in the south-central United States. It covers much of the scenic Ouachita Mountain Range, a folded and forested landscape that is distinctly separate from the neighboring Appalachian and Ozark systems. The forest is the oldest National Forest in the southern United States, originally established in 1907 under the name Arkansas National Forest and renamed Ouachita National Forest in 1926.
Beyond its age and size, Ouachita National Forest is significant for its unusually large tracts of old-growth woodland, rising hardwood and oak forests above 2,500 feet, mixed mesophytic forest communities, and a string of congressionally designated wilderness areas. It supports a wide range of recreation, including long-distance hiking along the Ouachita National Recreation Trail, scenic driving along the Talimena Scenic Drive, paddling on rivers such as the Ouachita, Caddo, and Cossatot, and quartz crystal collecting in one of the world's most notable mineral belts.
The forest plays a dual role as a working landscape and a conservation area, with active timber management in some sections and strict wilderness protection in others. Its combination of rugged mountain scenery, ancient forests, multiple wilderness areas, and protected rivers makes it an unusually rich natural region within the South Central United States.
