10 Nicest Small Towns In Arkansas
Arkansas keeps its friendliest corners in towns most road maps barely mark. Bartenders at the Ohio Club in Hot Springs have served the same room for more than a century. Wilson's founders rebuilt every storefront in Tudor brick after one family honeymoon in England. Fiddle players fill the Mountain View courthouse lawn on ordinary summer evenings. These ten towns show a welcome that lives in the small daily details.
Eureka Springs
The 1886 Crescent Hotel bills itself as America's most haunted hotel, and its ghost tours sell out on autumn weekends. Eureka Springs grew up in 1879 around mineral springs people believed could cure them, and the entire downtown now sits on the National Register of Historic Places. Steep, winding streets climb the valley walls past well-kept Victorian storefronts in the Ozark Mountains. Visitors walk the botanical gardens at Blue Spring Heritage Center to see turquoise pools and native plantings. Kayakers and anglers head a few minutes out of town to Lake Leatherwood City Park, built around an 85-acre spring-fed lake.
Siloam Springs
Siloam Springs sits on a tableland in Northwest Arkansas right along the Oklahoma border, and its pioneer-era downtown has stayed largely intact. Sager Creek runs through the middle of Siloam Springs City Park, where a historic West University Street Bridge and a Queen Anne gazebo draw families on warm afternoons. The walkable downtown fills its old brick blocks with independent boutiques and long-running eateries. Locals send newcomers to Barnett's Dairyette for an old-fashioned sweet treat.
Bella Vista
Mountain bikers cross the country to ride the Back 40 and Blowing Springs networks, and walkers share the same paths. Bella Vista occupies the northernmost tier of the Ozarks against the Missouri border, its forested ridges threaded with singletrack and laced with seven golf courses. Visitors stop at the Mildred B. Cooper Memorial Chapel to see its steel-and-glass Gothic arches rise among the trees. The Tanyard Creek Nature Trail leads a short walk downhill to a low cascading waterfall.
Hot Springs
Forty-seven thermal springs shaped the entire layout of Hot Springs, a resort town folded into a valley of the Ouachita Mountains. The heart of it runs along the Grand Promenade and Bathhouse Row, a lineup of Gilded Age buildings a few blocks long. At the Spanish Colonial Revival Quapaw Baths, visitors soak in mineral pools under a stained-glass skylight. The Renaissance Revival Fordyce Bathhouse keeps its early-1900s hydrotherapy rooms open for tours. A block away, the Ohio Club stands as Arkansas's oldest operating bar and a onetime Al Capone haunt, and the twin-towered Arlington Resort Hotel overlooks a strip of boutiques, galleries, and diners backed by the trails of Hot Springs National Park.
Heber Springs
Fly anglers work the Little Red River right where it runs past Heber Springs, chasing the trophy rainbow trout the state stocks there. The town spreads along the shore of Greers Ferry Lake, a favorite of people who want a slow lakeside pace. Swimmers claim spots at Sandy Beach, and the marina rents pontoon boats for a day exploring the rugged shoreline. Hikers climb the Sugar Loaf Mountain Nature Trail, an island route with wooden stairs and a 360-degree view of the water below.
Mountain View
Musicians gather on the courthouse square most evenings in Mountain View, the town that calls itself the Folk Music Capital of the World. Blacksmiths still work the forge at the nearby Ozark Folk Center State Park, where the crafts of the region stay in daily practice. Guided tours lead visitors through Blanchard Springs Caverns, a living cave system of growing stalactites and stalagmites. Above ground, the Blanchard Springs recreation area makes an easy picnic spot beside its waterfall, and P.J.'s Rainbow Cafe II serves down-home Southern cooking in town.
Van Buren
Six blocks of restored late-1800s brick storefronts line the Main Street of Van Buren, a stretch so intact that Hollywood has used it as a film set. The town sits on the banks of the Arkansas River in the western part of the state. Audiences catch a play or a concert at the restored 1891 King Opera House downtown. The Arkansas & Missouri Railroad runs an excursion train straight from the town depot on a vintage ride through the Ozarks. A stroll along the Van Buren Municipal Park walking trail rounds out an afternoon.
Ozark
The Franklin County Courthouse rises over Ozark's town square, ringed by well-kept brick storefronts full of local shops and diners. The town rests on a bend of the Arkansas River in the western Ozark foothills. Walkers cross the historic Ozark Bridge for a wide view of the water or settle in at the riverfront park docks. As a gateway to the Pig Trail Scenic Byway, Ozark gives travelers a starting point for the hardwood forests and rolling hills nearby.
Magnolia
Six large outdoor murals cover the buildings around Magnolia's courthouse square with scenes of the farming and cultural history of Columbia County. The blond-brick Columbia County Courthouse stands at the center of the square in this small town in the rolling hills of southwest Arkansas. Diners eat Southern classics on Court Square at Lefty's on the Square, a speakeasy-styled spot in a restored 1920s brick building. A few doors down, the Magnolia Bake Shop has turned out fresh pastries since 1928 as the oldest continuously operating bakery in the state.
Wilson
A whole English-looking village of Tudor brick sits in the flat cotton fields of the Arkansas Delta at Wilson. The town began as a company town in 1886, and after the founder's son honeymooned in England in 1925, every building went up or got refaced in matching Tudor style. Diners order the waffles at the Wilson Cafe for farm-to-table Southern fare, and the Wilson Grange sells artisanal local goods. The Hampson Archeological Museum State Park holds artifacts from a nearby Native American village that stood here between the 1400s and 1600s.
Where Arkansas Feels Most Like Home
The welcome in these towns turns up in specifics rather than slogans. It is the bartender at a bar that has never closed, the volunteers who keep a folk tradition alive on the square, and the baker working the same recipes a fourth generation later. Each town rewards the traveler who slows down long enough to talk to the people who live there.
