6 Most Laid-Back Small Towns in the Ozarks
The best Ozark towns are the ones that never tried too hard to impress anybody. A good morning here might be elk grazing the Boxley Valley meadows at first light, or a johnboat sliding onto the Current River before the heat sets in. The water does most of the work, with the Buffalo running clear through Newton County and Big Spring rising from the foot of a bluff on the Current. On summer Saturday nights, fiddle players take over a courthouse square downtown. These six towns kept their laid-back pace on purpose, and their character is in what they left alone.
Eureka Springs, Arkansas
Eureka Springs winds through the hills on a maze of curving downtown streets lined with shops, galleries, and cafes, with Basin Spring Park at the center. The Eureka Springs and North Arkansas Railway runs excursion trains through the surrounding Ozarks. Much of the town is built around the 1886 Crescent Hotel, the anchor of a downtown listed in full on the National Register of Historic Places.
Thorncrown Chapel, the glass sanctuary that architect E. Fay Jones set in the woods in 1980, is the area's best-known building, and the Blue Spring Heritage Center keeps gardens and walking trails just west of town. Lake Leatherwood adds biking and hiking on the edge of town.
Mountain View, Arkansas
Mountain View carries the title Folk Music Capital of the World, and it earns it. The Ozark Folk Center State Park keeps traditional crafts and mountain music in daily practice, and musicians gather on the courthouse square through the warmer months. The Arkansas Craft Gallery on the square sells handmade work from area makers, and the Stone County museum traces local history.
Blanchard Springs Caverns runs beneath the hills a short drive north. The White River nearby holds the fishing and paddling, and Mountain View stands among the Ozarks' most scenic small towns.
Jasper, Arkansas
Jasper, the seat of Newton County, holds fewer than 500 residents and sits in some of the most rugged country in Arkansas. It is the main gateway to the Buffalo National River, which Congress protected in 1972 as the country's first national river. Scenic Byway 7 climbs out of town to the overlook locals call the Grand Canyon of Arkansas, a long drop into the Ozark hills.
Elk graze the meadows of nearby Boxley Valley at dawn and dusk, and hikers head for Hawksbill Crag and the short Lost Valley trail, both within a half-hour of the courthouse square. The pace in Jasper is set by the river and the seasons.
Van Buren, Missouri
Van Buren anchors Carter County with around 800 residents and a long frontage on the Current River. The town is the southern gateway to the Ozark National Scenic Riverways, established in 1964 as the first national park area set aside to protect a river system. The Current River was the first stream named a National Scenic River, and it carries canoes, johnboats, and anglers through the warm months.
Four miles south, Big Spring pushes roughly 280 million gallons a day from the base of a limestone bluff, the largest spring in Missouri and one of the largest in the country. Skyline Drive runs the ridge above the valley for the sunset, and Peck Ranch to the west holds Missouri's reintroduced elk herd.
Hollister, Missouri
Hollister, one of Missouri's most memorable small towns, sits across Lake Taneycomo from Branson, and its Downing Street Historic District keeps a stretch of English Tudor storefronts and cobblestone that set it apart from its busier neighbor. Shops and small eateries fill the old buildings.
The College of the Ozarks campus next door at Point Lookout holds the Ralph Foster Museum and the working Edwards Mill, where students still grind grain and weave. Top of the Rock, a short drive south, opens onto the Lost Canyon Cave and Nature Trail and a long view over Table Rock Lake, with a state park marina on the water below. The lakes carry the boating, fishing, and float trips.
West Plains, Missouri
West Plains is the trade center for the southern Missouri Ozarks, and one of Missouri's most inviting towns. The Harlin Museum holds the local history, and the courthouse square keeps antique shops and small restaurants in its older storefronts.
The Mark Twain National Forest opens miles of hiking south of town, and the Eleven Point, a National Scenic River, carries canoes and anglers. Mammoth Spring State Park, a short drive south across the Arkansas line, surrounds one of the largest springs in the Ozarks. Grand Gulf State Park nearby, the collapsed cave system locals call the Little Grand Canyon, drops well below the surrounding hills.
Where The Ozarks Slow Down
What ties these towns together is restraint. Eureka Springs lets its Victorian downtown and its springs carry the day instead of building around them. Mountain View hands its square over to musicians. West Plains and Hollister keep their trade and their history close to the courthouse and the lake. Van Buren leaves the Current River mostly as it found it. None of them chases the kind of crowd that fills the bigger Ozark destinations, and that is the point. The laid-back pace is the attraction, and these towns have decided to keep it.
