This Is The Friendliest Small Town In Arkansas
Being nicknamed the "Folk Music Capital of the World" has helped cement Mountain View's other unofficial title: the friendliest small town in Arkansas. Visit any time from spring through late fall, and this small Ozark community of just under 3,000 residents rolls out the red carpet for anyone with a musical instrument, inviting them to join in their nightly "pickin' sessions." Strangers carrying fiddles, banjos, and guitars are always greeted with a friendly "howdy," and don't stay strangers for long in Mountain View.
Mountain View's Shake And Howdy
The pickin' tradition that defines Mountain View dates to the 1960s. It was then that songwriting resident Jimmy Driftwood, famous for penning The Battle of New Orleans and Tennessee Stud, helped found the Rackensack Society with a group of local musicians. Gathering weekly in the courtroom of the Stone County Courthouse, the sessions got so popular they spilled outdoors onto the square itself and have continued there ever since.
From mid-April through November, locals and visitors alike still set up lawn chairs around the courthouse and nearby Pickin' Park to listen to bluegrass, gospel, swing, and old-time tunes. Anyone with an instrument can join in, regardless of skill. And if you don't play, you can still join in by clapping along and dancing.
Local businesses around the square also get involved. The Dulcimer Shoppe, where Lynn McSpadden built his first mountain dulcimer in 1962, still handcrafts the instruments by hand. These easy-to-play Appalachian folk instruments usually have three or four strings and are strummed across a long, fretted soundbox laid flat on the player's lap (workshop tours are available). Also on the square, the Arkansas Craft School offers year-round workshops in blacksmithing, weaving, and other traditional skills.
The Ozark Folk Center State Park
Located on the edge of town, the opening of the Ozark Folk Center State Park was the natural evolution of Mountain View's cultural heritage. Opened in 1973, the park, like the town's courthouse pickin' scene, exists thanks to Jimmy Driftwood, who successfully lobbied Congress to secure the federal funding needed to construct a place to preserve Ozark culture.
The Craft Village is the Folk Center's main attraction and features working artisans demonstrating broom making, blacksmithing, pottery, fiber arts, and printing on a 19th-century press. Interactions are encouraged, and purchasing items directly from the folks making them adds to the experience. The park's Heritage Herb Garden is also worth a wander and preserves plants used in traditional Ozark cooking and medicine.
As for music, the 1,000-seat Ozark Highlands Theater has hosted popular touring acts including Old Crow Medicine Show and Del McCoury. It also hosts the Arkansas State Fiddle Championships. The Folk Center also runs the Roots Music Program, a free initiative in which area musicians teach traditional string instruments to local schoolkids.
Community Events And Festivals
The Arkansas Folk Festival has been held every April since 1963. The town's most anticipated community event of the year, it fills the courthouse square with craft vendors, food stalls, and plenty of music to enjoy. The music and most activities are free, but given the event's reputation, book a place to stay as far in advance as possible.
Come back in October for the Bean Fest and Great Championship Outhouse Races. A staple on the social calendar since the 1980s, hundreds of pounds of pinto beans are cooked in large antique iron kettles set up along the west side of courthouse square and served up with cornbread, all for free, and all in pursuit of the title of the state's best beans. Teams of locals then race wheeled-outhouses down Main Street in an attempt to win a much-coveted gold, silver, or bronze toilet seat trophy.
The twice-a-year Mountain View Bluegrass Festival (it's held in mid-March and mid-November) attracts truckloads of additional pickers from across the country. Come September, it's the turn of Mountains, Music & Motorcycles, with riders from across the region to the Ozark foothills for a weekend of rides and live music.
Outdoor Adventures
As great as the music scene is in Mountain View, it's also become a popular base from which to explore several natural attractions. These include the vast Ozark-St. Francis National Forest (it's over 1.2 million acres in size) and Blanchard Springs Caverns, one of only a few federally managed cave systems in the country that are open for guided tours.
Guides will take you along the Dripstone Trail to explore the caves, a half-mile route through cathedral-sized rooms of active flowstone, columns, and soda straws. Caroling in the Caverns in December turns the space into a fun holiday concert venue.
Then there's the White River. One of the most productive trout streams in the United States, it's kept cold year-round due to water released from Bull Shoals Lake upstream. Local guides run float trips for rainbow and brown trout from launches at Sylamore Creek.
Mountain bikers head to the Syllamo Mountain Bike Trail, a 50-mile network designated an International Mountain Bicycling Association Epic Ride. Closer to town, Mirror Lake and the manmade Mirror Waterfall are found at the foot of Blanchard Springs and make for an easy afternoon walk.
Embrace The Warmth
In Mountain View, friendliness takes on many forms. It's the open invitation to join a circle of pickers on the courthouse square. It's the free beans and cornbread, the volunteer musicians teaching kids to play, and generations of local business owners building the instruments that folks like to strum. For travelers wanting to feel like part of the community, there's no friendlier small town in Arkansas than Mountain View.
