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Ouachita Mountains
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The Ouachita Mountains are the southernmost subdivision of the Interior Highlands. It is a lens-shaped area having a width of 60 miles and a length of 225 miles extending from southeastern Okalahoma to the west central portion of Arkansas. This mountainous and geologically complex region is surrounded on the east and south by the coastal plain, and on the west by the dry, slightly elevated central lowlands. On the north, the low Arkansas River Valley separates the Ouachita Mountains from the mountainous Ozark region. The relief of the region is 2,381 feet with elevations ranging from 300 feet at Fourch-LeFave River to 2,681 feet at Rich Mountain. It is predominately made up of sandstone, limestone, and conglomerate along with metamorphic rocks such as shale and chert.
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The Ouachita Mountains in southwestern Arkansas and southeastern Oklahoma are the most rugged part of the Caddo Homeland. Modest in size, as mountains go, the Ouachitas are ancient features formed of rocks laid down eons ago that have been folded, faulted, and eroded for millions of years. The tallest are 800 meters (2600 feet) high and the greatest topographic relief is no more than 500 meters (1625 feet). The exposed rock formations consist mainly of sandstone, shale, chert, and novaculite. The exposures of softer rocks, sandstone and shale,have been rounded and pounded by the elements. In contrast, novaculite, the famous Arkanas whetstone, is highly resistant to weathering and forms sharp, steep-sided ridges.
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Ouachita Mountains has something for everyone-warm mineral waters, gorgeous mountains, the excitement of diamonds, botanical garden, and diamond lakes. One of the state's most popular tourist destination and home of a natural park, and top-flight thoroughbred racetrack.
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The Ouachita Mountains are made up of complexly folded and faulted Paleozoic age sedimentary rocks that were originally deposited in mostly deep marine environments. The continental collision during the late Paleozoic that pushed up this region produced a structural fabric that trends more or less east-west. The folding was intricate at all scale levels and several local sequences, both complete and partial, are overturned. Compressional faulting is commonly expressed in the sequence throughout the area. The Ouachita province, in a general sense, can be considered an anticlinorum with Late Cambrian and Ordovician deposits being exposed in the center and Mississippian and Pennsylvanian sedimentary units exposed around the margins. The area is cut off to the east by the Gulf Coastal Plain and Mississippi Embayment.
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The Ouachita Mountains are still poorly known archeologically. Only a few of the thousands of recorded sites with apparent Caddo components have been carefully studied. Caddo sites are found along major rivers in larger intermontane valleys, as well as in narrow stream valleys, in hollows, and in the rolling uplands. Flat-topped mounds and conical mound groups were built along both major and minor streams, and there are small domestic settlements in all settings. The largest mound site in the northern Ouachitas is in the Fourche La Fave River valley, and others existed along the Poteau, the Petit Jean, the Ouachita, the Caddo, the Saline, and the Little Missouri Rivers. Most sites seem to date to the Middle and Late Caddo periods, but Early Caddo sites exist as well, showing that the Caddo tradition was present by A.D. 1100-1200.
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Rich in history, the Ouachita Mountains were first explored in 1584 by Desoto's Spaniards. The 1600s brought French explorers trading pelts with the Indians. Settlers from Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama came in the 1800s looking for farmland. The railroads opened up the area for the timber industry during the turn of the 20th century. Numerous mineral springs ... brought many visitors during this time.
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Ouachita Mountains