Crowley's Ridge State Park

Crowley's Ridge is one of the strangest landforms in the country, a narrow band of hills rising up to two hundred feet above the surrounding Delta and running well over a hundred miles from Missouri down through Arkansas. It is capped by loess, a fine wind-blown soil laid down during the ice ages, which gives the ridge its rolling shape and unusually deep, easily eroded soils.

Standing high and dry above the lowlands, the ridge grows forests and plants more like those of lands farther east than like the Delta around it. Beech, tulip poplar, and other hardwoods thrive here, and the park preserves a fine stretch of that ridge-top forest, an upland island in a sea of farm fields.

The park was built in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Depression-era work program that put young men to labor building parks, trails, and public works across the country. On Crowley's Ridge they raised rustic buildings, stone walls, a spring house, bridges, and dammed a stream to create lakes, all in the sturdy, hand-hewn style that marks CCC parks nationwide.

That craftsmanship endures as the heart of the park's appeal. The stonework and timber structures, built from local materials to blend into the woods, have a warmth and permanence that newer construction rarely matches. To walk the park is to see the labor of the 1930s still standing and still in use, a living monument to that era.

A spring flows within the park, once an important water source and now a shaded, historic feature with a CCC-built spring house. The corps also dammed a stream to form lakes, which today offer fishing, paddling, and a swimming area, giving the park a focus for warm-weather recreation.

Trails wind through the ridge forest, climbing and dipping over the rolling terrain in a way that surprises visitors expecting the flat Delta. The paths pass among the hardwoods and the historic structures, making for pleasant walks in the deep shade, cooler than the open farmland below.

The ridge forest supports songbirds, deer, and small wildlife, with waterfowl and fish drawn to the lakes and spring. Spring fills the woods with blossom and birdsong, and autumn turns the hardwoods to gold and red, a display made all the more striking by the flat, open country surrounding the ridge.

Summer is hot and humid, best spent in the shade or on the water, while spring and fall are ideal for the trails and the history. The park sits on the same ridge that runs south to Jonesboro, so it links easily with that city's parks, museum, and nature center for a fuller journey along one of America's most unusual landforms.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.