This month, The Nature Conservancy in Arkansas opened the 459-acre Blue Mountain Natural Area to the public. It’s the westernmost mountain in the Maumelle Pinnacles chain, which includes Pinnacle Mountain and Rattlesnake Ridge, the latter of which The Nature Conservancy also manages. The opening of Blue Mountain means mountain bikers and hikers will have another nearly eight miles of trails in the Little Rock area to explore, but perhaps even more exciting is that it represents the final puzzle piece to connect a series of natural areas that together make up 21,000 acres. Connector trails are coming to tie that stretch of land together, and officials are exploring ways to further extend the connection all the way to River Mountain and Two Rivers parks.
Central Arkansas was at the vanguard of the pedestrian trail movement that’s since spread to seemingly every mid-sized community in Arkansas. The Arkansas River Trail, steadily pieced together over several decades and considered at least near complete (close the loop!) in 2011, set the standard for pedestrian trails throughout the state. But more recently, Little Rock area trail lovers can’t help but feel left behind by Northwest Arkansas and the nearly 38-mile-long Razorback Regional Greenway, and the hundreds of miles of bike trails funded by Walton family dollars. Some of that largesse has found its way to Central Arkansas with the development of the Pinnacle State Park Monument and River Mountain Park mountain bike trails.
There’s reason to be hopeful that within the next decade Central Arkansas’s trail infrastructure will rival Northwest Arkansas’s: Enough money and time has been spent on the planned 60-mile Southwest Trail, a bicycle and pedestrian trail that will connect the Little Rock Central High School Historic Site with Hot Springs National Park, that it seems inevitable. Same for the Tri-Creek Greenway, the planned six-mile-plus linkage of Little Rock’s War Memorial, Kanis, Boyle, Western Hills and Hindman parks.
But in the near term, the Maumelle Pinnacles are where the action is. Central Arkansas Water, which manages Lake Maumelle and much of the surrounding 88,000-acre watershed, has been awarded a $200,000 Transportation Alternatives Program grant from the Arkansas Department of Transportation to develop connector trails. Raven Lawson, watershed manager for Central Arkansas Water, expects work to begin this summer, after official paperwork goes through, on roughly 10 miles of new trails: One would connect Blue Mountain to the north side of Rattlesnake Ridge, and another would connect Blue Mountain to the Bufflehead Bay Trail, a 2.3-mile loop along Lake Maumelle and off Arkansas Highway 10.
Additionally, Lawson has a map with further trails plotted that rim Lake Maumelle, which would connect Pinnacle Mountain and the Ouachita National Recreational Trail to Rattlesnake Ridge, Blue Mountain and Central Arkansas Water’s existing trails. The water utility isn’t paying for trail development on the backs of ratepayers, but Lawson is confident that, with an array of state and private partners working in the area, they’ll find grant money to fund the construction.
Tom Walton, heir to the Walmart fortune, advocate for trail development and a member of the Natural State Advisory Council, which is working to bolster Arkansas’s reputation as an outdoor recreation destination, told a recent gathering of the Rotary Club of Little Rock that he thought Lake Maumelle represented the greatest untapped potential for outdoor recreation in Central Arkansas.
Lawson appreciated the shout out, and generally agreed, but also wanted people to know that there’s already a lot to do in the watershed. The Bufflehead Bay Trail, completed in 2021, may not be a secret to birders — it’s named for a duck that’s small in size but big in head — or anglers. But it still flies under the radar. In mid-May, Lawson led a reporter along the paved first half-mile of the trail and along a bit of dirt single track that follows, pointing out the proliferation of coneflowers and other plants in the understory, thriving thanks to selective thinning of the forest and controlled burns. The fire burns leaf litter, which sends nutrients back into the soil, opening up the seed bank for native plants to thrive. “Those native plants have root systems that are 5-15 feet deep on average,” Lawson said. “And the roots help hold the soil in place, and when we have big rains, all those plants can uptake the nutrients in the water as it goes across the landscape, so it doesn’t end up in the water. The whole story behind our forest management is [that] a healthy forest equals healthy drinking water.”
Farther along Highway 10, look out for Loon Point Park and the 0.7-mile Farkleberry Trail along the lake, another ideal spot for anglers and birders, and the Sleepy Hollow Water Trail, a five-mile flat-water float through the Maumelle River and Bringle Creek.
Back to the east, the parking area for Blue Mountain, with room for about 30 vehicles, sits just off Highway 10. The Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission, using state and federal funds, and The Nature Conservancy jointly purchased the property for $5 million from PotlatchDeltic in 2021.
Unlike Rattlesnake Ridge, the peak of Blue Mountain isn’t the area’s primary destination. Wright’s cliffbrake, a rare western desert fern, is found at the top, and conserving it was one of the reasons The Nature Conservancy and the state bought the property. There’s also a lot of poison ivy up there, so avoid. There are three trails in the Blue Mountain Natural Area, graded for mountain bikers, but open to hikers alike: The three-mile green Luna Moth singletrack loop, a 0.8-mile green downhill trail designed specifically for bikers called Dhu Drop, and the 3.5-mile, multidirectional Tarantula Hawk Trail (or a loop if you ride or walk some of Luna Moth) that connects to the south side of Rattlesnake Ridge. The latter, a blue, is rockier and more technical. It was also still under construction in May, though Samantha Bates, recreation technician with The Nature Conservancy, expected it to be completed by June.
Outside the parking lot for Blue Mountain is a remote-controlled gate that can be closed when it’s raining or the ground is so wet that foot or bike traffic might lead to erosion. The gate will otherwise open and close around dawn and dusk. Like at the popular Rattlesnake Ridge, it’s important that visitors don’t try to park outside the designated lot or explore the trails when the gate is closed.
“We’re trying to fill a slightly different niche,” Jeff Fore, director of conservation at The Nature Conservancy of Arkansas, said. “If you think of everything from a city park, which is a very heavily managed experience, to the national forest and the Flatside Wilderness Area, a very remote and different experience — we’re trying to fit a little in the middle of that, where you’re 30 minutes outside of Little Rock and you can go to one of these natural areas and pretty legitimately feel alone. Controlling the access and the number of folks who can be on the property at one time does create a unique experience where you can go find some peace and solace in nature, but you’re just right outside town.”
