Buffalo National River
National River The First In The United States, Designated By Congress On 1 March 1972 After A Long Fight Against Two Proposed Dams. Administered By The National Park Service; Certified An International Dark Sky Park In 2019. Contains Three Designated Wilderness Areas. · Ponca, Arkansas
The Buffalo was the first river in the United States to be made a national river, protected undammed by Congress in 1972 after a decade-long fight over two proposed dams. It runs a hundred and thirty-five miles east out of the Boston Mountains, through the Ozarks to the White River, under limestone bluffs that are the tallest rock faces between the Rockies and the Appalachians. The upper district around Ponca is the postcard: Big Bluff and the ledge path across it, Steel Creek, Hemmed-In Hollow and its two-hundred-foot waterfall, and the Boxley Valley elk, reintroduced in 1981 and bugling through the fields every autumn. The middle and lower districts are quieter, warmer and hold water all summer when the upper river is too low to float. The whole corridor was certified an International Dark Sky Park in 2019 and there is no entrance fee anywhere on it. What it does not have is phone signal, paved access to most launches, or a dam upstream keeping the water at a convenient level.
Buffalo National River, Highway 43, Newton County, Ponca, Arkansas, United States
Open twenty-four hours a day, year-round. There is no gate, no entrance station and no fee. The Tyler Bend visitor centre and the Pruitt and Buffalo Point contact stations keep daytime hours and cut them back in winter. The upper district is normally floatable from March into early June and after heavy rain; the lower river floats all summer. Private outfitters at Ponca, Kyles Landing, Silver Hill and Buffalo Point run from spring to autumn and shut for the winter.
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