Mulberry River

About

Mulberry River, Arkansas — 1992 Wild and Scenic, Ozark NF. Long before the river had a federal designation, its valley lay within the Osage Nation's Ozark hunting grounds. The rich hardwood forests of the Ozark Highlands supported deer, elk, bear, and turkey, and the Osage used the river corridors as seasonal travel routes through rugged terrain. Their displacement began with the Louisiana Purchase and accelerated through the treaties of 1808 and 1818. Cherokee and Osage habitation across the 1700s–1830s era gave way to extensive Euro-American settlement in the 1840s.

The forest that drew hunters also drew industry. From the 1830s through the 1920s, the Mulberry watershed was logged to feed the regional timber trade and the railroad expansion of the later nineteenth century. Sawmills, logging drives, and downstream lumber operations worked the Mulberry's white oak, hickory, and shortleaf pine, with the heaviest cutting falling across the 1880–1940 span. The exhaustion of the old-growth stands around 1910, the start of state forestry conservation in 1915, and the establishment of state forests in the 1930s brought the era of large-scale logging to a close.

The river drains 460 square miles of the Boston Mountains, the highest and most rugged of the Ozarks, and that geology gives the Mulberry its character — a fast, clear stream running through narrow canyons. Its gauge, USGS 07252000, records an average flow near 680 cubic feet per second, and the optimal paddling window runs from roughly 400 to 3,000 CFS. Rated Class II–III, the river is one of the principal whitewater destinations in the Ozark National Forest and a popular canoeing and kayaking run.

The conservation milestone arrived in 1992. After extensive local efforts, segments of the Mulberry were designated a National Wild and Scenic River, dividing the corridor into 19.4 scenic miles and 36.6 recreational miles. It stands as the principal conservation victory in the river's modern history. Later work built on it: beginning in 2010, a multi-agency partnership launched a watershed restoration initiative addressing gravel mining, riparian buffer restoration, and water quality, and the Mulberry has since shown measurable improvements in clarity and aquatic habitat.

Today the Mulberry endures as one of the Ozarks' defining wild streams. The most popular run drops ten miles from Wolf Pen to Turner Bend at Class II–III, while gentler stretches — Turner Bend to Campbell Cemetery, Redding to Wolf Pen, and the lower valley down to Mulberry — open the river to a range of paddlers. Outfitters including Turner Bend Outfitter and Byrd's Adventure Center supply rentals, camping, and cabins along its banks. Between the geology of the Boston Mountains, the clarity of its current, and its protected status, the river remains much as earlier generations found it.