Ouachita National Recreation Trail (OT)

29 free downloadable topo maps of the Ouachita Trail. See below to purchase on weatherproof paper map.

Skip the trail descriptions and jump to the topo maps

The entire trail is now available for Google Earth. See below.

Background. The Ouachita National Recreation Trail is 223 miles stretching from Talimena State Park in Oklahoma to Pinnacle Mountain State Park on the outskirts of Little Rock, Arkansas. The trail stays in the Ouachita National Forest from Oklahoma to Arkansas Highway 9. From there to the end, the trail passes through lands under varied ownership and is administered by Pinnacle Mountain State Park.

While there are maps of the Ouachita Trail, none exist that have the terrain detail available from the USGS 1:24,000 topographic maps and created from GPS tracks. Though I have been intending to hike the trail and produce the same quality maps as the Ozark Highland Trail series, Buffalo River Trail series and the numerous other hike on this website, I have not gotten much past the first 50 miles in Oklahoma. Meanwhile, there have been several intrepid hikers who have tracked all or some of the trail and posted those tracks on the Internet. In addition, Google Earth has high-enough resolution imagery to be able to trace the trail in many sections. and correct some of the GPS error. The tracks of the trail are a composite of that data. See the bottom of the webpage for credits.

The Maps. The 29 topos are a little further down the page. They begin at Talimena State Park, Oklaahoma and end at Pinnacle Mountain in Arkansas. The maps are free downloads that are formatted to print at scale (1:24,000) on 11 x 17 paper. Click on the image to get to the full size map and right click to download. It is free! Thay are also available printed in color on weather proof, Rite in the Rain, 11 x 17 paper. If you are interested, send me an email (see bottom of page for price and details).

The base maps are a composite of USGS 7.5 minute topos. The OT is shown in blue. Mileage markers where the data was available are provided. The text to the left of the maps show the approximate mileage of the trail and the Friends of the Ouachita Trail (FoOT) trail sections. The maps have been enhanced and updated using aerial photos and satellite imagery.

GPS File: Right click this link and Save Link As to download the GPS tracks in a gpx format. Save it to your computer and use your GPS software to load it to your GPS. There are over 1,000 track points so if it exceeds your saved track capacity, you will need to break up into more digestible bites.

Google Earth Track: Unfortunately Google depreciated the GE API so you can't look at the OT on GE from this website anymore. Instead. right click this link and Save Link As to download the track in the Google Earth kml format. Open the kml file in Google Earth and trace the route in interactive 3D.

Free Detailed Trail Description Available On Line. John (JD) Smith of Frisco, Texas has created a two volume trail description of the west half of the trail. Volume 1 goes from Tamimena State Park (Map 1) to Upper Kiamichi Trailhead at the Oklahoma-Arkansas state line (Map 7). Volume 2 describes the trail from Upper Kiamich to Big Brushy Creek Recreation Area (Map 13).

Improving the maps. While these maps are far better than anything else available, there is always room for improvement. If you have tracks of any section of the trail that you want to share, email me at cew5151@gmail.com. I am missing some of the mile marker locations, shelter locations and spur trail tracks, the campsite site locations of the designated campsites on the east side of Lake Maumelle and there are many section that could use better data. Also, some of the intersecting trails in Arkansas are rough estimates.