9 Offbeat Arkansas Towns To Visit In 2025
Looking for something a little off the beaten path for your next Arkansas road trip in 2025? It’s easy to get lost in the natural beauty of Arkansas, but it’s those quirky hidden gems that make it truly special. Whether you want to explore the Peppersauce Ghost Town in Calico Rock or investigate the unexplained light phenomenon in Gurdon, these cities are full of surprises. Only in Arkansas can you spectate the World Championship Running of the Tubs in Hot Springs! When you need to satisfy your curiosity, these communities will not disappoint.
Mountain View
If you dream of listening to live folk music in the shade of the Ozark Mountains, Mountain View is the place to be! Tucked away in Northern Arkansas, it’s an idyllic neighborhood of courthouse step jam sessions, fresh country air, and folksy general stores, like the OK Trading Post. One of the best places to catch live folk or bluegrass music isn’t in a theater or even an outdoor amphitheater, but the local courthouse!
While there are music festivals held throughout the year, there’s always a jam session happening outside the Stone County Courthouse. If you can’t get enough folksy music at the courthouse, the Ozark Folk Center is another great spot in Mountain View worth checking out. Not only is it a great place to enjoy live music, but it also offers old-timey demonstrations at Craft Village that teach visitors about Mountain View's rich heritage.
Gurdon
Off Route 30 (Southwest of Little Rock) is Gurdon, a small community with a big mystery. It’s home to a mysterious light that looks like it is floating in the trees in a nondescript area near some railroad tracks. The light sparked so much intrigue that it was even recognized in an old episode of Unsolved Mysteries! Some think it’s the ghostly lantern of an old railroad worker who was hit by a train, while others think it's a piezoelectric effect. Is it real or a local legend? The best way to find out is to check it out for yourself!
As you unravel the mysteries surrounding Gurdon, there’s plenty to see in town to keep you busy. The Gurdon Grill is a great place to sit around the table to talk local folklore over a plate of tantalizing catfish or classic Southern chicken-fried steak. One of the most exciting times to visit Gurdon is in December during the annual Gurdon Trail of Holiday Lights. The whole area comes alive with colorful light displays, and there’s even a holiday parade in mid-December.
Eureka Springs
If you’re on the lookout for weird and wonderful towns, look no further than Eureka Springs. It’s a small city with a lot of quirks, and it’s hard to fit in every strange attraction in just one weekend. To start off the tour, there’s Quigley's Castle, which is considered one of the most bizarre dwellings in the Ozarks. Its intricate gardens host over 400 varieties of perennials and wildflowers with ornate fountains and a lily pond. Inside, you’ll find even more plants, as well as an extensive collection of fossils and butterflies.
In central Eureka Springs, the buildings lining Main Street are ornate Victorian-era style buildings, filled with unique and unusual shops like the Heart Division, Granny's Place, and Eureka’s Excellent Emporium. If you want to learn more about this quirky little hamlet, the Eureka Springs Historical Museum weaves Eureka Springs’ tale through art and historical exhibits.
Hot Springs
West of Little Rock is Hot Springs, a place where things can get a little weird. The city, known for its healing natural hot springs, is a little obsessed with bathtubs and gangsters. It may sound like a strange mixture of things, but somehow it all blends together in this offbeat community. You can take a long, healing soak in one of their famous bathhouses, like the Buckstaff Bathhouse, and then tour the many quirky attractions in town.
One of the best things to see in Hot Springs is the fascinating Josephine Tussaud Wax Museum. You can tour life-size wax figures of historical and fictional people, and because Hot Springs has a love of gangsters, there’s also a gambling paraphernalia exhibit. To understand Hot Springs' fascination with gangsters, be sure to check out the Gangster Museum of America. But the best time to visit Hot Springs is during the World Championship Running of the Tubs, where you can watch contestants push customized bathtubs down Bathhouse Row!
Lead Hill
Not too far from the Missouri border in Northern Arkansas is the small city of Lead Hill, given its name due to the valuable lead found in the area that made it a profitable mining town. The mine was eventually flooded when the residents created Bull Shoals Lake, which is a wonderful place to relax on the shores in the heart of the Ozarks (along with Tucker Hollow Recreation Area). Yet the real reason visitors come to Lead Hill isn’t to relax at Bull Shoals Lake—it’s something far stranger.
Visitors come to Lead Hill to roam the eerie abandoned ruins of a French Castle. The Ozark Medieval Fortress was an ambitious project, intended to replicate the Guédelon Castle of France, and was slated to take about 20 years to complete. After only 2 years into the project, it ran out of funding and lies abandoned and forgotten. While the final project would have been spectacular, exploring the unfinished project is a fun adventure for urban explorers.
Ozone
Ready to breathe in that fresh mountain air? The area of Ozone earned its name because the air smells so fresh that it earned the name Ozone (which, in the late 1800s, was synonymous with clean air). There’s no shortage of Ozark adventures in Ozone. It’s home to Glory Hole Falls, a unique waterfall that spills through a natural opening in a rock formation. Or, you can check out the Ozone Recreation Area and Campground, offering stunning wooded views in the heart of the Ozarks.
After a day of exploring the natural beauty of Ozone and taking in that fresh mountain air, nothing tastes better than a burger from Grumpy's Burger Barn! It’s part roadside attraction, part classic comfort food in a rustic mountain setting. The brisket sandwich is worth the long drive! When you think of a classic roadside dining on a long road trip, Grumpy's Burger Barn delivers exactly the kind of hearty meal that hits the spot.
Berryville
Berryville is one of those charming communities with adventures hidden around every corner. A good example of the vibes of Berryville is the upbeat Memory Lane Museum. It’s a fun, quirky place to explore that feels like an old Route 66 tourist attraction equipped with vintage cars, road signs, and relics of decades past. You never know what you’ll find! And after a trip down memory lane, be sure to stop by the cozy Ozark Cafe for some good old-fashioned Southern cuisine.
The real attraction in Berryville isn’t necessarily one you’ll find above ground. Cosmic Cavern is a must-see when in the area. It is a cave system that maintains a cool temperature of 64 degrees year-round and has two bottomless lakes and magnificent 9-foot soda straw stalactites, which are some of the largest in the area. Some of the formations in Cosmic Cavern even glow in the darkness due to the highly reflective calcite crystals.
Calico Rock
In Northern Arkansas, just south of Norfork Lake, is Calico Rock, known for its calico bluffs overlooking the White River. There are plenty of ways to take in the views in Calico Rock, like heading to City Rock Bluff or the Sugarloaf Mountain Lookout Tower. The walkable downtown area has quaint stops like the Main Street Pocket Park or Calico Rock Trout Dock along the White River. What makes Calico Rock truly interesting isn’t the shops that are still open, but the ones that closed long ago.
East Calico, also known as Peppersauce Ghost Town, is a city locked away in time. It became a ghost town after a series of economic shifts and natural disasters gradually drove residents out. Today, it’s a hub for urban explorers to explore abandoned (but preserved) structures like the old pool hall, barber shop, theater, telephone exchange, and funeral parlor. Fun fact: the name Peppersauce comes from local slang for homemade moonshine, which was quite abundant in East Calico in its early days!
Jasper
With fewer than 600 residents, the city of Jasper is a place where time moves a little slower. There’s no better example of Jasper's old-timey vibes than the iconic Ozark Café. It opened in 1909 and is one of Arkansas's oldest restaurants, serving up classic Americana (like burgers, fries, and milkshakes) in a rustic setting. Things can get a little lively at the cafe in the evenings with live music! While you’re there, you have to try their famous biscuits with chocolate gravy!
Old-world charm aside, Jasper is an isolated city surrounded by the untouched beauty of the Ozark Mountains. Horseshoe Canyon Ranch is a popular spot to find adventure on a real working dude ranch. There’s horseback riding, zip-lining, and rock climbing amidst the solitude of the mountains in the distance. But for the best views, the Arkansas Grand Canyon is less than a 10-minute drive south of central Jasper. The valleys may not be as deep as the Grand Canyon of Arizona, but the scenery is just as stunning.
9 Offbeat Arkansas Towns Worth the Detour
From ghost towns, tub races, wax museums, and cave systems, Arkansas proves it’s much more than high mountain tops and rolling lowlands. Scattered throughout its amazing scenery are pockets of tight-knit communities that embrace the strange. Whether you’re hankering for biscuits with chocolate gravy (you have to try it at least once!) from the Ozark Cafe in Jasper or a roadside burger from Grumpy's Burger Barn in Ozone, the comfort food in these small towns is just the beginning. The trips you remember most are the ones that took you somewhere you never expected to go.
