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ALBERT RUTH LECTURE - A TRIP TO THE OZARK MOUNTAINS - 1927

I thought if I should tell you something with regard to a trip
which I made in 1927 to the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, some-
thing of the impressions and experiences connected with that trip,
as well as some facts which I learned by frequent excursions, not
only into the Mountains themselves, but also into the adjacent and
outlying mountain-country regions - the recital of these things
might perhaps prove of some interest to you.

The Ozarks are a comparatively long range of mountains, beginning
at the Missouri River in Missouri and extending in a northwesterly
direction across the northwest corner of Arkansas, then changing
their course to the southwest in Oklahoma they extend across
the state to the Red River where they terminate as mere foot-hills.

The Ozarks have been called and are called moutains, but they are
in reality nothing but lofty hills, for their maximum elevation
does not exceed twenty-five hundred feet and in some portions of
the range the elevation is not more than fifteen hundred feet.

But this low altitude has not always been characteristic of the
Ozarks. In the remote past - a past so remote that it cannot
be measured by years nor by centuries, but by ages and by aeons,
it could not have been affirmed of the Ozarks, it could not have
been asserted of the Ozarks that they were nothing but lofty hills,
for belonging as they do to the oldest mountain regions in the
world, denudation or erosion, that is, the gradual wearing away
and consequent removal by natural agencies, we are told, has been
going on for ages, and is still slowly but surely removing the
last remnants of what were once lofty mountains.

In Arkansas the range sends off two spurs to the east, one
spur, the Boston Mountains, is north of the Arkansas River; the
other spur, the Washington Mountains, is south of the River. The
Ozarks, through their entire extent, are thickly, but one would
not say, perhaps, that they were heavily timbered. For their is
nothing remarkable about the trees, either as to size or loftiness,
at least such is the case with many of the trees, if not with the
majority of them.

Leaving Forth Worth about seven o'clock in the evening of August 27th
1927, we planned, and confidentially expected, in accordance with
our plans, to reach our destination in the Ozarks, Winslow, Ark.,
about ten or eleven o'clock the next morning, but how true it is
that

"the best laid schemes of mice and men
gang aft aglee,"

qnd also how true is is that the unforeseen and unexpected often
interrupts and prevents the carrying out of many a well-devised
and carefully prepared scheme, or plan of action. Owing to the fact
that between Sherman and Denison we lost our way and were delayed
several hours, and also that when we were 30 miles west of Fort Smith
Ark., and were distant from our destination fifteen miles only, in
the very heart of the Ozarks, in a wild and lonely place, the night
dark and cloudy, our car refused to carry us any farther, and so,