The Trans-Ozark Trail may someday be a trail running between Lake Fort Smith in Arkansas and St Louis, Missouri. Many pieces exist, with gaps between.
Working west-to-east and south-to-north, the existing pieces and gaps are:
- Ozark Highlands Trail – Boston Mountains section, 164 miles.
- Buffalo River Trail (middle and lower river sections), 43 miles.
- Gap: Lower Buffalo Wilderness. Estimated to be about 16 miles. A bushwhack route exists. Getting a trail built requires National Park Service to update their management plan for BNR.
- Ozark Highlands Trail – Sylamore section, 32 miles.
- Gap: about 8 miles between Matney Knob and the Norfork Lake dam. There’s much private property in between so a future trail route seems unlikely. A road walk is quite do-able.
- Ozarks Keystone Trail: About 12.5 miles of trail from the Norfork Lake dam to Fish & Fiddle Rd (CR 1028), a gap of 18 miles, about 32 miles of trail from Panther Creek to the state line, then a gap of 18-20 miles to Dawt Mill, Missouri.
- Ozark Trail. I haven’t researched this in depth but gaps seem to exist from Dawt Mill to the southern end of North Fork section (Collins Ridge), between North Fork and Eleven Point sections, and between Courtois section and St Louis.
The Compulsive Hiker 