Eminence has fewer than six hundred residents and, on a summer weekend, several thousand visitors, most of them carrying canoes. The tiny town sits on the Jacks Fork River in the heart of the Ozark National Scenic Riverways, the first national park area in the United States created to protect a river system, established in 1964 to keep the Current and Jacks Fork rivers free of dams. The water here is famously clear, cold and blue-green over gravel bars, fed by enormous springs pouring out of the limestone.
The countryside around Eminence is a karst landscape of caves, sinkholes and springs, under a dense cover of oak and pine. Shannon County is also home to herds of wild horses that have roamed the hills and river bottoms for generations, descendants of farm animals turned loose decades ago, and protected by federal law since the 1990s. You may glimpse them grazing in the fields near the rivers, especially early in the morning.
West of town on Route 106, Alley Spring is the essential short detour. A bright red mill from the 1890s stands beside a deep, blue spring pool, and it is one of the most photographed scenes in Missouri. Route 106 itself is a fine road, twisting through the forest with steep climbs and descents, and it continues east toward Ellington with very little traffic. Route 19 runs through Eminence too, north toward Salem and south toward Winona, with similar character: tight bends through the hills, some blind crests, and decent but occasionally patched tarmac.
For practical matters, Eminence has a couple of cafes, outfitters, cabins and motels, and you can usually find fuel in town, but hours are limited and options are few. Winona, sixteen kilometres south on US 60, adds another station, and West Plains, about an hour away, is the nearest proper town with every service. In summer the river crowds can make the town noisy on Saturday nights. In spring and autumn it is quiet, and a swim in the Jacks Fork on a hot day is a memorable cold shock that will wake you up for the afternoon ride.