Talimena Scenic Drive

Scenic road chapters

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Talihina

   Talihina is a very small town in the Ouachita Mountains of southeastern Oklahoma, with just over a thousand people, and it is the western gate of one of the best ridge roads in the middle of the country. The name comes from the Choctaw language, and is often translated as iron road, a reference to the railroad that arrived here in the 1880s. This is Choctaw Nation land, and the tribe's presence is visible in the town signs, the language and the cultural centres. The Choctaw were forced here from Mississippi on the Trail of Tears in the 1830s, a history that gives the landscape a sombre depth.

   Read the complete Talihina write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Talihina is where the day begins. Next is Winding Stair Mountain.

2. 2. Winding Stair Mountain

   Winding Stair Mountain is a long, forested ridge in southeastern Oklahoma, and the Talimena Scenic Drive follows its crest like a thread along a hem. The Ouachita Mountains are unusual in the United States because they run east to west, not north to south, folded into long parallel ridges with broad valleys between them, and from the top you can see row after row of blue ridges receding into Arkansas. The elevation is only around 800 metres, but in this flat part of the country it feels like a proper mountain range.

   Read the complete Winding Stair Mountain write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Winding Stair Mountain comes up about 44 km into the recorded legs. Nothing on this route is higher. Next is Queen Wilhelmina State Park, mostly downhill.

3. 3. Queen Wilhelmina State Park

   A mountaintop state park named after a Dutch queen is the sort of fact that needs explaining, and the explanation is a railway. In the 1890s Dutch investors in the Kansas City Southern line, which ran through the nearby town of Mena, built a grand hotel on the crest of Rich Mountain and named it for their young queen, Wilhelmina. The original hotel did not last, but the name did, and the present lodge, rebuilt in the 1960s, sits on the same ridge with a view that spreads over Arkansas and, on a clear day, a long way beyond.

   Read the complete Queen Wilhelmina State Park write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 81 km into the recorded legs you reach Queen Wilhelmina State Park. Next is Mena.

4. 4. Mena

   Mena is a small Arkansas town at the foot of the Ouachita Mountains, near the Oklahoma border, with a little over five thousand people and an old railroad main street. The story goes that Dutch investors who backed the railway named the town after the wife of one of their number, and the Dutch connection has stuck, so that the state park on the mountain above is named for Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands.

   Read the complete Mena write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Mena closes the day.