West of Hot Springs, US-270 cuts through the Ouachita Mountains , unique to the continent in that they run east-west rather than north-south. On its way to Oklahoma, the road passes over uneven crests separated by wide valleys speckled with tiny communities, so isolated that, in the Thirties, hill-dwellers supposedly spoke a form of Elizabethan English. Separating the Ouachitas from the northerly Ozarks, the Arkansas River Valley , a natural east-west path for bison, was used for centuries by Native Americans and white hunters before steamboats arrived in the 1820s.

Western Arkansas

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• Fort Smith

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