Volunteers add 178 miles to Ozark Highlands Trail

The U.S. Forest Service created the Ozark Highlands Trail in 1977. The agency had an ambitious plan to create a long-distance footpath that would begin at Lake Fort Smith and extend across public land approximately 140 miles to Richland Creek Campground, remaining primarily within Ozark National Forest.

Using volunteer labor from several youth groups, including Young Adult Conservation Corps and Youth Conservation Corps, the Forest Service constructed sections of hiking trails within each of the three ranger districts the planned trail would traverse. The plan was to join these standalone segments into a continuous route but in 1981, funding for the trail was eliminated from the federal budget and the agency ended its project.

Tim Ernst, who had been hiking the finished trail segments, decided this was a project well worth completing. He began recruiting volunteers to resume construction.

Today, the Ozark Highlands Trail is an example of what can be accomplished by volunteers. With members from 22 states, the organization Ernst began to finish the job — the Ozark Highlands Trail Association — has contributed more than 350,000 hours of labor for trail construction and maintenance.

When the association took over construction, the Forest Service had built about 40 miles of trails. Today, the trail is more than 218 miles long (the volunteers added 178 of those miles).

The group’s long-term goal is to connect it with Missouri’s Ozark Trail at the state line. When complete, this joint Trans-Ozark Trail will extend from Lake Fort Smith in Arkansas some 1,000 miles to St. Louis. It would be the longest hiking trail in the central United States.