TravelWorld International Magazine Fall 2022

Where the
Buffalo Roams
addling the Buffalo River in northern Arkansas is
always exceptional. About the only way to top it is to
paddle with Mike Mills, owner of the Buffalo Outdoor
Center in Ponca, Ark., and quite possibly the person who
knows the river best from a lifetime of experience.
When Mike Mills was about 8 years old, he started canoeing
and camping with his dad. “Dad’s form of vacation was to take a
canoe and a tent and go camp beside a river and fish,” he recalled.
“That was the one week of the year I got to spend the most time
with my dad.”
“We floated the Buffalo River for the first time in 1965, from
Pruitt to Phillip’s Ford (now called Hasty). It was an 8-mile float
and took most of the day. I remember stopping at the mouth of
the Little Buffalo River and cooking fish in a cast-iron skillet over
a fire. The Buffalo just had this draw that was unlike any other
river. It was so beautiful; it was so pristine.”
Mills was hooked, and those trips with his father helped to define
his career. Today Mills is not only doing what he dreamed of
doing, but he is also sharing his passion for the Buffalo River with
the thousands of people who pass through the area for floating,
hiking, elk viewing, camping, fishing, bird-watching, and more.
Mills was inducted into the Arkansas Tourism Hall of Fame for
his lifelong devotion to the river and the outdoors.
First National River
nvironmental awareness and conservation
movements were sweeping across the country in the
1960s. In the early part of that decade, President
John F. Kennedy endorsed the Ozark National
Scenic Riverways (ONSR), the first national
park to protect a wild, free-flowing river system.
Congress in 1964 authorized the act, which protected 134 miles
of the Current River and its tributary, the Jacks Fork River, in
the Missouri Ozarks. The ONSR became the prototype for the
National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act of 1968, which helped
protect free-flowing rivers around the country. These two events
paved the way for the creation of the Buffalo National River in
Arkansas, the country’s first national river (not a river system,
as with ONSR). The Buffalo was signed into law on March 1,
1972, one hundred years to the day after the establishment of
Yellowstone, the country’s first national park. This year is the
50th anniversary of the Buffalo National River, which makes it a
super time to get out and enjoy it.
Mike Mills
knows the
Buffalo
National
River as well
as, if not
better than,
any other
person.
Photo by
Barbara
Gibbs
Ostmann
Fall foliage lights up
the Buffalo National
River in Arkansas.
Autumn paddling on the Buffalo
National River offers tranquility as
well as beautiful fall foliage.
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