6 Ozarks Traditions Arkansas and Missouri Both Claim

A state line doesn’t mean much in the Ozarks.

Arkansans and Missourians who grew up in the hills may each say a tradition started on their side.

Here are the customs both states can fairly call their own.

1. Float Trips

The radio station KSMU calls the Ozarks float trip a tradition that links generations.

Commercial floating in the Missouri Ozarks dates to the late 1800s.

Missouri’s Current River and Jacks Fork are part of the Ozark National Scenic Riverways.

It was the first national park area to protect a river system.

Across the line, the state tourism site arkansas.com calls floating the Buffalo National River an Arkansas rite of passage.

The Buffalo also became the first national river in the United States on March 1, 1972, the Encyclopedia of Arkansas says.

Pick your river.

2. Ballad Singing

Collectors recorded Ozarks ballad singing on both sides of the state line.

Max Hunter was a traveling salesman based in Springfield, Missouri.

He stored his reel-to-reel recorder in his car’s trunk.

Between 1956 and 1976, he recorded nearly 1,600 folk songs and ballads in Arkansas and Missouri, according to Missouri State University’s library guide.

Singers he recorded include Almeda Riddle, Fred High, Ollie Gilbert and Vance Randolph.

On the Arkansas side, the University of Arkansas Libraries opened its Ozark Folksong Collection online in 2015.

The collection has more than 4,500 audio files and over 700 performers.

The university names Mary Celestia Parler as the primary collector.

You can search Hunter’s recordings from home too, through Missouri State University’s online archive.

3. Old-Time Fiddling

You can find the fiddle in the law books of both states: Arkansas and Missouri each named it the official musical instrument.

Arkansas acted first, in 1985 under Act 277, the Encyclopedia of Arkansas says.

Missouri followed in 1987 under Section 10.080 of state law.

The Ozark Folk Center’s page lists the fiddle, banjo, guitar, mandolin, dulcimer and autoharp among the instruments musicians play there.

4. Basket Making

Both states have Ozarks basket-making families.

The Encyclopedia of Arkansas says the Gibson family of Arkansas had produced split white oak baskets for four generations as of 2009.

You can spot a Gibson basket by its heavy hand-carved handle, herringbone weave on the flat bottom and construction without nails.

George Gibson demonstrated his craft at the Smithsonian’s Fourth Annual Festival of American Folklife in Washington in 1970.

In Missouri, forester Aaron Holsapple credits three Ozark families for guiding his basket making, the Smithsonian’s 2023 festival page says.

He names the Uhlmanns of Drury first, then the Dudenhoeffers of Linn, who spent decades learning from the Currys of Salem.

The Ozark Folk Center’s 2026 season runs from April 14 to Nov. 14.

Its page lists baskets among the crafts made on site.

5. Tall Tales

Ozarks tall tales include the Snawfus, a mythological creature the Encyclopedia of Arkansas places in both states.

It’s described as all white and deer-like, but much larger.

The Snawfus is usually reported to have plum or dogwood branches in full bloom growing from its head instead of antlers.

You can read much of what’s known about it in folklorist Vance Randolph’s We Always Lie to Strangers: Tall Tales from the Ozarks.

By 1920, Randolph had settled in Pineville, Missouri.

Through much of the 1940s and 1950s, he lived in Arkansas, mostly in Eureka Springs and Fayetteville.

6. Fish Gigging

The Missouri Department of Conservation calls fish gigging an Ozark tradition in a 2014 magazine article.

The Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette called gigging a tradition on the clear streams of the Ozarks in 2013.

In Missouri, the season on streams and rivers runs Sept. 15 through Feb. 15.

You can’t gig game fish.

In Arkansas, the Game and Fish Commission says only rough fish may be taken with a gig.

Its window for suckers is 10 a.m. to midnight, Sept. 15 through Feb. 15.

On the Buffalo National River, the National Park Service says gigging, bowfishing and snagging are permitted.

Hillbilly Imagery

The Encyclopedia of Arkansas calls Dogpatch USA one of the most ambitious attempts to market and profit from the Ozarks’ hillbilly image.

The park operated from 1968 to 1993 in Arkansas and was based on Al Capp’s Li’l Abner comic strip.

Silver Dollar City, a frontier-themed park in Missouri, offered more extravagant amusement park rides.

The stereotyping of Al Capp and Dogpatch rankled many Arkansans.

Others co-opted the word hillbilly and wore it as a badge of honor.

In the 1970s, the Arkansas band Black Oak Arkansas and Missouri’s Ozark Mountain Daredevils called their music hillbilly rock.

Beyond Two States

You'll need more than Arkansas and Missouri to map the Ozarks.