Mount Magazine, officially named Magazine Mountain, is the highest point of the U.S. Interior Highlands and the U.S. state of Arkansas, and is the site of Mount Magazine State Park. It is a flat-topped mountain or mesa capped by hard rock and rimmed by precipitous cliffs. There are two summits atop the mountain: Signal Hill, which reaches, and Mossback Ridge, which reaches.
Etymology
Mount Magazine gets its name from French explorers who, while traveling through the area, witnessed a landslide on the mountain. The noise from the landslide was so great that one explorer described it as the sound of an ammunition magazine exploding, hence the name "Magazine". The U.S. Geological Survey's Geographic Names Information System indicates that the official name of this landform is "Magazine Mountain", not "Mount Magazine". Generally "Mount " is used for peaks and " Mountain" is used for ridges, which better describes this landform. Mount Magazine appears in the GNIS as a ridge with Signal Hill as its summit. "Mount Magazine" is the name used by the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism, which follows what the locals have used since the area was first settled. Mount Magazine is often called "the highest point between the Alleghenies and the Rockies", but there are many parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota with higher elevations.
The climate is very different from the typical climate of the Arkansas state as temperatures remain 10 degrees cooler than normal temperatures in the valleys. The annual average temperature is 56° F. The park gets 54 inches of rainfall every year, and due to the low clouds, there is fog and limited visibility all year for eight days each month.
Summer
The summer temperature very rarely reaches 100 degrees Fahrenheit on the mountaintop and the hottest average temperature during the summer in the park is 90 degrees Fahrenheit.
As the South American plate collided with the North American plate during the late Paleozoic, a major foreland basin, the Arkoma Basin, developed north of the Ouachita Mountains. Small grains of sediment that had filled the Arkoma Basin were compacted and cemented into sedimentary rock. As the land rose above sea level, small streams developed that eventually merged into the Arkansas River. After millions of years of erosion, synclines like Mount Magazine have become the most positive topographic features; this phenomenon is the result of the rapid weathering of shales once sandstones were breached on the flanks of surrounding anticlines. Mount Magazine is a broad mesa composed of Pennsylvanian sedimentary rocks deposited in various shallow-water environments. Like many mountains in the western Arkansas River Valley, Mount Magazine is capped by the Savanna Formation, a sequence of shale, siltstone, and sandstone; the upper portion of this sequence is missing throughout most of Arkansas. The Savanna Formation is conformable with the underlying McAlester Formation, a sequence of shale, siltstone, sandstone, and a number of coal beds. The McAlester Formation is conformable with the underlying Hartshorne Sandstone, a prominent ledge-former under favorable structural conditions. The Hartshorne Sandstone is unconformable with the underlying Atoka Formation. This unit has the largest areal extent of any of the Paleozoic formations in Arkansas, extending as far north as the Boston Mountains, and is divided into upper, middle, and lower members.
Nature & Attractions
Mount Magazine promotes environment conservation through an Eco-friendly nature attraction which allows visitors to explore nature. It also consists of 18 campsites for nature-lovers. An annual butterfly festival is hosted each June in the Paris town square.
Animals
The park is home to many endangered species including the Shagreen Snail, Black Bear, White-Tailed Deer, Rufous-Crowned Sparrows, and 94 of the 134 butterfly species of Arkansas. The most rare butterfly species is the Diana Fritillary.
Activities
Activities include the following: hiking, biking, bird watching, horseback riding, hang gliding, rappelling, rock climbing, sightseeing, and photography. ATV riding is also allowed as there is a guide to the activity.
