Whether you are hiking, running or cycling on a trail in Arkansas, you are taking advantage of work performed by what are known as Trail Fairies. Arkansas Trail Fairies have been responsible for working with land managers, designing trails, building trails and maintaining trails for decades. Some of the work through fundraising activities to have trails professionally built, some of the work is the tiring work of convincing landowners/managers to support trails on their land and some is through strong backs wielding various types of tools from rakes to sledgehammers, weed-eaters to chainsaws.

Many of these fairies work alone while others prefer to work in groups. Through their hard work, Arkansas has developed some of the best trails in the country that can be enjoyed year-round. If you would like to lend a hand, help financially or just learn more about Arkansas Trail Fairies, visit these trail advocate websites:
- Ozark Off-Road Cyclists (OORC)*
- Friends of the Ouachita Trail (FoOT)
- The Trail Dogs
- Central Arkansas Trail Alliance (CATA)*
- River Valley OORC*
- NorthEast Arkansas Trail Organization (NEATO)
- Central Arkansas Off-road Group (COG)
- Friends of Syllamo Trail (FOST)
- Friends of Arkansas Single-Track (FAST)*
- Foothills Trail Alliance
- Frontier OORC*
- Arkansas Master Naturalists
* International Mountain Bicycling Association affiliates.









(photos ruthlessly stolen from the Facebook pages of the above groups.)
6 Responses
Thank you for the shout-out to all of the dedicated, hardworking trail volunteers.
Marty
Friends of the Ouachita Trail
Realize this article is 1.5 years old, but even back then the Arkansas Master Naturalist chapters, especially those in the Ozarks, have been clearing, building and maintaining trails all over the state. Ought to update the article to give them a shout out.
Thanks, Nell, as this article was focused on the mountain bike trail building community, we did recently run this article that included the Arkansas Master Naturalists (https://arkansasoutside.com/resolved-involved-2016/). Thanks for all your work.