Take a leisurely ride through the Ozark foothills as we follow Arkansas Highway 95 from the AR-124 junction south of Cleveland to US-65B in Clinton. This 24-mile run trades in big drama for small pleasures—gentle grades, hay meadows, creek bottoms, and a steady ribbon of pavement that threads together everyday life in northern Conway County and the approach to Van Buren County’s seat.
We roll out at the tee with AR-124 just below Cleveland, easing north onto AR-95 as the road settles into its two-lane cadence. Barn roofs and round-bale rows slip past on the left; windbreaks of cedar and pine mark fence lines on the right. The sightlines feel unhurried here—broad sweepers stitched together by modest straights, with shoulders just wide enough to let the landscape breathe. We pass church corners and mailbox clusters that announce loose-knit neighborhoods before the houses thin and the fields stretch again. Bridges come and go with a quiet clatter as we hop small creeks feeding the Arkansas River basin, their channels shaded by sycamore and sweetgum. In the distance, low ridgelines stack like folded paper, hinting at higher country to come. County road junctions—gravel here, chip-seal there—blink by without fanfare, each one a thread back to a farmhouse or pasture lane. It’s the kind of driving that invites conversation at normal volume—the car and the countryside both running easy.
Through Cleveland proper, AR-95 nudges down to community pace: school and curve warnings, a couple of local driveways, and that familiar small-town rhythm where a gas pump can double as a newsstand. Then we are back to open air and pastureland, the highway taking a gentle rise to a low ridge before feathering down into a hardwood hollow. Pockets of loblolly pine join the mix, and the light flickers as the canopy closes ranks for a mile or two. The pavement is generally smooth—no trap-door potholes—so the broad arc of each curve can be drawn with a light hand. Every so often the trees part and we catch long, diagonal views across meadows stitched with stock ponds and fence lines, the kind of tableaux that make you glance at the clock and relax—you’re not behind; you’re exactly where you should be.
Crossing into Van Buren County, the terrain grows a little more insistent—never sharp, just more frequent rises and dips that give AR-95 a pleasant, rolling cadence. The camber is kind, the geometry forgiving; you’re engaged without working for it. Where the road sidles along the shoulder of a ridge, the northward view layers into soft blue hills—the Ozarks announcing themselves without shouting. Farm outbuildings give way to wider clearings, then pockets of neighborhood grid as we angle toward Clinton’s orbit. Traffic picks up just enough to feel like a town is near: a school zone reminder, a lumber yard, a roadside café with a couple of pickups angled at the door. Civic buildings and small businesses step in to replace pasture and thicket; the shoulders widen, center turn lanes appear, and the highway’s rural gait becomes a town approach.
The run concludes at US-65B, where AR-95 hands us to the business loop for quick access to Clinton’s historic core, fuel, and food. From here, the broader US-65 corridor stretches north and south, while the business route threads into town services and local streets. If time allows, circling downtown Clinton offers a compact snapshot of the county seat’s role as a regional hub—courthouse square, storefronts, and the community heartbeat that highways like 95 knit together day after day. Taken whole, this segment from the AR-124 junction through Cleveland to Clinton is a portrait of Arkansas’s state-highway network at its best: well-kept pavement, scenery in motion rather than on display, and the steady pulse of rural places connected by a road that’s always there when you need it.
As we click the turn signal at US-65B and let the engine settle, it’s easy to frame the drive in three beats: pasture, woodland, town. None of them rush; each of them matters. AR-95 doesn’t try to be a destination highway, and that’s exactly why the miles feel good—like a clear line drawn between people and the places they call home.
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