page_title: Natural Steps, Arkansas
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Natural Steps, Arkansas / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Colonel John Navarre Macomb.
context_page_description: Natural Steps is an unincorporated census-designated place in Pulaski County, Arkansas, United States. It is located 18 miles northwest of Little Rock along the southern bank of the Arkansas River, on Arkansas Highway 300. As of the 2010 census, its population is 426. Today, it is a small farming community with scattered businesses. Most of the natural steps, a geologic formation, still stand today and are used as a marker for river runners. The Natural Steps are not open to the public for viewing.
context_section_description: The small town was named after "two perfectly parallel vertical walls of sandstone, twenty feet apart, [that] jut out from the disintegrated soft slates, in prominent conformity, descending steplike, fifty-one feet from the top of the bank, where they first show themselves, to the edge of the lowest water-mark of the Arkansas River, and can be seen running their course beneath the stream. These form a conspicuous landmark to boatman and travelers on the Arkansas River, and are known under the name of the "Natural Steps". Beginning in 1822, the local "Natural Steps" provided a convenient stop for Little Rock visitors to disembark for their hike to the mountain."
  The Natural Steps were first written about and drawn by David Dale Owen (Principal Geologist) in his Second Report of a Geological Reconnaissance of the Middle and Southern Counties of Arkansas (1859) ordered by Elias Nelson Conway, Governor of Arkansas. He wrote,
  In sight of the Pinnacle (Pinnacle Mountain State Park) on the Arkansas River, near the mouth of the Big Maumelle, are "The Natural Steps". I found to be forty feet above the Arkansas River, at its stage when I examined and sketched them, on May 30, 1859, but they are fifty-one feet above low-water mark.
  Seen from the River at a little distance, they have a wonderfully artificial appearance, looking like steps laid by regular masonry, and form, indeed, not only a remarkable feature in the landscape, but also a striking and unequivocal instance, of which Arkansas furnishes several, of strata tilted nearly on edge.
  In 1870, United States Army Corps of Engineers Col. John Navarre Macomb, along with Assistant Engineer S.T. Abert, set out to map the Arkansas River and show low-water depths and other features important to river travel across the channel. In their maps, a drawing and location of the "Natural Steps" were included.
caption: Col. John Navarre Macomb
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