24/7 Trauma and Biohazard Cleanup in Natural Steps, AR

Natural Steps is an unincorporated census-designated place in Pulaski County, located about 18 miles northwest of Little Rock on the southern bank of the Arkansas River along Arkansas Highway 300, between Lake Maumelle and the river.

The community is named for a striking geologic formation: two perfectly parallel vertical walls of sandstone, about twenty feet apart, that descend steplike some fifty-one feet from the top of the river bank down to the low-water mark of the Arkansas River.

State geologist David Dale Owen first described and sketched the Natural Steps in his geological reconnaissance report of 1859, noting how the tilting strata look almost like steps laid by a mason.

Beginning in 1822, the Natural Steps served as a steamboat landing where deep water let boats dock conveniently; Little Rock excursionists disembarked there to hike to nearby Pinnacle Mountain, and steamboat picnickers flocked to the spot through the nineteenth century.

A 1932 archaeological investigation of the Natural Steps area by University of Arkansas staff uncovered fifty-seven burials along with pottery of both the Quapaw and Caddo peoples.

On May 8, 1874, a small Brooks-Baxter War engagement unfolded on the river near Natural Steps, when the steamboat Hallie was sent to intercept a flatboat reportedly carrying guns downriver for Joseph Brooks's forces.

A Methodist church was established in the community in the mid-1880s, but little of the old river port survives beyond its cemetery, church, and a historic house; today Natural Steps is a quiet farming community, and the formation itself still serves as a marker for river runners though it is not open to the public.

The 2020 census counted 413 residents in the Natural Steps CDP, and the community sits just east of Pinnacle Mountain State Park, with the Ouachita National Recreation Trail passing to its west.