A Local's Weekend Guide to Roland: Pinnacle Mountain, Wye Mountain Farms, and What's New in 2026

Drive west on Highway 10 past the Little Maumelle bridge and the shoulder starts to widen. Cell service thins. The subdivisions give way to fence line, then to the low ridge that becomes Pinnacle Mountain, then to the pine bottoms along Highway 113 where the pavement bends past berry rows and grazing pasture. This is home for the people who chose Roland on purpose, and the shape of a good weekend here is different from a weekend eight miles east.

Roland reads on a map like a bedroom community, but the ground tells another story: within a fifteen-minute radius sit one of the state's most-visited parks, two family farms open to the public, and a natural area that keeps landing on statewide "best of" lists. The trick to living here well is knowing which door opens on which morning.

The Park You Already Know, With Something You Might Not

You have hiked the West Summit. Everyone in Roland has. The reason to keep coming back is that Pinnacle Mountain State Park keeps changing underneath the same skyline. The park covers more than 2,300 acres with over 33 miles of trails, including 18.95 miles of mountain biking, and its summit sits at 1,011 feet above the Arkansas River, which makes for a workout that feels bigger than the elevation number suggests. The visitor center on the bluff overlooking the river now includes exhibits, restrooms, bike racks, and a Loblolly Creamery Outpost for a scoop after a hot descent.

The addition worth planning around this year is the new Owl Pass Trail, which connects key destinations inside the park and is built to welcome visitors of all abilities. If you have friends or grandparents who used to wave off the summit trails as too rocky, this is the trail that changes that conversation. The park has also been rolling out all-terrain Trackchairs so visitors with mobility challenges can get onto the trail network, a program the park has publicly committed to.

Here is how the workhorse routes compare when you are choosing on a Saturday morning:

If you have never noticed that the Ouachita Trail's eastern terminus is right here in Roland, you are not alone. It is the sort of fact that turns a routine park into a landmark: the trail runs from the visitor center parking lot to Talimena, Oklahoma. You live at mile zero.

Two 2026 park programs worth putting on the fridge

The interpreter-led calendar is what separates the park from a suburban greenbelt. Two programs stand out on the summer schedule: the Sunrise on the Summit Hike, a guided pre-dawn climb up the West Summit Trail that includes a reading of the Declaration of Independence in recognition of the America 250 commemoration, and Monumental Mountains, a short interpreter-led stroll from the Middle Mountain trailhead that explains the Monument Trails art pieces and the trail system's community history. Both are free, and both are the kind of thing you can bring out-of-town family to without needing to explain why you drove them past the last Chick-fil-A.

The Highway 113 Farm Corridor

Ten minutes north of the park, Highway 113 climbs Wye Mountain. This is where Roland stops being a park suburb and starts being a farm road, and it is the piece of the weekend most people who moved here for the trees never quite get around to using.

Wye Mountain Flowers & Berries, at 20309 Highway 113, has been growing cut flowers for central Arkansas since 1998 on an 18-acre farm, with roughly 3 acres of flowers and 8 acres of berries in production. The U-pick season begins around Memorial Day weekend and typically runs about eight weeks into July, with the farm open Monday through Saturday at 7 a.m. during picking season. Blueberries and blackberries are sold by the level gallon bucket. Call 501-330-1906 for the day's berry status before you drive out. If your kids are school-aged, the farm also runs weekday morning field trips at $6 per child for groups of 20 or more, which is a piece of information most Roland parents I talk to did not know existed.

A short drive further at 20823 Highway 113 is Double B Farm & Ranch, a first-generation family operation founded in 2017. They sell grass-fed beef in quarter, half, and whole shares, along with pork and free-range eggs, and their laying hens roam a two-acre area shaded by pecan, mulberry, and persimmon trees. Farm visits are by appointment. The reason to know Double B by name in 2026 is that the family is preparing to open the Double B Ranch Farm Market & Mercantile on the property, which trade coverage in AY Magazine flagged as being readied for the spring season. When that opens, the drive up to Wye Mountain stops being a special-occasion errand and becomes a Saturday routine.

If you want a third stop on that same loop, Rattlesnake Ridge Natural Area in Roland sits just off the same corridor and was a 2026 Arkansas Times Best of Arkansas finalist in the state parks and natural areas category, alongside heavyweights like Devil's Den. It is quieter than Pinnacle and pairs well as an afternoon add-on.

Events Worth Blocking on the Calendar

The rhythm of a Roland year has a few fixed points beyond the daily park visit.

• Sunrise on the Summit, July 4, 5:00 to 7:00 a.m., West Summit Trailhead. Bring a headlamp and water.
• Monumental Mountains, an interpreter-led short walk from the Middle Mountain trailhead's Coachwhip lot, running as a repeating free program on the park's 2026 calendar.
• Race the Base, a 4-mile competitive trail run inside the park, returning in the fall under a new producer and a Halloween twist. It has been described as one of central Arkansas's most beloved fall trail races.
• Capital City Enduro, which shreds multiple central Arkansas trail systems including the Monument Trails at Pinnacle Mountain. The Monument Trails at Pinnacle were named the 2023 Best Mountain Biking finalist in state coverage, which is worth knowing the next time someone tells you that you have to drive to Bentonville for real singletrack.
• Weekly Women's Wednesday hikes led by park interpreters, a standing invitation rather than a one-off event.

If you paddle rather than pedal, the Big Maumelle kiosk in the park offers on-site paddleboard rentals via a phone-scan reservation, running roughly $14.99 for one hour up to $44.99 for a full day. The Big and Little Maumelle Rivers put in inside the park boundary. This is the sort of amenity that goes unused by longtime residents simply because it did not exist when they moved in.

A Sample Saturday

Start at the West Summit lot at 7:30 for cooler stone. Descend, drive to the visitor center, and take the Arkansas Arboretum loop with coffee if you have someone slower with you. From there, cut north on Highway 300 to Highway 113. Berries at Wye Mountain in season, or a pickup order at Double B if you called ahead. Home before the afternoon storms build over the Ouachitas.

That is a shape you can repeat a dozen weekends a year without visiting the same combination twice. It is also the answer to the question that comes up whenever someone asks why you would live in Roland instead of closer to Chenal. You are not further from anything that matters. You are closer to almost everything that made you want to be here in the first place.

If you have friends thinking about west of I-430 and they want a candid conversation about what daily life on this side of the Little Maumelle actually looks like, send them my way. I have been walking these roads and writing about them for a long time. Reach out through Kristen Honea McCready or Get Your Instant Home Valuation if you're curious what your own place on the mountain is worth this year.