Best Hikes in Oklahoma

Oklahoma's ranked summits split across four groups scattered hundreds of miles apart. Seven cluster in the far northwestern Oklahoma Panhandle around Black Mesa, Oklahoma's official state high point at 4,973 feet — a three-million-year-old basalt lava flow that traveled some 55 miles from a volcano near Colorado's Piney Mountain, its resistant caprock shielding the softer sedimentary rock beneath from the erosion that carved the surrounding valley floor down around it; Robbers Roost Peak, Independence Arch and Castle Rock Pillar sit within about 12 miles of it, Winchester Mesa, Sugarloaf Mountain and Razor Blade Mesa a bit farther out at 25. About 250 miles southeast, near Lawton, Mount Scott and its close neighbors Mount Lauramac and Tarbone Mountain sit in the Wichita Mountains — granite, rhyolite and gabbro that solidified roughly 525 million years ago and were later uplifted well above their present height. Quartz Mountain and King Mountain, some 45 miles west near Lake Altus-Lugert, are cut from that same Wichita granite system's pink-red Lugert Granite despite the distance; Twin Mountains sits roughly midway between the two, named on its own rather than folded into either. Farthest of all, Lynn Mountain and Polecat Peak sit almost 500 miles from Black Mesa in the Ouachita Mountains of Oklahoma's far southeastern corner, against the Arkansas line. Quartz Mountain's 0.4-mile out-and-back is the shortest hike in the group; Lynn Mountain and Polecat Peak's 11.2-mile routes tie as the longest. 10 more Oklahoma summits are already queued in the database — these 15 are simply the ones with a confirmed route and elevation profile today.